Make sure your love is unconditional. Make sure you love people in all kinds of “weather”. Or else what is the use if we love a person only when he is good or she is nice? When I need the people most that’s when they leave me. All the time. So please, I hope you won’t be like that. We always have to consider the other party, your companion’s situation and mood. Maybe he’s in difficulty right now. That’s why his mood is not so sweet.

Maybe she has so much work to do and so many headaches, so she cannot be so darling like usual. That time is the time when we need to show our most noble quality, the way we want ourselves to be.

It’s not that if you are sweet to that person then he will love you more. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t. But that is not the point to be good and to be noble. To be good, to be noble is for ourselves because we choose to be that way, we want to keep being that way, and we feel good about it. It’s not because, “Okay, now he needs me more. If I show more sympathy, then our love will be stronger”; It’s not even to be considered.

But most of the time we fail the test. When people are in most difficulty, we just leave them, or we are cold and indifferent. “Oh, you’re not nice to me. All right, all right.”;”You’ll come and need me soon.”; Of course they will. When they’re in a better mood, when everything goes better, of course they’ll come around. But then it’s too late. Then it is not love anymore. It’s just a need for each other. That’s different, because you are used to each other and you need each other sometimes out of habit, out of convenience, out of financial security reasons — anything. But it’s not true love.

True Love Always Prevails
True love is we stick together in “thick and thin”;. Especially when it’s thin, when it’s troublesome. Then we should really bridge over the “troubled water”. That’s what they say in English. But most of us fail the test, to ourselves, not to our partners. He might leave you, he might stay with you, because you’re nice or not nice. But you fail yourself. You leave yourself. You leave the most noble being that you really are. So we should check up on this to our family members or whomever that is beloved and dear to us. Most of the time in critical situations, we just turn our backs and that is no good.

Of course we have our anger, our frustrations, because our partners are not as loving as usual, or whomever that is; but he or she is in a different situation. At that time, she or he is in mental suffering. It’s just as bad or even worse than physical suffering. Physical suffering you can take a pill or you can have an injection and it stops or at least temporarily stops, and you feel the effect right away; or at least if people are in physical suffering, everyone sympathizes with them.

But when they are in mental anguish, and we pound them more on that, and we turn our backs and become cold and indifferent, that is even more cruel, even worse. That person will be swimming alone in suffering. And especially they trust us as the next of kin, the next person, the one that they think they can rely on in times of need; and then at that time, we just turn around and are snobbish, because they didn’t treat us nice so we just want to revenge. That’s not the time. You can revenge later, when he’s in better shape. Just slap him.

Actually, at that time, the person is not his usual self anymore. He was probably under very great pressure that he lost his own control. It’s not really lost his own control, but for example, when you are in a hurry, your talk is different. Right? “Hand me that coat! Quick! Quick! Quick!” Things like that. But normally, you would say “Honey, please, can you give me that coat.” Is that not so? (Audience: Yes.) Or when you’re in pain — for example stomach pain, heartache or whatever — you scream loudly; and anyone who comes to talk to you, you don’t talk in the usual way anymore, because you’re in pain.

Similarly, when you are in a mental or psychological pain, you talk in a very grouchy way, very cross. But that is understandable. So if we — any so-called loving partner or family member — do not even understand this very least, very basic concept, then we’re finished. Then we are really in a bad situation. It’s not that the partner will do anything to us. Whether he does anything to us later or not, that is no problem. The problem is us. The problem is we degrade ourselves, that we make less of a being of ourselves than we should be, than we are supposed to be, or that we really are. So do not make less of a being of yourselves.