Everyday, including today, you can be in love

I have given a talk on the following topic to a gay buddhist group, a few years ago. In my search for romantic love, I discovered that I can be a lover everyday by sending this heart energy out to other beings, not just romantic lovers, and by observing myself and others and letting their love into my life. For example, how one treats the convenience store clerk reveals more about his or her capacity to give genuine, unconditional love. This realization has changed my life.

The claim that love pervades this world may not sound real to you but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Most of us just haven’t learned to pay much attention to the countless moments of love, kindness, and care that surround us each day: a child at the store reaching for her mother’s hand, an elderly stranger at the park who smiles upon a young family, a grocery clerk who beams at you as she hands you your change.

The “blessings that are always pouring forth” include the love that has permeated our lives, peeking at us through many eyes. Think, for example, of someone you loved to be near when you were a child: a parent or grandparent, a special aunt or uncle, a family friend or teacher—someone it felt wonderful to be with. Why did you like to be near that person so much? Probably because she radiated a wish of love to you through the quality of her presence, her words, her play with you, or simply through her smiling eyes when you came near. Try to remember someone like that from your childhood right now. Hold that person in your mind for a moment and recall how it felt to be near her. That’s what it is like to receive the love that simply wishes for your happiness. We like to be near people like that because we have a deep need to receive their unspoken love, to drink up its life-giving goodness.

-- John Makransky, "Love is All Around" (Fall 2007)