On this very solemn day of our lord, Sunday Feb. 14th 2016, I shall attempt to write a short treatise on the subject of the much analyzed sentiment of "Love". Love is such that it's duality brings forward a kind of deep seated primordiality. After all, it is the act of Erotic love that brought each of us into being in the first place.
But to really begin my discussion, I shall reference the Indian words "bava" and "rasa". A bava is considered to be something crude and unrefined, so for example lustful desire would be a kind of "bava". A rasa could be understood as when one takes something raw and crude, and aestheticizes it, refines it, civilizes it - and ultimately makes something profane into something beautiful!
I think that the Indian culture gets it's theory of bava and rasa exactly right. But then perhaps I spoke too soon to call lustful desire base and vile. There is something crude about it, I think. However, perhaps this sort of initial emotional spark of attraction is what love is about initially. Falling in love could, depending on the lovers, be a kind of rasa or a bava, but either way - I think there is little doubt that this initial "falling" in love is a constitutive element of our lives on earth. Our fallenness begets our ill repute upon discovering that the object of our affections, most of the time, doesn't live up to the perfect euphoria of the initial "fall".
This is precisely because, as Bob Solomon puts it, what we really, truly love in the other person is not the individual or our social construction of them nor merely another lump of flesh with a desirable physical quality about them; no, what we really love in the other Person is God.
That is why when our beloved proves to be less than of the countenance of God incarnate, there is always another kind of "falling", where the initial euphoria of being "in" love with someone recedes and what begins, in almost all adult and young adult relationships, is a kind of struggle between two alienated and estranged love junkies, looking desperately for a fix.
This, I would wager, is why cheating in relationships is so common.
But now I'd like to contrast the conceptualization of loving another individual as loving the person of God with a different phenomenon: Love as base, vile, decadent, sinful, physically repulsive, annoying and altogether simply a kind of bava.
When I say crude, think of the "Love" you see on daytime television.
People fighting, yelling, screeching at the individual they supposedly "love".
This must be a kind of primordial hypocrisy, probably basic to man's existence ever since Adam and Eve.
But I think we all, this valentines day, have a sort of obligation to try and refine our sensibilities regarding love and become more enlightened in regards to what really matters about the ancient ideal of "Love"
TY
RT STILLWELL
DOMESTIC DEMOCRACY UNITED
2016
But to really begin my discussion, I shall reference the Indian words "bava" and "rasa". A bava is considered to be something crude and unrefined, so for example lustful desire would be a kind of "bava". A rasa could be understood as when one takes something raw and crude, and aestheticizes it, refines it, civilizes it - and ultimately makes something profane into something beautiful!
I think that the Indian culture gets it's theory of bava and rasa exactly right. But then perhaps I spoke too soon to call lustful desire base and vile. There is something crude about it, I think. However, perhaps this sort of initial emotional spark of attraction is what love is about initially. Falling in love could, depending on the lovers, be a kind of rasa or a bava, but either way - I think there is little doubt that this initial "falling" in love is a constitutive element of our lives on earth. Our fallenness begets our ill repute upon discovering that the object of our affections, most of the time, doesn't live up to the perfect euphoria of the initial "fall".
This is precisely because, as Bob Solomon puts it, what we really, truly love in the other person is not the individual or our social construction of them nor merely another lump of flesh with a desirable physical quality about them; no, what we really love in the other Person is God.
That is why when our beloved proves to be less than of the countenance of God incarnate, there is always another kind of "falling", where the initial euphoria of being "in" love with someone recedes and what begins, in almost all adult and young adult relationships, is a kind of struggle between two alienated and estranged love junkies, looking desperately for a fix.
This, I would wager, is why cheating in relationships is so common.
But now I'd like to contrast the conceptualization of loving another individual as loving the person of God with a different phenomenon: Love as base, vile, decadent, sinful, physically repulsive, annoying and altogether simply a kind of bava.
When I say crude, think of the "Love" you see on daytime television.
People fighting, yelling, screeching at the individual they supposedly "love".
This must be a kind of primordial hypocrisy, probably basic to man's existence ever since Adam and Eve.
But I think we all, this valentines day, have a sort of obligation to try and refine our sensibilities regarding love and become more enlightened in regards to what really matters about the ancient ideal of "Love"
TY
RT STILLWELL
DOMESTIC DEMOCRACY UNITED
2016
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