All the troubles, all the quarrels and so-called “annoyances”, I like to think have shaped me and brought me closer to enlightenment.
The more I read about Zen Buddhism, the more I come to feel that enlightenment is never a thing you reach but rather a kind of direction you keep moving towards.
It will always be necessary to sit and be silent and let your thoughts come and go.
For Hegel, it’s foolish to think of Mind as something particular, because Mind is Spirit and Spirit is universal.
So whatever there is to love in myself and in those “close” to me, I can find in everyone else too.
So the only rational way to be is to love everybody and everything.
(This isn’t quite what Hegel says but I’m reading between the lines.)
Even the Earth, the solid Earth, is as fragile as a flower in the fullness of time and space. Why focus your love on one thing, or person, or truth? All things come and go, but the coming and going are forever.
Lee Watkins 
Does it come down to different definitions of love?
The love of a thing is different, I think, to the love of a person. The love of a person is different to the love of truth.
Which is the strongest love? Love of a person?
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I think you are correct. Thanks for reading!
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To say a bit more: I suppose for most people the strongest love they feel would be for other people. But I think that that love can be extended to all living things (for example by thinking of animals too as people in that they also seek happiness like we do) and maybe to ideas too as things that come from and represent the hopes and dreams of other living beings.
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