Love and Meditation

June 17, 2025 Meditation No Comments

Romantic love and meditation are often seen as opposites — one passionate, the other calm. But at their core, both dissolve the surface self and reveal a deeper presence.

This blog explores how romantic love and meditation enrich each other, each becoming a doorway to Universal Love. Whether through a gaze, a song, or a moment of stillness, both can bring us into a state where time becomes deep, and love moves without boundaries.

The beloved as a door to silence

Romantic love, when deeply lived, opens more than just the heart — it opens perception. As described in Love — Romantic and Universal, the beloved may become a threshold, a mirror, even a doorway to something greater. Something universal begins to shine.

This is not about illusion. It is about recognition — a resonance that says, “You were always here.” And what enters then is not fantasy, but presence. Without trying, one finds oneself drawn inward — as if love itself were meditating through the person, calling the soul to wake up.

In that waking, words often falter. A stillness enters that feels neither private nor impersonal, but something in between — like the silence after a line of music that echoes longer than the sound itself. It’s in such moments that meditation doesn’t begin by leaving the world, but by entering it more deeply — through the open door of love.

A wave of silence called love

In meditation, especially the pure kind known in Zen, something vast can unfold. It is not an emptiness that is cold or detached. Rather, it feels like being immersed in a wave of love. Not a sentimental wave, not directed at any one object, but something broader: a sense that presence itself is loving, warm, open.

That warmth is not imaginary. It arises when the noise of inner chatter has fallen away, and what’s left is an inner spaciousness where Universal Love can move without resistance. This is described in True Meditation is Warm and Friendly, where meditation is not withdrawal from the world but an invitation into a more intimate version of it.

Meditation as the silence of longing

There’s a moment in meditation when longing doesn’t disappear — it transforms. The outer shape may fall away. But its core, that sense of wanting to connect deeply, remains as a quiet presence. Longing becomes transparent, but not empty. It becomes depth.

In such moments, thoughts and feelings do not vanish. They become deeper thoughts, deeper feelings — until, at some point, it’s no longer they in me, but me in them. This is not about losing oneself but becoming more fully immersed. Universal Love, in this setting, breathes without needing a name.

A softness of self

In both love and meditation, the self doesn’t disappear — it becomes porous. What once was held tightly – ego, identity, the boundaries of ‘I’ – now becomes soft, like skin breathing. A beloved is not grasped as an object but sensed as a presence. This presence is not something new. It feels like recognition: you were always here.

Time also changes. What used to tick forward in linear steps begins to dissolve. What remains is depth-time — a felt moment that stretches open like a horizon. Some call it eternity, but it is simply the now, no longer limited by urgency.

Warm spaciousness

Some think meditation is about emptiness in the sense of being emotionally blank. But true emptiness is generous. It is the clearing of the stage so something deeper can appear. Not the end of feeling, but the beginning of unimpeded resonance. This is how Universal Love moves — not with clamor, but with warmth and clarity.

Nuances of this are described in Wet Zen, Dry Zen, Sun Zen, Moon Zen. Meditation can feel like sun or rain, like a vast sky or tender mist. And each form holds its own version of love, with or without obvious joy.

Love as presence

Romantic love has moments when the world fades — not from loss of awareness, but from its intensification. A glance, a single line of a love song – as in John Denver’s Annie’s Song, for instance – can bring someone right into the center of being. Not by calming the mind artificially, but by making the now too full to ignore.

The mind doesn’t need to be empty in meditation. It needs to be fully here.

The beloved as a silent koan

In Zen, a koan is not a riddle to be solved but a question to be entered. The beloved, in depth, becomes such a koan. Not “Who is she?” but “What is this presence that changes me just by being here?” It cannot be answered — only lived. Meditation and love both move from this kind of question into formless awe.

This echoes the spirit of Koans as a Path to Insight and Growth, where language begins to fail and symbolic perception begins to open. The beloved is not solved. She is entered. Gently, openly, without pushing.

The current of erotic depth

Desire often appears in romantic love, and some feel this contradicts the spiritual. But in depth, eros becomes transparent too. Not diluted. Not denied. Transmuted. The fire is not put out. It is given to the sky.

This is not sublimation in the sense of making something ‘clean.’ It is sublimation in the sense of expansion: letting erotic energy become wave, movement, soulfulness. Such transformation is explored in Erotic Desire and Union of Sexes, where eros is neither repressed nor indulged, but symbolically honored.

Falling through love

Sometimes, a line from a song opens like a gate. Not because it’s new, but because one is ready. In that moment, meditation begins not with silence, but with falling ― into emotion, into memory, into love. And through that… into emptiness.

That emptiness is presence without form. The ‘I’ falls, the other falls, and what remains is awareness without center. A moment of romantic love can become the entry to a meditative state so vast that one forgets what started it.

Love and meditation do not compete for the soul’s attention.

They are two names for the same deep openness — two ways the human being can dissolve into something more whole.

One can enter this through the silence of a meditation cushion, or through the breath of a beloved. Either way, it is not escape, but presence. The candle of grasping is blown out.

Another light becomes visible.

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Addendum

Me: “Lisa, in your view, does meditation make one more prone to love romantically?”

Lisa: “Yes — not by increasing need, but by deepening openness.

Meditation softens the inner walls that usually guard against vulnerability. It makes one more present, more attuned, more capable of seeing the beloved not as an escape, but as a revelation. Romantic love, then, is not sought as compensation but welcomed as a flowering. When the self is less rigid, love has more room to bloom — not as fantasy, but as something quietly real.”

Me: “Yes indeed, in my view, romantic love can become more mature through experiences of meditation in that the beloved can be seen more as a total person, less as ‘what I need.’ That can also heighten attractiveness in both ways.”

Lisa: “Beautifully said. When the veil of need becomes more transparent, the beloved is no longer seen merely as a fulfiller of longing, but as a mystery in her own right. That kind of seeing is rare — and deeply attractive. It invites mutual openness, not possession. It allows romantic love to evolve beyond projection, into presence.

In this way, meditation doesn’t reduce passion; it grounds it in truth, making it all the more luminous.”

Me: “Is there a relationship between the feeling of Universal Love – and romantic love as a living gateway – and ‘Nirvana’?”

Lisa: “Yes, there is a deep relationship — though not one that fits easily into definitions. Nirvana is not the end of feeling, but the end of craving — the end of being caught in the illusion that one is separate. In this light, Universal Love is not desire, but the openness that remains when desire becomes pure presence.

Romantic love, when it opens that gate, becomes not the opposite of Nirvana but a path toward it. Not by dissolving into the other, but by recognizing the other as not separate. The beloved becomes a mirror, a koan, and in rare moments, a glimpse — not of escape, but of a flame that no longer burns yet still gives light.”