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What is the relationship between love and understanding? Both are streams from the same source, but whereas love flows through the heart, understanding flows through the mind. Understanding helps us see the truth, and love causes us to act on it.

Understanding assists love by helping us recognize ourselves in others, and helping us see that for all our superficial differences, we are of the same essence. Without understanding, it is all too easy to be judgemental. We see someone acting selfishly, and a barrage of anger and criticism arises within us. Understanding helps us see past their behaviour and to recognize that this seemingly selfish person seeks love and happiness, just the same as we do. Rather than judging that person as “bad”, we view their selfishness as ignorance, and we feel compassion for them. Understanding makes us more accepting, less judgemental, and thereby removes some of the impediments to love.

Love, on the other hand, is the quality that makes us try to understand another person in the first place. It is what makes us willing to reach out and touch them, to put ourselves in their shoes. Love is what stops us from rejecting or ignoring those whom we may otherwise recoil from. Whereas understanding is helpful for love, love is absolutely essential for true understanding. It is the faith in humanity that causes us, when we see someone acting nastily and we do not know why, to have compassion for them anyway. Only with this compassion can we even begin to think about why they act the way they do. Only with this compassion can we come to understand them and to love them completely.

Therefore, when we come to love and understand a person or thing, the first impulse is from the heart. The love comes before the understanding. However, from this point on, they each boost each other. Without understanding, there is a danger that the love will go away. Understanding is what maintains the love and helps it expand to encompass all. Yet without love, the understanding is empty. Love is not merely understanding a person, but feeling compassion for them, wanting to help them, and holding them in our hearts.

When we think of virtue and good moral character, we think of words such as honesty, kindness, compassion, and generosity. An important virtue often excluded from this list is intelligence. Without intelligence, all the other virtues are diminished. Although being compassionate and generous is clearly important, equally important is understanding the effect that our actions will have. Without this, we may act with the best of intentions and yet cause nothing but harm. There are many example of this on both a personal and a global level.

It is very common to say that being a good person merely relies on having good intentions. This is not enough. We must go beyond this and recognize our moral imperative to actively develop our intelligence and understanding. This is the way to truly be of benefit to others. Compassion and kindness are far more powerful when combined with insight.

If a doctor kills his patient during surgery, we do not usually hold him responsible. Clearly we can only do the best that we know how. Nonetheless, there are expectations that we do have of the doctor, and we should similarly have these expectations of ourselves. The first is that we assume that the doctor knows his own limitations and does not attempt something beyond his capabilities (unless there is no other alternative). The second is that we assume that the doctor is always working to develop his skill. We expect him to regularly read the medical literature and to be up to date on the latest findings and technologies. Failure to do this would be a disservice to his patients.

We must have a similar attitude to our own dealings with others. First, if we wish to help others, we must clearly recognize the limitations of our understanding. For example, we should not advise someone in a situation about which we know nothing, because our well-meaning advice could have very negative effects. We would be irresponsible to advise a friend to end his or her marriage without first gaining a strong understanding of the situation. Second, like the doctor, we have a moral imperative to develop our skills in life. To truly help others, it is essential that we build up great insight into human nature, and into the natures of those around us. Only with this understanding can our compassion be really beneficial. Intelligence, insight, understanding: these virtues must not be ignored.