There are many things to learn from Plato's "Symposium" on love. Love must come from the heart not from lust and wantonness. This is real love. We have all experienced puppy love or what the Greeks called Common Love, and we have all been disappointed at the end results. Love based on physical beauty alone is not strong enough to last. Attraction to physical beauty helps, but it is not real love. It is only the puppy love of adolescence. Adults need more than puppy love to feel satisfied. They need the Love of the older Aphrodite. Love that is based on Virtue, honor, and attraction to another's intellect. This is real love, true love, the other is common and as Pausanias says, inferior.
All three works have emphasized the transitory nature of the material world and the transcendence of the realm of rational thought, belief in god, or living in the ways of Krishna. Plato and the Gita especially emphasize the necessity of people doing what suits them best. Meanwhile the concept of an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient god from which all existence must come from directly parallels Krishna and all of existence, mentality, sensation and thought existing within him.
|
|
|
Favorites
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Magnolia
StumbleUpon
Google
Yahoo
Technorati
BlinkList