Unconditional Love

[Dharmavidya]

Today I have been teaching on the Buddhist Psychology programme and this evening gave the Sutra Study Class at The Buddhist House. We are studying Shoshin Nembutsu Ge and have reached the passage about Amida's Light. Amida's light is love. It incorporates joy, faith, wisdom, tenderness and other sublime qualities. It is the epitome of love. Amida's Light is called immeasurable. This is because true love does not measure. It is called unbounded. This is because true love liberates and does not confine. It is called unimpeded. This is because love rises above obstacles and is undaunted. It is called inconceivable. This is because love cannot be reduced to a set of concepts. In this way we can understand the passage in the sutra as not only describing the Light of Amida but also as defining that Light as unconditional love. The sutra says that all Buddhas and bodhisattvas praise this Light. This means that the great teachers of all true religions praise the light of unconditional love. They may use different language and they may position their teaching within a different metaphysic from one another, but the mark of a true teacher is that he or she teaches us to worship the light of unconditional love.

We recognise that we ourselves do not radiate such an unconditional light, though we might be touched by it occasionally. Once one has been touched by it the memory never totally leaves one. It remains one's unfailing source of spiritual replenishment and mindfulness. Even though we might be instructed to train ourselves to 'work on' our problems and strive to overcome greed, hate and delusion, as soon as one feels truly loved they just evaporate of their own accord. Our own encounter with love is always through the medium of love-of-something: since we are worldlings, our love starts with something in the world - something that somehow at a certain moment embodies the sublime for us and takes us out of ourselves. Higher encounters with the light may flood into our world and illumine everything so that we come to life in new ways. We are bombu. The Light is, therefore, a suitable object of worship. To praise it is simply a natural response to the reality of its nature in relation to our actual state. We cannot seize it, but by admiring and appreciating it we do open ourselves to a power that may lift our life into a new level of beatitude. Wherever the Light is noticed there is a softening of the heart and a growth in the sense of tender communion. Namo Amida Bu.

[Katrien Sercu]

Again thank you Dharmavidya. By this talk, i understand and i feel better the connection - before this Light and Love were two realities in my perception - between Light and unconditional Love. You explain it so gradually that i can walk with you into understanding of this deep quality or spiritual reality. It gives also trust that the worship to the light of unconditional love connects all great teachers of true religions....it rises above differences. I see that you talk about 'true' religions. Interesting!
In conditional love we find something that embodies the sublime for us, what takes us out of ourselve. Here you paint conditional love in his beauty and not only in his limitations!
Thank you for this short and clear talk: it's about most essential content.