The French Call It Amour

Summary

This talk, given on the second day of a retreat titled “To Understand Is to Love,” presents a Buddhist teaching on love, mindfulness, suffering, and transformation. The speaker addresses the Sangha and frames the session around the idea that understanding is the foundation of love. Through playful examples involving French expressions for love and chocolate, the talk emphasizes that love is not merely sentiment but a way of nourishing and sustaining life. The speaker warns that if one does not know how to love properly, one can harm oneself and others, just as overeating chocolate causes illness. Love, therefore, must be practiced skillfully so that both the lover and the beloved can continue to “last for a long time.” A central teaching in the talk is the insight that life is continuous transformation rather than fixed birth and death. Using the image of a cloud becoming rain and then water, the speaker explains that what appears to disappear has not died but has changed form. This is presented as a meditation exercise in looking deeply: when one sees water, one can also see the cloud within it. The speaker extends this image into a vivid imaginative dialogue between cloud and water, and then between water and the human body. Water is invited to “visit” the body, travel through the lungs, kidneys, liver, and intestines, and then return to the sky through breathing or urination. The point is to help practitioners see interbeing and transformation in ordinary phenomena. The talk repeatedly denies a separate, absolute birth and death, insisting instead on continuous change from one form to another. The speaker then turns to mindfulness as the key practice for living deeply in the present moment. Mindfulness is described as an energy that brings insight, joy, and happiness. The talk explains that a moment is not inherently happy or unhappy; rather, it becomes so depending on one’s awareness and attitude. Examples are given of sitting on grass with a child, or of a rainy walking meditation at New Hamlet where the speaker and attendants began running, causing the whole group to laugh. These examples illustrate that even unpleasant conditions can be transformed into joy through mindfulness. The speaker also discusses mindfulness of the body, noting that the body and its six senses are sources of wonder and happiness. Seeing, hearing, walking, and breathing are presented as conditions for gratitude and joy. The talk gives substantial attention to suffering, presenting it not as something to avoid but as a necessary field of practice. The speaker explains that mindfulness of suffering allows one to recognize and embrace painful feelings without being overwhelmed. The image of a mother holding a suffering baby illustrates how tenderness and attention can calm pain. The speaker refers to the Sutra of Mindful Breathing and its exercises for recognizing and calming painful feelings. Suffering is described as the mud from which the lotus of understanding and compassion can arise. In this view, one must understand one’s own suffering in order to understand and love oneself, and only then can one truly understand and love others. The suffering of the individual is also linked to the suffering of parents and ancestors, suggesting a deep continuity across generations. The talk then defines the four elements of true love in Buddhist teaching: maitri, karuna, mudita, and upeksha. Maitri is loving-kindness or friendship, the capacity to offer peace and happiness to oneself and others. Karuna is compassion, the ability to listen deeply to another’s suffering and help reduce it. Mudita is joy, the capacity to create happiness in relationship rather than causing suffering. Upeksha is inclusiveness or non-discrimination, the realization that the happiness and suffering of the beloved are not separate from one’s own. These four are described as the “four unlimited minds,” qualities without boundary or limit. The speaker emphasizes that true love begins with self-understanding and self-care, and that loving another person requires being truly present, peaceful, and compassionate. The talk concludes by returning to the practical dimension of love: to love is to be there, to offer one’s presence, and to cultivate the qualities that make that presence nourishing. The session ends with an invitation to prepare for walking meditation, reinforcing that the teaching is meant to be lived through practice rather than merely understood intellectually.