Recently some one told me that they were meditating and they were finding great peace in this meditation. I told them this is very nice, but this not at all what we want. We do not care for peace. We want love. The perfection of life is not simply a neutral condition of peace, but love. Love means the willingness to sacrifice oneself for the beloved. It is like mother in her relationship with her child. Is the mother concerned for peace in the house or is she concerned with taking nice care of the child? When a woman has a little baby, there is practically no peace in the house. The baby is crying all night long. The baby is responding to nature indiscriminately wherever it goes. The baby is looking for any excuses to hurt,breaking anything it gets its hands on.
Now mother can easily just give the baby to somebody else, some baby sitter saying, ‘You take care; I do not want anything to do with this.’ But the mother is running here and there everywhere trying to take care of the child. She is staying up some time all night long. She is worried about the child hurting itself. That is love. Love is higher than peace, because in that love is eternal peace—not the peace of the mind, but the peace of soul. Love means sacrifice—sacrificing even our own peace for the pleasure of the beloved.
By Radhanath Swami
