Kamal Ghorui
If truth finds its natural expression through love, it becomes important to understand what love truly means.
In everyday life the word love is used very freely. We often use it to describe attachment, attraction, or emotional dependence. Yet spiritual traditions have always distinguished between these temporary emotions and the deeper experience of love.
What we usually call love is often only desire.
The Vaishnava tradition explains this distinction with remarkable clarity. Kaviraj Goswami expresses it beautifully in Bengali: atmaindriya priti iccha tare boliye kama krishnendriya priti iccha tare bole prema
The desire to satisfy one’s own senses is called kama, lust. The desire to satisfy Krishna’s senses is called prema, love.
This simple distinction reveals a profound spiritual truth.
When our actions revolve around our own happiness, recognition, or fulfilment, they remain confined within the boundaries of desire. But when the same actions are offered for the happiness of the Divine, they transform into expressions of love.
Externally the action may appear the same. The difference lies entirely in the intention. Lust seeks to receive. Love seeks to offer.
Lust desires possession. Love expresses surrender.
Because of this difference, lust eventually creates restlessness, while love creates peace.
When actions arise from desire, they carry expectations. When those expectations are not fulfilled, disappointment naturally follows. But when actions arise from love, they become acts of service. Service carries no burden of expectation; it carries the joy of offering.
In this way, love transforms ordinary actions into devotion.
Love also possesses a unique power. It does not necessarily remove the difficulties of life, but it changes our relationship with them. Just as a soothing medicine eases pain without immediately removing the illness, love softens the harshness of suffering.
When the heart is filled with love, sorrow loses much of its sting.
This is why devotion has always been regarded as the highest path in spiritual life. Devotion does not require extraordinary abilities or intellectual brilliance. It requires sincerity of heart.
In devotion, love becomes the guiding force of life. It shapes our thoughts, our actions, and our relationships. Gradually the centre of life shifts from the self to the Divine.
When love is guided by truth, it becomes stable and fearless. It is no longer dependent upon circumstances or recognition. It simply flows as a natural expression of the soul.
The saints of our tradition often describe this love as the highest form of freedom. When the heart learns to love without selfishness, it is no longer bound by constant demands of desire.
Instead, life itself becomes an offering.
And when life becomes an offering, every action begins to carry the fragrance of devotion.
END OF ARTICLE
