Question: What is the difference between your love and your concern?

Sri Chinmoy: If you love someone, you will have concern for them, but love is infinitely more important than concern. Love is oneness. Concern may not be based on oneness. If you have established oneness with humanity or higher realities, you will give everything that you have and everything that you are. But if you have concern for someone, you will give according to your willingness, not according to your capacity. If you love someone, you will give according to your total capacity. You will give all that you have and all that you are.

If you have concern, you can give just a little. A beggar is asking you for alms and you are giving the beggar a dollar or two. That is your concern for a poor man. You may think, “Perhaps he has not had a proper breakfast.” But if you have love for that individual, immediately you will invite him to your place and give him the food that you like best, and let him eat as much as he wants.

So there is a great difference between love and concern. Love is total self-giving, but concern is giving only the amount that you want to give, whether it is one dollar or ten dollars. Concern is limited by your willingness to give, but when you have love for someone, then you give to that person boundlessly and endlessly, according to your own inner capacity. Love is conscious and constant unconditional self-giving. If it is unconditional, then only is it real love.