Agape is so damn difficult!

betaboy

Love is easy if it involves sexual pleasure. It is easy if it involves people who are worth caring for.

But love is hard when you're confronted with a world filled with wickedness and sin. Agape love is what I mean - to love without motive, without any expectation of reward. That love is supreme.

Yet, when confronted with evil people, I meet their glare with mine, I meet their evil with mine. I became evil myself. So I cry with one of the saints, "Even if I have the faith that moves mountains but have not love, I am nothing. Even if I surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind ..."

footiam

betaboy said:

Love is easy if it involves sexual pleasure. It is easy if it involves people who are worth caring for.

But love is hard when you're confronted with a world filled with wickedness and sin. Agape love is what I mean - to love without motive, without any expectation of reward. That love is supreme.

Yet, when confronted with evil people, I meet their glare with mine, I meet their evil with mine. I became evil myself. So I cry with one of the saints, "Even if I have the faith that moves mountains but have not love, I am nothing. Even if I surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind ..."

When it involves sexual pleasure, one may mistake lust for love. In a wicked world, we may be wicked ourselves and have not the love. There is love yet. It is like a seed which needs water, warmth and sunlight to manifest itself. Sex, the wickedness and sin perhaps are not the water, warmth and sunlight.

lobster

Yet, when confronted with evil people, I meet their glare with mine, I meet their evil with mine. I became evil myself.

:buck:

You do? How is this reflecting working on reflection @daathBetaboy?

Hamsaka

What makes a person worth caring for? Meant with 100% sincere wondering There are people in your life you care about, so what are they like?

I have a huge problem with 'agape' when it comes to sociopaths or the trait of sociopathy. Seeing that 98% of the population creates pain and mayhem in others due to their own confusion and pain has been easier to 'get' and eventually, understand and forgive. Eventually Betaboy there will be far far fewer 'evil people' in your life, and far more confused, suffering, acting-out people who inspire your compassion, not your own 'evil'

Where do the sociopathic fit in the cosmology we're talking about here at NB? Not worried so much about definitions of sociopathy or who's clinically a sociopath here . . . but 'right view', Buddhistic wisdom, transcendental grokking.

There's one where I work, a patient we must all provide excellent care for because she does need skilled nursing care. The aversion to her is a thing apart. Exquisitely awful. She's on our unit due to 'placement issues' (read: there's not a nursing home in the icy heart of Hell that will take her on), so we'll be exercising advanced coping mechanisms for the next six months, even a year according to one doctor.

'Agape' is too hard Betaboy, yet. How about polite and superficially friendly? How about meeting the 'evil' with curiosity, like little kids cutting open slugs? It's a start, and I do not endorse actually cutting up slugs, but morbid curiosity is more skillful than imagining you have 'evil' to glare back at them.

Try morbid curiosity. It's helping deal with the . . . patient at work. It beats the hell out of aversion and fear.

Gassho
LG

BhikkhuJayasara

I don't see any wickedness or sin in the world(nor do I define the world in good and evil terms)..I see only action, and beings performing actions that are skillful or unskillful, same as myself. Viewed through that lens it's easy to see reality, we are all stuck on this planet in this universe together and are trying to find our way.

Therefore it becomes much easier to relate, have empathy, and give boundless friendliness to all beings, as well as yourself.


also that being said.. metta is a PRACTICE, no one expects you to have boundless friendliness for all beings right off the bat, or even after practicing many years. Keep on practicing and don't lose confidence in it's power. You are hard on others, because you are hard on yourself.

MaryAnne

betaboy said:

Love is easy if it involves sexual pleasure. It is easy if it involves people who are worth caring for.

But love is hard when you're confronted with a world filled with wickedness and sin. Agape love is what I mean - to love without motive, without any expectation of reward. That love is supreme.

Yet, when confronted with evil people, I meet their glare with mine, I meet their evil with mine. I became evil myself. So I cry with one of the saints, "Even if I have the faith that moves mountains but have not love, I am nothing. Even if I surrender my body to the flames but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind ..."

Is there going to be a pop quiz on Monday?
If not... I'm not sure what the point is to this 'lecture' about agape love. Seems like a random, orphaned topic without context - at least for us...

And isn't this more of a Christian/Bible term?

Oh and for the record, from my point of view... Love is never 'easy'.
The "Easy" path is avoiding love or denying it exists.