'অর্থলোভী লায়েক যারা' - প্রেম কি সর্বজয়ী: লালনপন্থা সম্পর্কে একটি মতামত | All-Conquering Love and the Path of Lalon

Abstract

In this unusual essay drawing on the textual analysis of some songs by Fakir Lalon Shah, on the philosophy of ashtanga yoga and on personal experience spanning many religious traditions, Deborah Zannat (Deborah Eliette Cukierman) tackles one of the most mysterious and most talked-about topics of all times: love. What love can be, what love can do, how to find it, keep it, give it and take it, are some of the questions that flow throughout this exploration. Looking at love from three points of view, that of a negative, of a positive and of a zero, Deborah Zannat argues that true love is divine yet within human endeavor. That cultivating love requires strong discipline and restraint, which she names the taming of the mind, related to the negative, to subtraction; it also requires positive acts of caring, that love is what love does, as Lalon Shah highlighted the five qualities of love according to Sri Chaitanya, related to addition. And most difficult of all, located in the dangerous fertility of the zero, the necessity of baring the mind to settle in peaceful, selfless, true and constructive acts of love and this does not occur without struggle and resistance, without alluring traps and great risks. While Sufis claim to be the only path of love, Deborah Zannat here shows that any complete mystical boon necessarily yields love, whichever path may have been walked to acquire it. And that this pure divine love is human's highest achievement.