The Pull of Maya

Our entire life is nothing but a labyrinth. Here many correct sums don't add up, while many wrong calculations somehow balance out perfectly.

Of all the reckonings that exist in this world, do you know which is the most difficult to calculate? . . . Love.

Why could you never love, even a little, the person who loved you so intensely for more than half a lifetime that they became utterly destitute? Just as you can find no accounting for this, you will never be able to solve the equation of why someone who gave everything, emptying themselves completely in loving you for more than half a lifetime, could never love you back even a little.

Love is not a two-way street.

In everything, love will bind you like a spider's web, holding you captive; you'll want to tear free, but for some unknown reason, you won't. You'll writhe and struggle to escape the bonds, but even after bearing all the pain, you won't break free. Like a frog stuck in a well or a dragonfly caught in love's web, you'll find yourself trapped in a circle—no ladder to climb up, no wings to beat for flight. Understanding everything, you'll remain stuck there like someone who understands nothing.

Life becomes bound to some intoxication in everything about the beloved. Like this: why does their half-smoked cigarette feel like a volcano, why does the touch of their absent-minded fingers feel like the intoxication of opium—you'll find no equation for any of this. Love is an eternally unresolved resolution.

Why does their pet dog, standing at their door every day, seem so endearing, why does their torn towel hanging on the balcony seem like fields of embroidered quilts, why does the last sip they left in their tea cup seem like the most beautiful dewdrops in the world—search as you might throughout this world, you'll find no accounting for these things. Where all calculations balance out, there is no love.

Attachment is an intoxication. Love is an addiction. When both happen together, it becomes opium. Once the scent of this opium enters your nostrils, the entire world will seem like a tavern to you. In that tavern, it's not wine that flows day and night—it's the intoxication of life itself.

Tell me, is attachment a kind of intoxication, or is intoxication a kind of attachment? Does a person go mad from loving, or does a person fall in love after going mad?

In the end, human beings die of love.