Loving anyone is a challenge. The poets frequently sing about the thrill of falling in love at first sight, but they rarely sing about the thrill of living in love after many sights. That’s because the thrill of love is agonizingly short-lived. At best, it gradually fizzles out when our object of love repeatedly fails to live up to our expectations. At worst, it transmogrifies into a chill when our object of love abruptly leaves us.

Is our longing for love meant to be always frustrated?

Only as long as it is misdirected, answers Gita wisdom. It explains that we as souls are meant to love the all-attractive, all-loving Supreme Person, Krishna, and delight eternally in that loving relationship.

When we don’t direct our longing for love towards Krishna, the Bhagavad-gita (04.10) indicates three broad ways in which we become frustrated:

1. Raga (Attachment): We search for some worldly object to love and end up frustrated, as explained earlier.
2. Bhaya (Aversion due to fear): We feel that our longing for love is the cause of our suffering, so we try to repress and extinguish it.
3. Krodha (Anger due to indecision): We can’t decide whether to express or repress our longing for love, so we lead lives of angry indecision.

Gita wisdom guides us to redirect our love towards Krishna through the process of devotional service. When we learn the art of loving him, we discover that his glory and beauty is ever-fresh and that his remembrance brings fresher and deeper joy.

Once our longing for love is thus satisfied, we become instruments of divine love in the world and form Krishna-centered loving relationships that uplift us and others towards the world of endless love. Loving others still remains a challenge, but the devotional intention makes it a fulfilling challenge.

 Bhagavad Gita Chapter 04 Text 10

“Being freed from attachment, fear and anger, being fully absorbed in Me and taking refuge in Me, many, many persons in the past became purified by knowledge of Me—and thus they all attained transcendental love for Me.”