The 3rd Mindfulness Training – True Love
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful sexual behavior, I am committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society. Knowing that sexual desire is not love, and that sexual activity motivated by craving always harms me as well as others, I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without true love and a deep, long-term commitment made known to my family and friends. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by unmindful sexual behavior. Seeing that body and mind are one, I am committed to learning appropriate ways to take care of my sexual energy, and cultivating loving kindness, compassion, joy, and inclusiveness – which are the four basic elements of true love – for my greater happiness and the greater happiness of others. Practicing true love we know that we will continue beautifully into the future.
My Mindful Comments:
The True Love teaching always confuses people because of the first sentence begins with, “Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful sexual behavior.” We start judging ourselves and evaluating our sexual values and behavior to see how mindful or unmindful we are most of the time. Or, perhaps we judge others. Many people perceive this teaching is only about how we should think and act within dating and marital sexual relationships. Actuality, it is about not only our personal sexual behavior but the sexual behavior, morals and values displayed throughout our culture in movies, magazines, TV shows, newspapers, and video games. The teaching also, in an inferred manner, speaks to sexual abuse, child pornography, prostitution, and the buying and selling of young girls and boys for sex, and our societal inability or lack of passion, to protect those we love from sexual harm.
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful sexual behavior, I am committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society. Mindful sexual behavior takes into consideration the other person’s emotions, wants, needs, values, morals, comfort level, and decisions. Mindful sexual behavior asks us to consider unmindful sexual behavior, defining it as behavior that is void of true love. Therefore, sexual behavior is unmindful when true love is absent, when it is selfish, emotionally or physically painful, disrespectful, unkind, inconsiderate, or lacks compassion and empathy. This is true for individual sexual relationships as well as the relationship our society has with sex and sexual behavior.
Seeing that body and mind are one, I am committed to learning appropriate ways to take care of my sexual energy and cultivating loving kindness, compassion, joy and inclusiveness – which are the four basic elements of true love – for my greater happiness and the greater happiness of others. Practicing true love, we know that we will continue beautifully into the future. The factors that define true love are central to this part of teaching number three as is the belief that the mind and body function as one, rather than independently. The basic elements of true love are 1) loving kindness, 2) compassion, 3) joy, and 4) inclusiveness. True love, from this perspective serves to create and maintain personal happiness and the happiness of others practicing true love. This would also mean that when loving kindness, compassion, joy and inclusiveness are absent, true love is absent – as is our ability to find happiness within ourselves, within our personal relationships, or within our society.
This teaching leaves us much to think about as we live our day to day lives and teach our children about the meaning of true love. May each of us experience true love today and always.
This is an interactive series of posts, therefore I encourage you to leave comments below so that others may respond, allowing us to learn together. I encourage you to print this post and write your response to the teaching and to my comments.