January 23, 2008 Love has a Technology

Love can transform societies and ultimately the whole world. We need love.
Love is the answer.
But how do you learn love? How does the world learn to love?
What if you wanted to learn to play the violin, would you just pick up the violin and play? There are a few rare individuals who do and they are masters. But for most of us, we would have to take lessons and practice.
Actually learning to love is something like this. For most of us, we need to take lessons, we need to practice, we need to learn. The possibility is there for all of us, with commitment and tenacity – we can master love, and we can change the world through it.
So what is the system, the technology of love?
IMHO, yoga is a good one. It has been developed and honed over thousands of years. Although it generally requires a decent teacher, it also includes several step-by-step manuals.
A long time ago a great yogi named Krishna lived. He taught, in the Bhagavad Gita, that in order to love, yogis should follow three  paths: Karma yoga – the yoga of taking right action in the world; Jinana yoga – the yoga of seeking to understand spiritual truths and embodying spiritual knowledge; and Bhakti yoga – the yoga of cultivating and deepening a loving relationship with the Divine.
A long time ago, but not as long ago as Krishna, another great yogi, Patanjali, looked deeply into the human mind. And he started to explain it. He collected many of the great yogic teachings, systematized them, and wrote them down. In the Yoga Sutras, his teachings built upon what Krishna had taught. He explained the mind and then explained how the mind can overcome its obstacles to identify with its true nature. The Sutras outline how to develop the relationship with the Divine. In other words, how to love. Patanjali called it Ashtanga yoga – subscribing to situational ethics, controlling the vital force, learning to sit comfortably so that you can withdraw your mind from external distractions, and then concentrating the mind and contemplating the Divine.
Another aspect of the practice he called Kriya yoga – this is his suggestions for how to be in the world: helping others make their lives less difficult, attempting to understand deep spiritual truths, and committing to the action of moving towards your Source. Sounds easy enough, but it does require a strong desire to trace all love back to its Source – the desire to love and be loved by the Divine.