Love happens in all kinds of ways.

There is love at first sight, a phenomenon that many of us have experienced. You meet someone and right away, you fall hard. You just know at that very first instant that you love this person. There is never any doubt. No need to think about it, inspect it, analyze it. It just is.

There is love that creeps up on you, a slowly swelling river imperceptibly inching higher and higher until suddenly you realize your feet are wet. An even more startling revelation to follow is that you really don't mind. You just stand there grinning as your brand new Selbys fill with water.

Sometimes love begins as friendship and transmogrifies. You're accustomed to being friends with this person, hanging out, doing things together. Then one day you look at him and he's glowing in a way you've never noticed before. It's the glare from the halo that has unexpectedly appeared above his head. This can be a shocking and disconcerting discovery. In that one moment, a new door has opened. A line has been crossed. There is no going back; there is only uncertainty where once abided comfort, familiarity, and assurance.

I have experienced all these forms of love happening. They were thrilling. Exciting. Heady trips into a fantastic netherworld. They did not fulfill me, however. Did not reaffirm me. And in the long run, did not sustain me. What began as love morphed into other entities, unnamed and shrewd, untamable and headstrong.

When love happened this time, it was with some measure of aforethought. Not much, granted, but a little more than I usually give it. After my marriage with Lightnin ended, I didn't have the heart for love any more. Didn't want anything to do with it. Forget it. Love could be for others. I would revel in the happiness of my friends and secretly genuflect, thanking the gods for sparing me.

Then approximately one year ago I began to realize that I had at last conquered the chasm of grief and anger which had claimed me for over seven years. At last I had clambered from the depths and found myself at the edge of a peaceful wood, near the banks of a swiftly running stream. I reached down and touched the cool water and it occurred to me that perhaps I should entertain the idea of love once more.

If love should happen for me again, though, there were certain qualities I was seeking. Those qualities must take precedence over sexual attraction, personality traits, or physical characteristics. They were essential, vital components of any deep and meaningful relationship I might ever have. I also decided that it would not be necessary for him to make any of the usual gestures or commitments.

He wouldn't have to wed me or bed me. Wouldn't have to pay my bills, listen to me snore, or keep my Harley running. There would be nothing required of him except to tell me the truth, always the truth, regardless of its nature, and to be there for me in his heart. In his mind. In his soul. To let me know those things unequivocally. I vowed to myself that this time, I would have that or I would not have love.

He would know about suffering. How to bear his burdens nobly and unbowed. He'd understand the importance of the mission. He would display loyalty and dedication toward his own and understand my devotion to mine. He would come to me with a precious gift in his hand: the inherent ability to help me become more than I am simply by being all that he is.

He would know what it means to search. He would have searched for his soul, for his self, for his place in the universe. He would press an endless quest, one with no discernible beginning but which drives him onward, ever onward, into the unfathomable. He would understand that I am searching, too.

He would be an old friend to pain. He would know firsthand how it cuts through you and carves into your being, leaving you hollow, empty, maimed. He would also acknowledge that pain is necessary. That it threshes us, fires us, tills our soil so that we may harvest love, tolerance, and compassion where its unwelcome vines once rooted.

He would feel a closeness to the Earth, to all living things. He would see life even where others do not. And once in a while he would turn his eyes to the heavens and think of me.

Sometimes he says, "I don't know what you find in me."

In you, my love, I find all of the above. In you I find my tathagata.