Dalai Lama on relationships
HH Dalai Lamas sayings carry lot of practical wisdom, though they emerge from his spiritual perspective. In the book, The art of Happiness, he says that when there is a problem in a relationship, whether it is between lovers, relations or friends, we need to look at the underlying basis and nature of the relationship.
A relationship, say a friendship, may be based on wealth, power or position. This means that the relationship is sustained as long as the underlying wealth or any such basis continues. It is not difficult to predict that this kind of relation can not continue for long and will eventually run into problems.
A genuine relationship will be based on a feeling of closeness, some kind of connectedness between two persons. In this kind of relationship, people feel close because they have a natural affection towards each other. Any change in wealth, status or any other external reason does not spoil this kind of relationship.
Unfortunately, when people start relationships on wrong premises, they fail to recognize the situation in the beginning. One example is when two persons fall in love due to mere physical attraction without actually feeling inner closeness. However when one is conscious about this aspect and puts deliberate effort to understand the basis of a relationship, it is easy to distinguish genuine ones.
Combining his spiritual wisdom, Dalai Lama adds that relationships based on inner qualities such as kindness, goodness etc last long compared to the ones based on external characteristics. This does not mean that external factors are unimportant. In fact, in a good relationship, both internal and external factors help in binding two people.
Many times, the problem in a relationship boils down to not having sufficient time to understand each other. So it helps to deliberately put effort in the beginning itself to understand the basis of a relationship and focus on the feeling of connectedness rather than just external factors. If there is no such feeling of connectedness naturally occurring between two people, probably they are not meant to be in a close relationship. On the other hand, when there is an inherent closeness, any future differences can be easily sorted out.
