What is LOVE?

Everyone keeps on talking about love to everyone. See the successful romcoms, the mad love triangles, the crazy serial lovers, vengeful love sicknesses.  All the time. It's about finding love, found love, about whom you love, about whom you love doesn't love you....and of course about how one has lost love. 

I am so much drowned in this discussion currently that in need of a gasp of fresh air, had a random thought.....in all this love talk, we are looking for a person who would love us. But are we capable of loving back? Are we able to love if we find love?

Quite often the reality is that we are so obsessed with what we want that we seldom realize what we have. We take the love we have for granted and wander in search of a fantasy. That brings me back to me question, are we truly capable of loving? Do we know what to do with the person or love if we find it?

I stumbled upon a random thought here again, is love not really aesthetics? Saundaryashastra? An experience of aloukika? Sublime! Can being in love be any different that being a sahridiya rasika? The one that can completely submerge in the experience of emotion of the otherness?

I would rather say, love is rasa. If so, then we are capable of loving, but we have to learn, practice and inculcate to be able to do so; and yes it is a repetitive experience of nine rasas in a loop till you reach a constant 'simulation'. Like always, I find the story of Abhinavagupta (an aesthete and proponent of Rasa theory from 9th century CE) to illustrate the existence of rasa as a perfect anecdote to discuss love. He says that we have thousands of dormant emotions/ideas lying in our subconscious, like seeds under the soil. With a few drops of rain some of the seeds sprout, like with some action/event or person out dormant emotions ignite. Some of the sprouts then may grow into trees that will bear flowers and then fruits. Eventually the fruits will disintegrate into seeds again and the process continues in a loop. Abhinavagupta says that the tree is the process of our sensual experience, flowers our expression of the emotion and fruits the output through which we reach the other. In art analogy, the tree would be the creative process, the flowers the artworks and fruits the consumption of art by the spectator. 

I find this so close to love. We have love within us, that sprouts with someone, develops into a tree, flowers and blooms and whom we love tastes the fruits. Some may love the fruit, some may find it sour, some might dislike the taste all together, sometimes the fruit is just not good, its spoilt. What is amazing is that we have many fruits and we will have many fruits every season. That is our huge our capacity to love is. But guys we are creating the fruits, (and yes savouring a few of others too may be) it is all us. We love, and it is our love that reciprocates to us in love-relationships. Like rasa love cannot be transferred it is within us, it is our sthayi bhava, constant emotion that is creating rasa, love.     

As an aesthetician, I have always maintained that aesthetics may not make you an artist but it will certainly take you closer to being able to appreciate art. But its easy said than done. 'Aesthetics' is opposite of anesthesia, a state of physical numbness. One needs to be in a state of complete awareness for am aesthetical experience, for love. It is a sensual pleasure, so is love I maintain. One has to be absolutely aware, present in the moment, conscious to be able to love, but alas most people are lost in love.

Like the mad artist pursuing in frenzy to create his best work (than enjoying the creative process), the lover runs behind love that's in his mind, in short limited to his mind, is just a seed. The complexity lies in the interpretation, aesthetics is not about beauty, love is not about the lover. 

Like a sahridiya rasika one has to be present, sensually experience and react to the experiences. Rasa cannot be transferred, each one has to experience one's own 'rasa', one has to become a rasika. You can't find it outside. You search for beauty elsewhere you will hardly find it, one has to submerge and become that beauty that experience oneself. Similarly love in not in one's lover I feel, it is within us, absolutely individualistic and universal at the same time. 

Like the painter who is engrossed in painting the highlight of the eye may miss the moist edges, one can miss the love inside oneself while looking for it in other person. Love I feel is misunderstood as catharsis and has become more and more dependent on the 'other', like catharsis on the creation of art. but love is the sthayi bhava, constant emotion that lies dormant within us, can be ignited by someone as vibhava, but we need to be a sahridiya, and immerse in the completeness of the feeling to become rasika, the lover that can not just be loved be can also love!

Amidst the complex posts of continuous incompleteness of individual self, of constant backstories of trauma, one essentially needs to find the self love, the sthayi bhava within. And become a rasika, experience the rasa as the peak of emotion and remain true to oneself, ready for the next emotion. Love is not losing yourself, love for me is the state of complete awareness, aloukika, a jagruti. 

 

(image: Edward Hopper A show of his work, including “Morning Sun” (1952), taken from https://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/arts/design/04hopp.html purely for illustrative purpose, no commercial intention)