Love is life?

That must be about the most cliched of cliches in the world, this statement that 'Love is Life'. I mean, literature is rife with romances where people feel unable to live if they lose their love, so one does get a surfeit of this idea in books.

But is that what Tiru means when he says this?

Anbin vazhiyadhu uyirnilai; Aqdhilaarkku enbuthol portha udambu - Tirukkural

The soul exists because of love; those without love are but skeletons clothed in skin - Loose Translation.

It is a strange thing that, when we talk of love, all that we instantly think of is romantic love. That, though, is not what Tiru means here. Or, rather, that's not the ONLY love that the Tamil word 'Anbu' means. What Tiru means is all sorts of love - parental love, filial love, sibling love - and affection and friendship...in short the entire gamut of positive relationships that make up the tapestry of your life.

What you call the 'soul' has its being in the love that you have and can express in all these myriad ways. If there be such a person who feels no love, Tiru says that he lacks a soul and is merely bones clothed in flesh and not to be considered human.

Which, in another way is true. There IS a difference between merely existing and living. And living, as opposed to existing, IS to dive into the experience of some or all of these multiple forms of love.

What price renunciation then? Does Tiru then say that the ascetics are but bones clothed in flesh? No, that's a misunderstanding of what asceticism means. Asceticism is not the renunciation of love, it is to expand that love to encompass everything in the universe equally. And it is to renounce the ATTACHMENT to the objects of your love as much as to the objects of pleasure. So, Tiru does not mean this as a trolling of ascetics.

Love may or may not make the world go around. But it is certainly what makes the difference between you being merely a passive spectator of life or being really ALIVE!