Pyeong Hwa Gyeong (064) - True Families : Gateway to Heaven - 3
7. Love happens in completely natural settings
This is a story from my childhood. One day I caught a pair of birds and tried to make them kiss each other’s beaks. To see them kiss, I put them in a cage, fed them and watched them. I did it out of a child’s desire to see them love each other and sing happily together. This was an experiment, out of curiosity, to understand the principles of nature. I continued this experiment, which I now understand to have been quite naughty.
It was only much later that I began to realize that love happens in natural settings. Sincere love is realized naturally, in a most natural setting. It was only as a result of a long series of experiments that I came to a correct understanding about love.
When someone has lost the value of love, what good would it do for this person to receive a university education? Such a person will only accumulate knowledge, become individualistic, and come to worship materialism. Just as Korean bean paste soup tastes right only when it is served in an earthenware bowl, so character training can reach its purpose only when it is based on love.
The flower of world civilization blossoms on the basis of artistic harmony. In this sense, roasted ribs need to be served on a platter and Korean bean paste soup ought to be served in an earthenware bowl to bring out the proper taste of each dish. Once you grow accustomed to the rough, deep and refreshing taste of Korean bean paste soup, you never will forget it, no matter where you may go.
Likewise, once people have become used to the earthy, deep, relaxing taste of love, they will not change. Just as we easily tire of instant foods that usually are heavily sweetened, if we could obtain love easily and anywhere, like we can instant food, we could not call it true love.
There are people everywhere today whose love is like instant food. This is a problem. Love does not deepen because you bathe in a fragrant bath. I would say that the love of a husband and wife living in the remotest countryside, who wash themselves in cold water before going to bed, is purer, longer lasting and ever deepening.
A couple who have to clean their teeth before kissing are not experiencing natural love. The toothpaste smell will prevent them from tasting the unique smell of the other. When I look at people who clean their teeth before kissing, I don’t know whether they are trying to taste love or taste toothpaste.
When you meet someone you like and love, you want to embrace and kiss that person. This is natural between the sexes. We have a relationship with our environment so that we can feel affection toward the universe. It is natural for us to do this, as a part of our search for a partner.
When all people relate to each other within this ideal of partnership— with each man relating to one woman and each woman relating to one man—there will be no acts or incidents that violate the order of love. The order of true love emerges only when man and woman meet on the basis of the ideal of partnership.
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