Unknown Pleasures

When someone sends sexually explicit images/messages to you online, what are they trying to say???? If their profile picture is half -naked or in a bathing suit, what are they trying to accomplish?????? Would it increase their chances for having some sort of relationship with me????? Do they have a handle on some "unknown pleasures" that i should be drawn to check out????? Wouldn't this have just the opposite effect on me...to delete them.

Are we all deceiving each other????? Deep down we feel there is nothing good, beautiful, and true in us; and at the same time we are desperate to show other people how good, beautiful, and truthful we are.

What would the Buddha think about this???? What is the ultimate truth of love????

Sitting at the foot of the bodhi tree on the night when he realized the truth, the Buddha discovered something that was very surprising. He saw that the good, the beautiful, and the true are to be found in everyone. People think that the true, the beautiful and the good exist somewhere else, in someone else. They don't know that they are true, beautiful, and good at their core. Our whole life, we are looking for someone else to replace what we feel is missing.

We don't need to deceive each other, because the thing we are looking for is already in us. If we have it all ourselves, couldn't we bypass having relationships with others????

Now is our best chance, actually. When the understanding is there, we know what to do and what not to do to bring happiness and peace to another person. True love is the desire to bring happiness and peace to another person.....being generous, not selfish... being sweet, not bitter.
When there is true love, the pain of the other is our own pain; the happiness of the other is our own happiness. True love is characterized by attentiveness, respect. If we have this attention then when we see the suffering of the other person, we can't go on causing them pain. If we have respect, we cannot go on like that.

Our true teacher is within us, the real object of our love is ourselves. We have to know how to love ourselves, how to return to our true nature, to see the good, the true, and the beautiful within us. Then we will be able to see it in others. When we have seen real beauty, goodness, and truth in ourselves and others, we will no longer be deceived by outer displays.