Love is an absence much more than a fullness. Love is a fullness of absence. Christian Bobin
Love is not the presence of man-made gods and angels
Love is not (to quote Dylan) ‘flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark’
Love is not the comfort of ritual
the stroking of romance
the safety net of marriage
the golden ring with which you pledged the world
the silver chalice you dug up by accident in the garden
or discovered after a dedicated lifelong search
or the heart you embalmed
or the hidden spring you dowsed
or the madman you calmed
or the rabble you roused
or the self-control you exercised
or the serenity you cultivated
or the disciplines you practised
or the game plans you activated
or the duty you did
or the pain that you hid
or the disciples you led
or the vices you shed
or the virtues you upheld
or the views you withheld
or the thresholds you crossed
or the paths that you lost
or the friends you invited
or the enemies you indicted
or the sutras you recited
or the candles you lighted
Love is not happiness sadness or blind indifference
Love is not approbation reprobation confrontation or perturbation
Love is not cunning or svelte words
or transient feelings and emotions
Love is beyond the moaning of the sea
the passionate fervour of the ocean
the land’s hard embrace
the salty kiss of the waves on the shore
Love is not any of these things
yet Love is all of these things
for Love is all there is
and Love is all there is not
yes Love is all there is
yes Love is all
yes Love is
yes Love
yes
Love is an absence
Love is a fullness of absence
I did enjoy the varied emotions this long list evoked! And admired it. "Love is all there is/and Love is all there is not". is very satisfying after the long journey through all the things Love is not. I'm wrestling a little though with the idea that Love is absence. Though - it can - I feel - be felt very much in absence....(and I wish I could italicize 'felt').
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, Dritanje. About 'Love is absence' — Bobin gives the clue by stating 'Love is a fullness of absence', don't you find? (Though not an easy concept, I agree.) It's a bit like defining God. Many of those ancient mystics and theologians found it more productive and nearer the mark to define God by what God was not. Not darkness rather than being light, the via negative and all that. A hard task to define what love is, in its highest sense… love is all things, every detail of this worldly life, and it's also none of these things alone, or beyond all these things, or inclusive of all these things and everything else (99% of which is unknown to us) besides… I'm not making myself very clear, but, hey, that's the difficult and mysterious nature of God and Love...
ReplyDeleteThanks for taking the time to reply at length to this Robert! Actually I think you put it very well. Once I get started on this subject I could write (and have in the past) pages about it. It could be that Bobin was saying something similar to ‘nirvana’ which means I believe ‘extinguished’ suggesting nothingness – though I think what is meant is that the chit chat of the mind, which we tend to identify with, falls quiet and then another far greater perception can (possibly) emerge, which connects us to everything, and that is really what Love (and God) is. Either are impossible to define because they go way beyond the defining naming mind, they are of that ‘Other Mind’ or so I call it.
ReplyDelete‘love is all things, every detail of this worldly life’ – I once wrote a long poem, one sleepless night in Epidamnos (now known as Durres) when I was trying to do a similar thing. A few lines – But love, the language of the heart,/returns what we perceive as other, to us/returns us to where we long to be./There is no place so remote or unimportant/or neglected or abandoned or polluted/or fought over or imprisoned or sealed-off/that it cannot reach.