Love Your Enemies

Though everyone experiences love in one form or the other, the meaning of love has been understood differently by different persons. Even the same person experiences it differently at different times. The meaning of love, as far as an ordinary man is concerned, is nothing but something that he gets from the very act of love. Naturally, one expects at least a sign of love in return. So to ‘love and to be loved’ has been an unquestionable dictum of the act of loving. Hence, one who loves someone can make a claim of being loved. A person craves for love either from his friend or foe, only because he is sure that he has given out love and so he deserves to be loved. It means that there has been love in him. Dissolutionment has been narrated as the fate of such conditioned love affairs, because everyone engaged in the act of loving feels that one never gets back the exact amount of love in the same gravity and purity that one gives to the other. The feeling of difference between ‘the giving’ and ‘the getting ‘ leads one to the brewing of mistrust, misunderstanding, conflicts, quarrel and self-destruction. This is the beginning of the feeling that one has been cheated in the sacred act of loving. This is a horrible experience and that leads one to take revenge on the other. Such revenge ranges from irrational submission of suicide to irresistible aggression of homicide. Then, how these extremes can be avoided to adopt a safe step to practise normal love is a question to be addressed by one and all in the same society. The answer formulated by the majority is ‘love ones’ friends and hate ones’ foes’. But it cannot be practically possible and logically free from contradictions, because it is not possible to have the co-existence of love and hatred at the same time in ones’ life. Therefore, what is practical in the practise of love is to avoid discriminations of friend and foe or good and bad. Such an act of love is termed as ‘Nishkamakarma’ in Indian System of thoughts.