True Love is the Supreme Love. It is highly desired, yet rare in the world. These passages can only begin to describe this ideal love, whose various attributes will be treated at length in the following sections.
Most essentially, true love is grounded in divine love. Love or compassion, being the core of the Ultimate Reality, is manifested by the saint who can rise above self-centered attachments and desires.
As God created for the sake of His creatures, so true love is totally committed to the welfare of the beloved. As God is absolute, eternal and unchanging, true love never changes and cannot be defeated by the vicissitudes of life.
As God is the Parent of all humanity and the creator of all things, so a person with true love is impartial and all-embracing.
Therefore, true love is displayed to individuals who are deeply united with God and fulfill God’s purpose for their life. True love is beyond the reach of most people, who are caught up in self-centered pursuits.
Yet it is not so far off, for everyone has within him or herself the potential for love. A parent who gives everything for the sake of his or her children has tasted it.
Maybe he had habitually lived for his own pleasure, but with the birth of a child his life goes through a total reorientation—from self to the other, from taking to giving.
Parental love clanging is close to God’s true love, and hence we call God our Father. This inborn potential is illustrated by the Chinese character for benevolence (仁), which contains elements signifying “two (二) people (人)”; the same elements that are combined to make the character for Heaven (天). Thus love is innate in our being, through love God dwells with us, and by loving we resemble God.
Sun Myung Moon
The Nature of True Love
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13
Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us… There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and he who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 1 John 4.7-12, 18-20
The infinite joy of touching the Godhead is easily attained by those who are free from the burden of evil and established within themselves. They see the Self in every creature and all creation in the Self. With consciousness unified through meditation, they see everything with an equal eye. I am ever present into those who have realized Me in every creature. Seeing all life as My manifestation, they are never separated from Me. They worship Me in the hearts of all, and all their actions proceed from Me. Wherever they may live, they abide in Me. When a person responds to the joys and sorrows of others as if they were his own, he has attained the highest state of spiritual union. Bhagavad-Gita 6.28-32 (Hinduism)
Sun Myung Moon
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
What is a life of true love?
True love is the spirit of public service. It brings the peace that is at the root of happiness.
Selfish love is a mask for the desire to have one’s partner exist for one’s own sake; true love is free of that corruption. Rather, its essence is to give, to live for the sake of others and for the sake of the whole.
True love gives, forgets that it has given, and continues to give without ceasing. True love gives joyfully. We find it in the joyful and loving heart of a mother who cradles her baby in her arms and nurses it at her breast.
True love is sacrificial love, as with a filial son who gains his greatest satisfaction in helping his parents. God created the universe out of just such love: absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, investing everything without any expectation or condition of receiving something in return. True love is the wellspring of the universe.
Once a person possesses it, true love makes that person the center and the owner of the universe. True love is the root of God and a symbol of His will and power. When we are bound together in true love, we can be together forever, continually increasing in the joy of each other’s company.
The attraction of true love brings all things in the universe to our feet; even God will come to dwell with us. Nothing can compare to the value of true love. It has the power to dissipate the barriers fallen human beings created, including national boundaries and the barriers of race and even religion.
The main attributes of true love are that it is absolute, unique, unchanging and eternal, so whoever practices God’s true love will live with God, share His happiness and enjoy the right to participate as an equal in His work.
Therefore, a life lived for the sake of others, a life of true love, is the absolute prerequisite for entering the Kingdom of Heaven. (September 12, 2005)
First Corinthians 13 states, “faith, hope and love abide… but the greatest of these is love.” But people do not understand what love is. What does it mean to love with your whole heart and mind and soul? It means that you love even risking your life. Have you experienced loving someone completely?
Have you loved your husband or your wife completely? Have your loved your teacher completely as his disciple? Have you loved your nation completely? No one, not a single person, has loved completely.
Therefore, just as in a factory a single mold is used to cast thousands of parts, we need a model human being—a true person—from which to propagate true people throughout the world. That is why God promised to send the Messiah. (Way of Unification 8.4.1)
What is true love? It is God’s love. What is the path to true love?
To become the owner of true love, we must possess God and His attribute of eternity. It is as simple as that. Why? True love has the quality of eternity.
Therefore, to meet the condition of [true] love, we should be eternal. We will have true love between us only when our love is eternal.
Therefore, on the path to love it is obligatory that we become eternal and unchanging people. Thus, love is eternal. It is eternal, unchanging and unique.
Therefore when we have that kind of eternal heart for Heaven, our path will lead us to true love, to love that is all in all. (123:328, January 9, 1983)
What is the holiest thing in the world? It is true love. True love begins from God. God desires the path of true love above all, not any other path. God wants to see, hear, eat, and touch through true love.
Were you to receive a kiss from God, you would feel such joy and happiness as if your insides were about to explode. (Blessing and Ideal Family 1.3.8)
When God exercised His power as the Creator, He created everything centered on love. God relates to everything with true love. In the spirit world, the connection of true love makes you the leader of all things. You can create anything. Therefore, it is our aspiration to relate to everything in true love. Unless you make a connection with true love, everything you do will be in vain. (147:116, August 31, 1986)
Ultimately, the original source of love is not in human beings, but in the first causal Being, who is absolute and unchanging. That is why a family of love is a God-centered family. Such families are the basic units for the realization of the ideal in human society.
Beginning with families that realize the highest ideal of absolute love, love can expand to the nation and the world. The world of unity that is formed in families that perfect and complete love will surely expand to bring about God’s promise of an ideal world of eternal happiness. (89:227, November 27, 1976)
Suppose a husband and wife give birth to a child with a deformity. Do they terminate its life and say, “Well, we can try again”? Is that true love? No, of course not. By the same token, a husband cannot think that if his wife displeases him, he can simply divorce her and marry someone else.
Rather, he should determine to stay with her through thick and thin, always compensating for her shortcomings and her faults. That is the proper course, and such love will pass muster in the spirit world where love is more visibly dominant than it is on earth.
Such a person can be called a true husband. True love is not seen when it is easy to love. True love becomes evident when you love someone even though it is difficult.
The same principle of love applies in a student’s relationship to a [difficult] teacher and vice versa. It also applies in the relationship between a nation’s president and its people. (117:292, April 11, 1982)
If God has a creation that He cherishes and thinks most valuable, does He intend to throw it away after spending just one day, 10 years or 100 years with it?
Or did He create it to be with Him eternally?
Surely this applies to human beings, whom God created to live with Him eternally. We are the object partners of the absolute God, who created us out of absolute love for His good pleasure. Likewise, if a man takes pleasure in a woman for a few days, 10 years or 100 years, and then discards her, it is not love.
If it were love, the more he loved her, the longer he would want to be with her.
There was once a man whose wife died young. He stayed single the rest of his life, always carrying her handkerchief. Nehru, the Prime Minister of India, always wore roses on his clothes because his wife had loved roses. (39:342-43, January 16, 1971)
True love is love that continues forever. It is love that does not change, whether in spring, summer, autumn, or winter. It does not diminish when a person is a child, middle-aged, a senior citizen, or has passed on to the eternal spirit world. True love does not change. (194:303, October 30, 1989)
Sun Myung Moon
Compassion and Benevolence
‘Benevolence (仁)’ means ‘man (人).’ When these two are conjoined, the result is ‘the Way.’ Mencius VII.B.16 (Confucianism)
Benevolence (仁) is simple undifferentiated gentleness. Its energy is the springtime of the universe, and its principle is the mind of living things in the universe. Chu Hsi (Confucianism) Compassion is a mind that savors only mercy and love for all sentient beings. Nagarjuna, Precious Garland 437 (Buddhism)
Anas and ‘Abdullah reported God’s Messenger as saying, “All [human] creatures are God’s children, and those dearest to God are those who treat His children kindly.” Hadith of Baihaqi (Islam)
Those immersed in the love of God feel love for all things.1 Adi Granth, Wadhans, M.1, p. 557 (Sikhism)
He who is skilled in welfare, who wishes to attain that calm state (Nibbana), should act thus: He should be able, upright, perfectly upright, of noble speech, gentle, and humble. Contented, easily supported, with few wants and simple tastes, with senses calmed, discreet, not impudent, not greedily attached to families… [He should always hold this thought,] “May all beings be happy and secure, may their hearts be wholesome! Whatever living beings there be: feeble or strong, tall, stout or medium, short, small or large, without exception; seen or unseen, those dwelling far or near, those who are born or those yet unborn—may all beings be happy!” Let none deceive another, nor despise any person whatsoever in any place. Let him not wish any harm to another out of anger or ill-will. Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so, let him cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings. Let his thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world: above, below, and across without any obstruction, without any hatred, without any enmity. Whether he stands, walks, sits or lies down, as long as he is awake, he should develop this mindfulness. This, they say, is the noblest living here.2 Sutta Nipata 143-151, Metta Sutta (Buddhism)
Now, I am jealous of no one, Now that I have attained unto the Society of the Saints: I am estranged with no one: nor is anyone a stranger to me, Indeed, I am the friend of all. All that God does, with that I am pleased; This is the wisdom I have received from the saints. Yea, the One God pervades all: and, seeing Him, I am wholly in bloom. Adi Granth, Kanara, M.5, p. 129 (Sikhism)
If you step on a stranger’s foot in the marketplace, you apologize at length for your carelessness. If you step on your older brother’s foot, you give him an affectionate pat, and if you step on your parent’s foot, you know you are already forgiven. So it is said, “Perfect ritual makes no distinction of persons; perfect righteousness takes no account of things [wealth]; perfect knowledge does not scheme; perfect benevolence knows no [partiality in] affection; perfect trust dispenses with gold.”3 Chuang Tzu 23 (Taoism)
Sun Myung Moon
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
Through many religions, God has taught us that we must love. The Buddha described it by the word compassion.
Confucianism described it as benevolence and righteousness. Its teachings on benevolence, righteousness, propriety and wisdom indicate that there is no virtue unless love is included.
The Chinese character for benevolence (仁) shows two (二) people (人). The Chinese character for Heaven (天) also contains two (二) people (人). (256:205, March 13, 1994)
Love cannot be true love if it is only for me. True love cannot be my individual possession. True love is for all people and for the whole universe. True love is what connects the family, the society, the nation, the world and universe. (Blessing and Ideal Family 1.3.8)
Even among fallen human beings, a parent’s love for his or her children approximates original parental love. Parental love is absolute because it can transcend the parent’s consciousness of his or her existence and activity.
It is not comprehended by biological instinct, nor can it be constrained by a ruler’s decree. Parental love transcends ideology. It transcends humanistic values. It can even transcend God’s value. (8:273, February 7, 1969)
What is true love?
It is God’s love. Then, what is God’s love?
Jesus defined it as love that is capable of loving even an enemy… Those who can unconditionally love everyone, including their enemies, must command the respect of others, whether they are black, white or yellow.
This would be true in the past, in the present, and on into the future, even a million years from now. So this must be a universal truth. Consider all the founders of religion—Jesus, Confucius and Mohammed. Throughout their lives they lived for the benefit of the world, loving humankind. (115:315-16, November 29, 1981)
How can we digest the evils of the world? With military power? With economic power? With the power of knowledge, or gold? No, we must digest this evil world with the power of love…
A small child climbs up on to the topknot on the head of his great-grandfather, who is so old he is near death, and then slips off.
As he sliding down, he urinates and defecates all over the old man, covering him from his head to his waist with urine and feces. Can such a thing be forgiven? The grandmother and grandfather will shout, “Oh, no!” and the mother and father will shout, “Oh, no” and make a tremendous fuss.
But will the great-grandfather shout, “This brat humiliated me! You must punish him for this!” No, he cannot. He will just laugh. What great power and authority can do this?
Only the unsurpassed power of love! Love is like a huge pot that melts everyone together and creates harmony. What a wonderful melting pot! (139:209-10, January 31, 1986)
Sun Myung Moon
Love’s Circular Motion
Love works in a circle, for the beloved moves the lover by stamping a likeness, and the lover then goes out to hold the beloved in reality. Who first was the beginning now becomes the end of motion. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica (Christianity)
Those who act kindly in this world will have kindness. Qur’an 39.10 Blessed are the merciful, for they shall attain mercy. Matthew 5.7
I love those who love me, and those who seek me diligently find me. Proverbs 8.17
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us…
God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him… We love, because he first loved us. 1 John 4.11-12, 16, 19
In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. He who has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me; and he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. John 14.20-21
Believers, men and women, are protecting friends of one another. Qur’an 9.71 Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. Ephesians 5.21
True love is a love of beauty and order, temperate and harmonious. Plato, The Republic (Hellenism)
Sun Myung Moon
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
Absolute love is not forced. It circulates naturally. (196:134, December 31, 1989)
Love does not come from “me.” It comes from my partner. Knowing this, we conclude that people were made to live for others. Every man was born for a woman, and every woman was born for a man. Only by living for the sake of the other can we find love and receive love. There is no true love when you ask others to live for your sake. (143:54, March 15, 1986)
Men and women were not created to live for their own sake, but for the sake of their partner of the opposite sex. A man is born for the sake of a woman.
Likewise, whether or not a woman is beautiful, or even if she hates men, she was born for a man; just look at the way her body is shaped. God designed each sex to live for the sake of its opposite.
Likewise, when parents live for the sake of the children and the children live for the sake of the parents, there is a circular motion. The more they live for each other’s sake, the faster the motion becomes. This is the ideal form—not a square, but round and three-dimensional.
Each member adds to the other’s energy; hence the more we live for each other, the more dynamic our circular motion becomes. The family forms a sphere that can continue this way for eternity. This is why circular forms are so widespread in the world. The face is circular. The eyes are round.
They must engage in complete give and take. Veins and arteries also engage in give and take. Sickness occurs when the balance is broken, when there is giving but no way to receive.
In sum, all beings that move must establish the principle of living for the sake of another. Otherwise, they cannot continue to exist. (69:83-84, October 20, 1973)
Love, especially true love, involves a spiral action. As two elements revolve, they penetrate each other and rise at the same time. Nearby objects are drawn into the swirl. The spiral action takes place due to the power of give and take action.
This is how Jesus could say that he was in the Father and the Father in him. Through love, Jesus is in us and we are in him—it is entirely possible. God, Jesus and us combine in a great sphere. (124:51, January 23, 1983)
When something is rotating, its vertical and horizontal axes unite only at the most central point. When you and your partner come together at that central point, the entire universe resonates. You can even come to know the spirit world clearly. The world of love has no need for a system of education, nor does it need anyone to dominate and govern it. Love governs us.
Doesn’t even God completely submit to love? And if we are headed in the wrong direction, the world of love corrects our direction and sets us on the right way. We automatically know the way we should go. (214:233, February 2, 1991)
Sun Myung Moon
True Love Begins from Faith and Character
What is meant by saying that the regulation of the family depends on the cultivation of the personal life is this: Men are partial toward those for whom they have affection and whom they love, partial toward those whom they despise and dislike, partial toward those whom they fear and revere, partial toward those whom they pity and for whom they have compassion, and partial toward those whom they do not respect.
Therefore, there are few people in the world who know what is bad in those whom they love and what is good in those whom they dislike.
Hence it is said, People do not know the faults of their sons and do not know [are not satisfied with] the bigness of their seedlings. This is what is meant by saying that if the personal life is not cultivated, one cannot regulate his family.5 Great Learning 8 (Confucianism)
He who does not love does not know God; for God is love. 1 John 4.8 It is not for the sake of the husband, my beloved, that the husband is dear, but for the sake of the Self.6
It is not for the sake of the wife, my beloved, that the wife is dear, but for the sake of the Self. It is not for the sake of the children, my beloved, that the children are dear, but for the sake of the Self. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.4.4-5 (Hinduism)
The fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; against such there is no law. Galatians 5.23
What kind of love is this that to another can shift? Says Nanak: True lovers are those who are forever absorbed in the Beloved. Whoever discriminates between treatment held good or bad, Is not a true lover—he rather is caught in calculations. Adi Granth, Asa-ki-Var, M.2, p. 474 (Sikhism)
Wherefore let us exhort all men to piety, that we may avoid evil, and obtain the good, of which Love is to us the lord and minister; and let no one oppose him—he is the enemy of the gods who oppose him. For if we are friends of the God and at peace with him we shall find our own true loves, which rarely happens in this world at present… My words… include men and women everywhere; and I believe that if our loves were perfectly accomplished, and each one returning to his primeval nature had his original true love, then our race would be happy. Plato, Symposium (Hellenism)
Now tell me: can a man love anyone who hates himself? Can he be in harmony with someone else if he’s divided in himself, or bring anyone pleasure if he’s only a disagreeable nuisance to himself? How necessary it is for a man to have a good opinion of himself, give himself a bit of a boost to win his own self-esteem before he can win that of others. Erasmus, Praise of Folly (Humanism)
Sun Myung Moon
Teachings of Sun Myung Moon
People seek love with each other—horizontal love, while God’s love is vertical love.
If love is to be perfect, the horizontal and the vertical lines must be connected. (238:140, November 22, 1992)
It is a teaching of the Principle that God dwells in an individual whose mind and body are in oneness. Why does God dwell there?
Love most certainly dwells where a person’s mind and body are united. Love is the starting point of unity. The object partner’s love brings God near, to dwell there.
It is said that human beings are temples of God. What kind of place is a holy temple? Is it a place of work? No, a temple is a place of rest and tranquility. Where can we rest? We can rest in the midst of God’s love; that is the most ideal place. Don’t you agree? So we can be God’s temples when we can rest in God’s love.
We aspire to have such a mind, with God’s love and peace abiding within our inmost heart. Then we would dwell in what is called “the world of heart (shimjeong).”
That place is like an ever-flowing spring of the purest fresh water. Love and peace well up from within, never ceasing, never stagnating. It is endless because God dwells there. Become that kind of person, a temple of God, and you can comfort those who are crying out in pain. (91:77, January 30, 1977)
True love moves at the zero point. The zero point is where the mind and body become one. There, every void is filled and every excess flattened. There the mind and body have perfect rest. At the zero point, only love has the power to move us.
Nothing else works. At the zero point, both the wife’s mind and the husband’s mind are at zero; therefore they can become one, they can become totally one. At the zero point, neither the wife nor the husband clings to their own concepts. Abiding there, they have no concept of “two,” only “one.”
What does it mean?
They are living for each other. That is the zero point. In that state, they free in everything; wherever they go and whatever they do they are free. (230:103, April 26, 1992)
A person who does not love himself cannot love God. A person who does not love himself cannot love his parents.
A person who does not love his parents cannot love his country. You must first love yourself to be able to love your parents, love your country, love the world, and love God. (22:97, January 26, 1969)
According to the ideal of love, all love relationships in the animal and plant kingdoms are for reproduction only. Human beings are the sole exception.
Humankind enjoys freedom in the conjugal relationship of love. This is humanity’s special privilege as the lord of all creation.
God blessed His sons and daughters with the infinite joy of love. However, the true freedom that God allowed requires human responsibility.
If an individual were to insist upon and practice freedom of love without responsibility, how much confusion and destruction would take place? Achieving the highest ideal of human love is possible only when one takes responsibility for love.
We can think of this responsibility in three ways. The first responsibility is to become a master of true love—truly thanking God for the freedom of love and knowing how to cultivate and control ourselves. We do not take this responsibility for a love relationship merely because of law or social convention.
Instead, a person should establish this responsibility through his own self-mastery and self-determination within a committed vertical relationship with God. The second responsibility is toward our partner of love.
By nature, people do not want their spouse’s love to be shared with others. Horizontal conjugal love, which differs from the vertical love between parents and children, loses its potential for perfection the moment it is divided.
This is because the Principle of Creation requires husband and wife to become one in absolute love. Each spouse has the responsibility to practice absolute love, living for the sake of the other.
The third responsibility of love is toward our children. The love of parents is the basis for children’s pride and happiness.
They would wish to be born through the total and harmonious unity of their parents in true love, and they would wish to be raised in that kind of love.
The highest responsibility of parents is not only to rear their children externally but also to offer them life elements of true love that can perfect their spirituality. This is why the family is so valuable. (277:201-02, April 16, 1996)
Sun Myung Moon