Claim. True love, as Rev. Sun Myung Moon teaches it, is the absolute love characterized by eternal, unchangeable, limitless, universal scope and by the desire to continuously give to others without expecting anything in return — in contrast to secular love which is selfish.
Elaboration. Lee defines true love by contrast with secular love (God’s True Love). The term “absolute,” applied to God’s love, carries four specific predicates: eternal, unchangeable, limitless, universal. Because God is eternal and omnipresent, God’s love is too. True love is comprehensive love given to all humankind and to all things — every created being is its object partner, and “nothing in the universe is excluded from the realm of true love,” including enemies and even material things. Lee uses the sunlight analogy: there is no place the sun does not shine, and the sun shines eternally without rest.
The six-direction structure follows. Taking oneself as center, one relates above (parents, superiors, elders), below (children, subordinates, younger), front (teachers, senior colleagues, leaders), back (students, juniors, followers), right (siblings, intimate friends and colleagues), and left (competitors, strangers, opponents). True love covers all six directions, plus all things. Three Great Subjects Thought asserts we should practice this love at all times and places.
The operative definition: “love is to seek to care for one’s object partners, while expressing to them a warm heart.” In true love, one wants to give what one has rather than receive. Lee contrasts this sharply with secular love, which seeks one’s own interests. He lists concrete forms: “to talk gently,” “to understand one’s circumstances,” “to give financial aid,” “to extend cooperation,” “to serve,” “to support,” “to help someone get out of difficulties,” “to embrace,” “to forgive one’s enemies,” “to teach kindly.” Giving and giving again with a warm heart — this is altruism, the spirit of “living for the sake of others.”
The phrase “living for the sake of others” is loaded with later Unificationist usage. The structural move here is to operationally define true love such that it is asymmetric, expects no return, and covers literally everything in the cosmos. This sets up later claims about downward-love-primary-induces-upward-and-horizontal and about the structural primacy of giving in give-and-take action.
See also. downward-love-primary-induces-upward-and-horizontal, three-divine-principle-foundations-for-ethics, mutual-existence-joint-ownership-grounded-in-true-love