done on do are hi everybody. my name is in jin moon and welcome to i-home church. and for those of you joining us for thefirst time, don't forget to subscribe to our email list. today i would like to talk about the magic of true love and
i have a little story to share with all of you. i have a dear, dear friend that i've [chuckles] known for many, many years and you know, whenever we talk about love and whenever we talk about relationship he goes into this [laugh]-- into thisheadache mood or what i call the "monk scream," and you know, he is absolutely terrified of the number 2 and he used to tell me that you know, "for me, relationships kind of feels like 'one and one equals two,' and
the number 2 for some reasonjust terrifies me." and i said, "why is it?" and he says, "well, the number 2 kind of looks like abeautiful, graceful, swan but if you put a little beak in front of that, 2, the starting point, it can look like a beautiful [chuckle] swan with a terribly sharp beak." and he says, "i'mterrified of deep or meaningful relationships because i grew up in a family where
my father was mercilessly hen-pecked bymy mother and i just don't want to find myself in that situation or in that quandary ever, so i would much rather do away with any deep meaningful relationships and dowhat i need to get by but it just absolutely terrifies me." and so when i heard him say these words to me,you know, it got me thinking. and yes, he is
absolutely right, when you're talkingabout relationship one and one equals two in that youknow, two people come together because we'resomehow put together or bound together or working together. and i think many times we kind of look at one and one equals two, as a very simplistic mathematical equation but more important than the number, i think, is the word 'and.'it's "one"
'and' one" that equals two. and that's where the magic of relationshipsor magic of true love comes into play, that helps makes thenumber 2, these two people coming together a wonderful relationship that could belikened to being in heaven or an extremely difficultrelationship that can be likened to being in hell. and rumi has awonderful quote, rumi of course is thepersian mystic and he used to say
that "whenever we can manage to love without expectation, without calculation and without negotiation, then we are in heaven." and i think he is absolutely right and hits home in many respects because relationships are made difficult because we do have and we do tend to put a lot ofexpectations on the relationships
or on the other person and sometimes when we are engaged in relationships, all we're doing isthinking about, well you know, creating lists. you know, 'my list is this. you know, "his list is that. who owes more?" or "whose turn is it to give? or, "whose turn is it to receive?" and it gets really, really burdensome or many times we are constantly negotiating with each other, like, "okay, you do this for me then i do this foryou. if you make me feel good
then i will love you," and it's all of these conditions that makes relationships incrediblydifficult and complicated and fraught with misunderstanding on both sides. and so when my father, the rev. sam myung moon teaches that in order to have a wonderfulrelationship with somebody be it a parent or a child or a spouse orsiblings, my father has always encouraged us tolive for the sake of others, practicing true love. and so
when he says, "live for the sake of others," i think for many, many years, many peoplehave kind of understood that as total self-annihilation for the other, total self-denial. but we gotta beliving in order to live [chuckle] for the sake of others. but i think a better way to understand what he means by that is that living for the sake ofothers, practicing true love, implies that it's something that needsto be learned; it's something that needs to bepracticed, it's something that
we need to kind of work on, to go about being this true love-- true-love individual or men and women that we would all like to be. and when we are truly living for the sake of others, the way i like to understand it, is that, 'we live for the sake of others when we learn to care about the other person's happiness justbecause.' meaning, we wish the other person
all the happiness and all the love andall the well wishes not because we're expecting anything [chuckle] in return, not because we're calculating where do we stand vis-ã -vis the other person in terms of our list. not because we are in the middle of thisfantastic negotiation [laughs] that "the other side," you know, "might be slightly ahead andnow it's my turn to be ahead," and almost as if looking at a relationship as a trade or a bargain of some sorts, you know,instead of thinking about it in that
way, when you live for the sake of othersand when you genuinely wish upon somebody and you more than wish, actually learn to care about the other person's happiness, just because, without any strings attached. that's whenyou are in a prime situation to practice this thing called "true love." and rev. moon, my father, defines true love in this way. he says, "there are qualities
of true love and there are four qualities." he says that, "true love is absolute. it is eternal. it is unique and unchanging." and so if we are to ask the help from merriam-webster's dictionary and welook up these words, we realized that the word "absolute" means, "free from imperfection or mixture." in other words in order to be that person of true love, we gotta be, quote, "perfectly us." you gotta be,"perfectly you."
genuine, honest, transparent in order to be that person who wantsto practice true love living for the sake of others. but asecond definition of the word, "absolute," means, "free from control, restriction," or "qualification." and 'qualification'means, 'limitation or modification.' in other words, you know, "i love you. now, just change and do all these thingsthat i expect you to do." but if we are truly an absolute
person, practicing true love what we are doing is not busycontrolling, modifying, limiting or restricting the other person but we are free in terms of our ability tolove because we want the other person to love us freely just as we want to love the other person freely. in other words, it'sa very natural relationship. now when we look at the second quality,the eternal
quality in true love you know, the word 'eternal' means,'everlasting and perpetual,' and it is everlasting when we practice these qualities of true love because it's freely received and freely given. in other words its eternal and not temporal. we're notstuck on the superficialities of this imperfectworld that we live in. what we are concentrating on is that eternal beauty of the other person, the ability to just truly love, kind oflike the way
a parent loves a child. it doesn't matter you know, what happens in our lives. theminute child is placed in our hands, that child is eternally our loved one, our beloved, and we love this child regardless of what happens in the course of one's life.it's the kind of a parental love. and the interesting thingabout this love is that when it is eternal and it is freely givenand freely received, it is not exhausting.
when the love is not eternal and it's temporal, or the superficial kind of love, it takes a great deal of effort to keep itgoing. it is extremely exhausting and it justtakes so much wind out of you. but when love is freely given and received,it creates it's own energy that perpetuates the dynamic of what you have with the other person. and the third quality that my fathertalks about is, the word 'unique.' the word 'unique' means, 'one of a kind,' or, 'very unusual' [laughs].
'true love' is indeed very [chuckle] unusual in this imperfect or in this temporalworld. it's kind of like, finding 'a diamond inthe rough' because "true love" is uniquely unselfish. when we wish upon the other, infinite happiness, you know, what we aredoing is concentrating on what we can be responsible for, not overly taxing ourselves, trying to control theother person, trying to restrict or
modify the other person to our liking butreally always thinking about you know, what can we do to help make this person a happier person. and in that way, we can enjoy this incredibly one-of-a-kind, beautiful, very unusual, unpredictable, kind of love that is ever-exciting and that is ever-compelling to the twopeople involved, the
"one and one." and the fourth quality is "unchanging." and again this quality is very much a parental kind ofa love in that 'unchanging' means, 'unalterable.' itcannot be substituted. in other words, it is a quality that kind of implies that love is notbased on certain conditions. conditions canchange all the time. you know, you can-- you and i can have a beautiful relationship with our sibling or our parent but then
the condition change, something happensand does that mean that because theconditions change and you are not loving me the way iwant you to love me, i love you less? no! "true love" is notlike that. "true love" is unchanging in that it isunconditional. it is not what you do for me thatdetermines how much i'm going to love you. i am going to love you with an unchangingheart, with an eternal heart, with a unique heart
and with an absolute heart. and that's the beauty of what "true love" is all about. and when i think about, you know, how do we kind of understand or what will be a great example of these four qualities, youknow, it reminds me of the story by hans christian andersen and the story iscalled, "the old man is always right." and it's astory about this farmer, a very poor farmer
who lives on this farm and has a smallcottage that he shares with his wife and one day he decides to go tomarket with the only valuable asset that he has, which is a horse. and you know, on the way to the market he meets up with a series of differentcharacters and he ends up trading, and for instance he first meets up with this guy who has this fabulous cow he is thinking, "oh, well my horse is much--
worth more, more valuable than that cow but that cow can give great, delicious, milk for my wife, so i should trade it in for a cow, and he does so. but then he goes a little bit more and thenhe realizes that, "oh, there's a sheep and that sheep can give wool and keep my wife very, very, happy and warm in the wintertime, so i am going to trade my cow in for a sheep.
and then he goes a little bit more, furtherdown the road to market and he sees another person with a goose and he says, "ohh, that goose is something that my wife had wanted. it would be perfect for christmas so i'm going to trade my sheep for a goose." and he goes a little bit further and decides to-- comes up on this man with a hen and decides that, "oh, i am going to trade-in my goose for a hen because then my wife can have fresh eggs."
and so, he takes the hen, goes a little further and finds somebody with a basket of rotten apples, and he says, "oh, a basket of rotten apples for my pigs,something that i didn't have before." so he trades in is hen for a basket of rottenapples, and he finally makes his way into thetavern. and in the tavern there are all sorts of characters and you know, this english gentleman who is very, very, richwith coins, coming out of his pockets, he looks at the man and he's heard aboutthe foolishness of this farmer's trading
on the way to the market and he kind of says to the farmer, he said, "you know, i would love to go back home with you, to the farm, and see what your wife says. and i bet you that your wife it's going to smack you for all thisfoolishness that you did along the way to the market." but then the farmer turns to thisenglishman and says, "well, i would wager your
bushel (of finery), of gold coins because i know that my wife, when she sees me with this basket of rotten apples, she will kiss me and she willwelcome me home and with open arms." and so in disbelief the englishman decides to follow thefarmer back. so the farmer and the englishman decide to tell the wife, you know, how they got to (hold), this basket of rotten applesthat they brought back home.
and each story, the husband says or tells the wife about trading the horse for a for cow, shesays, "oh, my wonderful, wise, husband you were thinking about bringing me fresh milk, you know, how wonderful this is." then the husband said, "well, my dear, the cow was traded in for a sheep." and she says, "oh, my dear, you thought about," you know, "goat's cheese
and all the woolen mittens that we could mit for each other, how wonderful you are!" and then thehusband says, "well dear, you know, i didn't stop with thesheep. you know, i traded the sheep in for a goose." and the wife exclaimed, "oh my wonderful, wise,husband, how do you know that i was hoping for a lovely goose for christmas? you are absolutely fantastic." and you know, of course, sitting next to thefarmer, the english gentlemen's jaw is dropping to the floor and probablyhit it couple of times because
he just cannot believe what he's hearing with his ears. and the husband goes on and you know, "but it's not the goose, i trade it in for a hen." and she says, "oh, you thought about how i love fresh eggs in the morning and how i wanted to have chickens and a chicken pen in the back of our cottage. how wonderful you are!" and then the husband says, "and i traded in the chicken for a basket of rotten apples because, you know, our mom
told us that we should always keep anapple on the counter because it's a symbol of prosperity and the last one was so old itblew up in everybody's face but now we have awhole basket-full." and then the wife just ran up to thehusband, grabbed the husband's face and said, "how funny you are, and how thoughtful you are. i love you so much." and she gave him thewarmest and the biggest kiss ever. and so, in theend of the day,
the storyteller says, "the incredible thing about this couple is that they're always going downhillin terms of the way the world might perceive what thesefoolish peasants are doing." what the peasant or the farmer did intrading his horse for cow and then for a sheep and then a goose and a hen and then a basket of rotten apples, is absolutefoolishness. but he did it out of the [laughs] lovingness of his heart without
you know, expecting or expectinganything, without calculating or thinking, "okay, well i'm gonna get thisfor my wife and she's gonna get that for me." he just wanted to make her happy. he was sincerely caring about his wife's happiness, not because he wanted to get-- receive all of these wonderful things from her but just because he loved her. and the wife, you know, is thinking that the husband that shehas is the greatest
thing on earth and he can do no wrong. and even thoughthe world may look at this couple as totally a foolish couple, the fact is, that even though they're always goingdownhill by world-standard, they're always happy. and so when you are constantly always livingfor the sake of others, wishing other people-- wishing otherpeople happiness, you're kind of creating a vacuum because you're
giving of yourself which allows the universe to swish-in and bring forth or bring into that space incredible blessing, incredible abundance and incredible love. so this story, in a nutshell, is a story about the magic of true love, in that may seem foolish, and i think manytimes a religious life does look quite foolish to the worldbecause we are
thinking about the other more thanourselves but when we do that, then we inspire the universe, we (inspire), you know, the universe comes and brings us all this blessing and all this abundance. and so this story is a wonderful tale of how, you know, it's not what you have, it's not how foolish you might appear to somebody, but as long as you are honest and natural
and genuinely grateful for the life and for every opportunity that are put in front of you, then because we are approaching life with a grateful disposition, all these magical things can happen. and i know that for once, that my father's-- this is kind of like his philosophy on life. he's never owned anything in his name.
everybody thinks he's one of the richestpeople on the planet. but the fact is, he never ownedanything in his name. everything was owned by the people, by the church, by the ( inaudible). everybody thinks he left, you know,fortunes for his children. he did not! he left nothing. but what he gave to us is this gift of an understanding of "true love" and the value, the importance of living for thesake of others, because that's where all magic happens. and even if the world takes everythingaway from you,
as long as we can have a grateful heart, as long as we can have a lovingdisposition, and better that, better than a loving disposition, actually learning and practicing how to care about the other person's happiness, 'just because,' with no strings attached, great and wonderful things will happen to your life, will happen to my life, will happen to our life. so just as rumi said, "whenever we can manage [chuckles],"
meaning, you know, it does take a little work to love without expectation, without calculation, without tallying points, [laughs] and without negotiation, which is extremely exhausting and tiring, then we can have heaven or then we can experience "kingdom of heaven" in our relationships. so when we look at the simplemathematical equation again, "one and one equals two," again the magic
is in the word 'and,' because that's where the homework needs to be done; that'swhere true 'rubbing' takes place and as long as we continue to practice with a loving heart, reminding ourselves how 'life best lived' is a life, "living for the sake of others,' meaning that we can wish happiness for the other person, then we can learn how to love
without measuring different conditions that are placed in front of us. so instead looking at our husband or a wife saying, "well, today, i love you because certainconditions have been met but tonight i cannot love you or i love you less because you didn't do,"a, b, c and d. or we may look at our parents and say, "you know, you just don't live-up to myexpectations." you should be more this. you should bemore that. here we go! controlling, restricting,limiting, qualifying,
our parents again. parents will takecare of themselves but what we need to do, is do what we need to do. and that is, you know, letting the other, freely love and when love is given, freely received, without expecting anything in return. and the same thing with our siblings. how many times do we look at our siblings and say, "well, you know, i will only help you," or "i willonly love you because you helped me"? what about just helping, 'just because'? or if a sibling says to us,
"well, you know, i'm really angry at you because you didn't live-up to certainexpectations that i had and therefore i will love you less because iam disappointed in you." many times we use the word'disappointment' because we feel 'dissed' by the appointment that we had each other, a certain kind understanding but if we realize that disappointments really come from a sense of emptiness and fear that we have in, you know, being sofrustrated and confused about
'what am i not going to get from you' or 'what are you not doing to me,' you know, then our lives are going to be a very burdensome and an exhausting life. but when we can just, kind of, 'let it go.' and let things be and wish the person well, wish the person happiness, and do whatwe can in terms of supporting, loving and empowering the other person and if the other person wanting agenuine and a true relationship, a "true
love" relationship, realizes that in order to have that, they have to work on the word 'and,' andalso reciprocate with a loving and a genuine and a natural kind of a love. then we realize that we can build incredible relationships, in our families, between our spouse and between our children, and between our parents,
and then the world becomes a beautiful place because we're not waiting for expectation, calculation and negotiation, just as rumi says. so i wish all of you a wonderful sunday and a beautiful week. and let's try to really learn how to care about the other person's happiness, 'just because.' just because we love them, and just because we want the best for them. and watch the magic of true love, take place,
in your life and in our lives. so god bless. take care. it homer home i'm vehicle shuttle stuff there's no means
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that i'll trial down-home yes me you the %uh song
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