Love is not words or feelings, thoughts or prayers. Love is an action. A spontaneous action taken in the full awareness that one is acting. This is different from an emotional reaction, which is never justified. A loving action has no self in it.
How do we know if our work is selfless? If we need no help doing it. If it seems like the work is doing itself.
Wisdom is the stillness, the pause before the action, the space between the notes.
Stillness differentiates action from mere activity. Activities are for the self. Action is for the world.
Love is action, not talking, not ‘I love you.’
Love originates in wisdom. Wisdom is the womb.
Whitman wrote something like this following his decisive encounter: “We met. I forget the rest.”
So that’s love, then—the slate wiped clean, a great forgetting.
Self-obliteration, a few facts, a box to store them in: What more could a man ask for?
Men's Work 