Love is a happening
Q: Dear Gurudev, love, respect and attachment, how are these three connected. How we can we keep these in balance in relationships?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: I think you have too much free time. You should get busy. Do not sit and worry. Love, respect, all these feelings and emotions remain in you. When your heart and mind are clear, then the right emotions will come at the right time. Love, respect – all these happen. You cannot make it happen. You cannot make respect come into you. If you make an effort to feel love or respect, it will be a failure. So, all that you can do is free yourself from stress and have wisdom in the mind. Wisdom is seeing the world from a bigger perspective.
See what is temporary and what is permanent. All the opinions of people are temporary. They come and they go. This you must remember. Do not crave for respect. Some people give respect, some do not, it is fine. It is their choice. But if your life depends on respect from others then you are a weak person. You will feel weakened more and more, and when you are weak, you will be miserable. You should know that you do not need anybody to respect you. ‘My respect is with me, I do not need anyone to respect me’, that is it. So when you go back from here, that does not mean you behave disrespectfully. You give respect, but do not expect respect in return. Sometimes people will not have even a little respect. That is how they are, never mind. If others do not give you respect, never mind. It shows their culture, their evolution. If you are highly evolved, you will always respect everybody. Whether they are sane or insane, you will respect them. Then you will respect even the insane people because it is in your nature. You see them as a part of this Creation. They belong to the Creation, to Divinity. So when you respect everybody that shows how much wiser you are. Expecting respect shows our weakness and giving respect to people irrespective of who they are or what their standards are shows our wisdom. Love is a basic substratum of this Creation. It can never disappear. It is always there. Again, give love and it will come back to you a million times more.
Q: Why does the Infinity keep its anonymity?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: So that you can seek that. When you long for it then you seek. And the seeking itself is so beautiful. Longing for the Divine, longing for the highest is in itself so beautiful. That is why longing is called Radha. Radhameans longing, and Shyam means love. Longing and love go together. If there is no longing, there cannot be love. And if there is love, there has to be longing. They go together. Source : Talk by Sri Sri