Buddhism, true love, Thich Nhat Hanh

transcription taken from comments, and gratefully:

'The Buddha is a teacher of love, true love. Love for mother earth should be true love. And if it is true love, it can bring a lot of happiness to you and to mother earth. And romantic love, if it is true love, it can also bring a lot of happiness. But if it is not true love, it will make you suffer, and make the other suffer as well. And in the teaching of the Buddha, true love needs four elements. First of all, maitri, loving kindness, that is the capacity to offer happiness. If you cannot offer happiness, that’s not true love. In romantic love, if you are not able to help the other person [be] happy, that’s not true love. So you should train yourself in order to be able to offer happiness to you and to him or to her. Without that, both will suffer. The second element of true love is compassion. Compassion is the kind of energy that can help remove suffering. It can help transform the suffering in you and in the other person. If you cannot transform and take care of the suffering in you and in [the] other person, that is not true love. That is why karuna, the second element of true love, should be cultivated by you and by the other person. Romantic and not romantic, that’s not important. The important [thing] is it is true love or not true love. Right? And the third element of true love is joy. If by loving you make the other person cry all the time, and you cry all the time, that’s not true love, romantic or not romantic. True love is inclusiveness; that you do not exclude. His suffering is your suffering, his happiness is your happiness. There’s no individual suffering and happiness any more. In true love, there is the element of inclusiveness, non-discrimination, there’s no separation, there’s no frontier, between you and the other person. In that spirit, you cannot say “That’s your problem.” No. Your problem is my problem. My suffering is your suffering. So this is true love, the forth element of true love. And if romantic love has these four elements, it can bring a lot of happiness also. And the Buddha never said negative things about true love. And romantic love, if you are successful, you will cultivate a lot of loving kindness and compassion, and very soon, your love will be all-embracing. The other person is no longer the only object of your love, because your love continue[s] to grow and your love will embrace all of us. And happiness become[s] limitless. And that is the love of the Buddha. That is the meaning of the forth element of true love, inclusiveness. If it is true love, then it will continue to grow, and include more and more and more, not only humans, but also animals, vegetables, and minerals, and that is great love, maha-karuna, maha-maitri. And that is the love of the Buddha.'

Do Buddhists believe in a soul?, lionsroar.com- reflection,associations,thoughts

http://www.lionsroar.com/do-buddhists-believe-in-a-soul/?goal=0_1988ee44b2-2416f18c65-22284457&mc_cid=2416f18c65&mc_eid=83cbb78504

"The short answer is no. In fact, this is the defining premise of Buddhism and one of the main things that differentiates it from other religions. In ancient Hinduism, the soul was called the atman and the basic Buddhist view was described as anatman—no soul.

A soul is considered to be something at our core that is single, independent, and unchanging. This isn’t just a religious belief; deep down, we all believe we have a soul. When I feel hurt, I must believe there is a separate “me” that is being hurt. In that sense, soul, self, and ego all refer to the same thing—our belief in a single, independent, and unchanging “me,” whether mundane or transcendent.

The Buddha said that all phenomena—including us—are conditioned, and all conditioned phenomena are impermanent. Far from being single, independent, and unchanging, we are made up of many parts, a product of causes and conditions, and constantly changing.

Yet Buddhism does say we have an essential nature that transcends conditioned or material existence. In the Mahayana, this is called buddhanature, the open expanse of awakeness in which all good qualities reside.

Is this just another version of a soul? Well, it is if you think of it that way—if you try to identify yourself with it. But in reality, buddhanature is said to be empty of all concepts of self and identity, as well as birth, death, time, space, etc. To be anatman, if you will."

first reflections:

i think i have have been thinking or more reflecting on this for all my  life since youth.

i am not at all interested in "belief", and i never was.

i cannot see the definition of soul and me , of self and ego as given here for true or say correct.

no deep thinker in our time will see the soul or "me" as something unchanging, independent and single. 

cognitive science shows us how much consciousness and self are changing and forming from moment to moment along experience,  C.G.Jung showed us "the" soul as connecting to the collective unconscious,  and i cannot see it as independent but as existing in inter-being.     in a socio-cultural context soul is a spongy definition containing the realm of emotions, relatedness to life and death, intuition, deep feeling, desire, longing,  love between man and woman, the innocent  state of small children, and this what we call heart and pureness inside giving us space to unfold in feeling, action and dream. Spongy i must call it as everybody will find another definition for himself or herself and even different contexts in different cultures and languages.

soul is not buddha nature AND it can be filled with it. When we see in the eyes of a dog or a small child we see soul. Alternatively  i could say: the soul - when silent from the noise and struggle of individuation- is the sphere in which the Buddha nature can be present and through which kindness and compassion can radiate. 

soul is life flowing not only as a river but even in a river and it is a river.

the part about the essential nature and awakeness i see the same.

alas, we are all individuated beings, even dogs who may not be conscious of it, and in inter-being and with growth  our souls can be clouded with sadness and a feeling of alienation or filled with true light and space in varying proportions.

soul i could like to say is a field of consciousness and feeling in which we can meet with stones, plants, animals, nature and other individuated humans, it is inside and in between at the same time, a flow of energy  through which we being humans can find a way to buddha nature or to hell.

soul exists because of individuation and in between for all relationships be it with animals, children, adults -and it is in itself an unconscious or maybe better non-thinking state of being, containing innocence and experience , beauty and wings to fly.

being too  is always moving and changing, and soul is a basic energy in individual life and death. 

nothing is fixed, and belief like this stated above distracts exactly from this, it puts itself in contradiction to itself and moves away from what could have been intended to communicate:     we are all given an essence which makes us all relatives, and this is pure and independent of belief, society, culture and the needs of the day.

Buddha didn't "believe" and belief has nothing to do with Buddhism.
I guess in some ways Buddhism was for religion what Marxism meant for our analysis of society and history: a revolution. Revolutions should not be fixed after into dogma.
I am rather interested in the post-revolutionary outcome.

Everybody is to find a perspective on how to be alive and to die and on how to act in the light of  what i may call the way of the heart which is far beyond simple definition and words.