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Love Without Adornment
When we love each other, we often look at each other as if searching for a missing half, because of a sense of lack within ourselves:
- beauty,
- truth,
-
holiness.
From there arises the desire to “decorate” both our appearance and our soul with cosmetics, knowledge, moral titles… but these only temporarily cover up our sense of lack and unintentionally reinforce wrong views, turning love into deception and leading to disappointment and brokenness.
On the night of enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha realized that the three essential qualities of truth–goodness–beauty are already present in every living being; it is only because we do not touch them that we wander everywhere in search. Practice is to return to our own mind to discover this true nature, so that love is no longer entangled in artificiality. The image of the wave returning to the water reminds us of the equality and the unborn, undying nature of our true being, while the story of Matangi and Venerable Ananda illustrates that true love transcends outer appearance, opens the heart of awakening, and brings benefit to all beings.