VBT – Meditation 18.0
LOOK LOVINGLY ON SOME OBJECT. DO NOT GO ON TO ANOTHER OBJECT. HERE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OBJECT – THE BLESSING.
Look Lovingly At An Object
LOOK LOVINGLY ON SOME OBJECT… LOVINGLY is the key. Have you ever looked lovingly at any object? You may say yes because you do not know what it means to look lovingly at an object. You may have looked lustfully at an object – that is another thing. That is totally different, diametrically opposite. So first, the difference; try to feel the difference.
A beautiful face, a beautiful body – you look at it, and you feel that you are looking at it lovingly. But why are you looking at it? Do you want to get something out of it? Then it is lust, not love. Do you want to exploit it? Then it is lust, not love. Then really, you are thinking of how to use this body, how to possess it, how to make this body an instrument for your happiness.
Lust means how to use something for your happiness; love means your happiness is not at all concerned. Really, lust means how to get something out of it and love means how to give something.
They are diametrically opposite.
If you see a beautiful face and you feel love toward the face, the immediate feeling in your consciousness will be how to do something to make this face happy, how to do something to make this man or this woman happy. The concern is not with yourself, the concern is with the other.
In love the other is important; in lust you are important. In lust you are thinking how to make the other your instrument; in love you are thinking how to become an instrument yourself. In lust you are going to sacrifice the other; in love you are going to sacrifice yourself. Love means giving; lust means getting. Love is a surrender; lust is an aggression.
What you say is meaningless. Even in lust you talk in terms of love. Your language is not very meaningful, so do not be deceived. Look within, and then you will come to understand that you have not once in your life looked lovingly toward someone or some object.
The second distinction to be made: this sutra says, LOOK LOVINGLY ON SOME OBJECT. Really, even if you look lovingly at something material, insentient, the object will become a person. If you look lovingly at it, your love is the key to transform anything into a person. If you look lovingly at a tree, the tree becomes a person.
And the contrary is also true. Whenever you look with lustful eyes toward a person, the person becomes an object, a thing. That is why lustful eyes are repulsive – because no one likes to become a thing. When you look at your wife with lustful eyes – or at any other woman, or man, with lustful eyes – the other feels hurt. What are you really doing? You are changing a person, a living person, into a dead instrument. You are thinking of how to “use,” and the person is killed.
That is why lustful eyes are repulsive, ugly. When you look at someone with love, the other is raised.
He becomes unique. Suddenly he becomes a person. A person cannot be replaced; a thing can be replaced. A ‘thing’ means that which is replaceable; a ‘person’ means that which cannot be replaced: there is no possibility of replacing him or her. A person is unique; a thing is not unique.
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