Mortal love is but the licking of honey from thorns.

–Anonymous woman at the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, (1198), in Helen Lawrenson, Whistling Girl (1978)

One must desire something, to be alive; perhaps absolute satisfaction is only another name for Death.

–Margaret Deland, Florida Days (1889)

Sex itself must always, it seems to me, come to us as a sacrament and be so used or it is meaningless. The flesh is suffused by the spirit, and it is forgetting this in the act of love-making that creates cynicism and despair.

–May Sarton, Recovering (1980)

The concept in Buddhism that desire contributes to our suffering remains complicated to me. The end of the journey — Nirvana — is the state of desirelessness, nothingness. But isn’t the goal of Nirvana a desire in itself? Is Nirvana reached only when one stops caring about it as a destination or accomplishment? I suppose that is when death, as we know it, would happen.

Meanwhile, I like the image of licking honey from thorns. It appeals to attraction to duality — instead of either/or, however, the image suggests both/and. You can have love, if you’re willing to lick the thorns, risking some injury to yourself. Or you can have pain, as long as you understand the sweetness that lies on the other side — not-pain.