Guideline IV

Be cautious about love just as you need to guard yourself against fear and hatred.   But if you feel like living adventurously, go ahead and pursue your passion.  Just be sure to prepare yourself for the possible consequences.

Or perhaps, at that particular moment in Bangkok, some tourists were distancing themselves from these spots, fearing that they might fall in love with an angel who is HIV positive, or perhaps an angel who is only interested in his money.  On the other hand, while many of these angels are dreaming that one of their customers would marry them someday, these angels are also cautious about tourists who will only use them for pleasure and quickly throw them away.   In reality, even the average person in the City of Angels, or anywhere else in the world, knows all too well that love can lead to depression, anger, psychosis, and even suicide.

Of course, love has many variations.  Other types of love include love for your country, for an ideology, for your religion or philosophy, for your work, or for some other passion.  These types of love also produce negative consequences when they are experienced to the extreme.  In fact, history shows us that these types of love can lead to massacres, holocausts, inquisitions, and wars.  Nazis, Communists, Catholic clergymen, and the like are all too familiar with it.

Admittedly, the power of love can also greatly improve the overall quality of your life if you know how to control it and move it toward the right direction.  But this doesn't happen all the time.  So be on guard, and be cautious of where love leads you.  Otherwise, you'll end up suffering.

As Hong Ying Ming says, “think about food on a full stomach, and you find you don’t care about taste.  Think of lust after making love, and you find you don’t care about sex.  Therefore, if people always reflect on the regret they will feel afterward to forestall folly at the moment, they will be stable and will not err in action.”