Three Sutras for Mastering Yourself in Relationships
How to choose the happiness track — and stay there
There are three simple sutras that, if practiced and mastered, can transform your relationship into a space of long-term happiness, intimacy, and trust.
1. Live for Each Other
This is the foundation — the way you relate. Living for each other means holding your partner’s well-being as deeply as your own. It is not about self-erasure, but about seeing your lives as interwoven, and making choices that uplift both.
2. Be Neutral, Unattached, and Listening
When an event occurs that is less than ideal, resist taking it personally. Instead, practice neutrality — a steady, balanced state of being that allows you to listen without reaction. This neutrality is not coldness; it is a spaciousness that makes compassion possible.
3. Listen to Understand with Compassion — and Respond with Love
When you listen to understand — not just to respond — you naturally place the other’s needs alongside your own. This opens the heart and dissolves distance. From here, the flow is complete: listening with compassion reveals the need, and the natural response is love in action — to serve that need. In doing so, you return to the first sutra: living for each other.
The Tracks of Relationship
Living for Each Other: The happiness track. When both live for the other, the relationship becomes a cozy carriage ride — steady, joyful, and elevating.
Living with Each Other: Like two fish in separate bowls, peering through layers of glass. There is connection, but it is distorted and distant. Without crossing into each other’s space, the illusion of separation persists.
Living at or Against Each Other: The most painful track, marked by opposition, blame, or power struggles. Even thinking about it brings constriction to the heart.
Shifting Tracks
An “event” — a conflict, misunderstanding, or life challenge — can cause one or both partners to jump tracks instantly. But awareness is the steering wheel. Once you can identify which track you are on, you can consciously return to the happiness track. And when both are there together — the whole relationship rises.
The three sutras are simple to remember but profound in practice. They are not just for marriage, but for any relationship you want to elevate.
In The Art of Marriage and throughout the LEVEL 108 platform, we explore additional techniques to deepen this mastery and sustain it over time.
Where are you on the tracks today? And what would it take to live for each other — every day?
Explore how you can grow with these three sutras, with some self-reflection:
