Are Love and Compassion The Same Thing?
AllbuddhaBound
Veteran
It may sound simplistic but really, is compassion the only true shot we have at loving our enemies? Love thy neighbor. Being nice to people we don't like may have a phony feel to it, like being forced into something we don't really feel. But being compassionate, not so much.
For myself, I find when I make an effort to be compassionate, I can't hate the person. Does that mean that this love just means I no longer hate?
I believe I confuse love with adoration at times. Compassion does not seem to have any adoration to it. Only giving and kindness. A purer sentiment. One devoid of the idea of possessing or obtaining.
Is it possible that compassion is something beyond love? If true, this is definitely going to mess with a lot of poems, musical lyrics and challenge the belief that love is everything. Heaven forbid, the commandments may be in some trouble too.
What about you? Are love and compassion the same thing?
Comments
It was humpty dumpty who said 'words mean what I say they do'.
I think it depends what an individual means.
@AllbuddhaBound
Today I use the word
compassion to describe empathizing or sympathizing with anyones suffering whereas I use the word
love to describe the active effort at bringing some resolution to that suffering.
But either term probably has as many varied definitions as there are people labeling them.
I didn't know that Humpty Dumpty was a philosopher. Learn sumtin new every day.
There are a lot of teachers who insist that love permeates and 'drives' every 'thing', like 'love' is something that might be discovered now that they have the Higgs boson more or less nailed down. Love is fundamental in ways where it isn't recognizable to limited humans. Compassion 'seems' to be a subset of love? I think questions like this make philosophers out of us all. Perhaps it is just another verb for love?
Compassion: "to suffer with"
Get pricked by a needle - ouch!
Your friend gets pricked by a needle - Nooooo! Ow!
Compassion can be relationship-independent,
meaning you feel for someone before there is an evaluation of "friend" or "stranger" or "enemy"
which kinda turns everyone into a friend, really it is training the mind to cancel [its] dividing,
and on the other side of the scale, it's growing [the] love which, as @how so elegantly stated, actively endeavors to bring some resolution to [that] suffering.
</$0.02>
Excellent question.
For me personally, love =/= compassion. For example, I love my cousin. We were extremely close growing up, but she did some despicable things to me in our 20's. She has since married, had three children in quick succession and is always looking after them and her husband, often to her own detriment. And I feel not an ounce of compassion for her situation. (Yes I realise that this is a good Dharma teaching for me in developing compassion)
I can also conjure up oodles of compassion for strangers who are suffering but feel no love for them. I just want to help because it's the right thing to do.
Guess that makes me a bad, wannabe Buddhist..... :hair: ..
Metta,
Raven
_ /\ _
Love usually means some sort of attachment. Compassion is an openness to the suffering of another, whoever they may be.
I luv the question too but I have no compassion for it.
However that might be a little glib and @how provides a superior defining
Compassion in the dharma is often tempered by wisdom and self control. It is not the immersive drowning in the overwhelming nature of the physical or the intoxicated love of the Sufi.
So I would suggest that Buddhism is more head centered in its love, partly why the word compassion is used.
Love is a wide but very necessary arising. We have in various ways to develop a love for the three jewels, liberation, practice and so on. This is what may leads us to have compassion for ourselves and others.
So love gives us empathy, euphoria, spiritual friendship, teacher or Buddha adulation etc but compassion includes the skilful means . . .
The Huggs Boson.
No, they're not.
Metta is Compassion.
Karuna is Loving Kindness.
You can be compassionate and still not like the person you're being Compassionate to, very much.
A couple of years into a formal Zen practice, I was once talking to a delightfully-straightforward and quirky older member at the center we both attended.
"I find it easy to love the people we practice with," I said to her, "but I have a hard time liking them."
"For me, it's the opposite," she replied: "it's easy to like them but hard to love them."
Each of us seemed to find a reason to continue practicing.
To me they are one in the same. Just two different ways to describe values that are opposites of hate and aversion.
Yes, but vice versa.
yah.... :whatever: .
(I'm kidding. You're right, of course. Silly me. or vice versa.
. )
"What about you? Is love and compassion the same thing?"
One of my Dharma teachers once said "Love is ones wish for others to be happy/find happiness whether or not the person is suffering!" ....
..
I think compassion is when we acknowledge the suffering of others(empathy) and have this often overwhelming desire to put an end to their suffering .... .
I love compassion but do I have compassion for love?
I had to think about that for a couple.
Yes... Yes, I suppose I do.
The brahmaviharas are best seen in relief against their opposites:
It all comes back to that "I teach only suffering and the end of suffering" formula the Buddha keeps returning to again and again throughout his teaching. These are qualities of heart that the Buddha encouraged as antidotes to the suffering and unskillful ways of living encouraged by the opposite mind-states, which just serve to keep one entrenched in the suffering of samsaric existence.
On to love vs. compassion, I avoid using the word "love" and "loving-kindness" as translations of metta because those are not very accurate representations of what the Buddha meant, and reflect more the attempts of early translators to find parallels between Buddhism and Christianity. Love, at least as most English-speakers understand the term, refers usually to very personalized feelings of affection for specific people: family members, romantic partners, very close friends, etc. IME, love can both skillfully and unskillfully embodied. Some embodiments of love are full of attachment or extremely conditional. Other times, there is love that is selfless and is a sort of living affirmation of the human capacity to deeply connect with another being.
Metta, by contrast, is more generalized and less personal. It's meant to free us from the shackles of hatred and unburden us of the enemy-making tendencies of the mind. You don't necessarily have to know a person very well (or at all) to have goodwill for them. You simply strengthen your resolve to wish them well. It's an attitude, rather than a full-blown emotion, of committing to non-hatred. Karuna, likewise, is less personal and more generalized than love. It's about committing to the end of suffering, rather than its perpetuation. It's also about not shying or turning your eyes away from another's suffering when you are faced with it.
Even though metta and karuna aren't as personal as love, they ask a lot of a person. They ask for unflinching honesty with yourself about your own attachments, and ask (repeatedly) for you to give up your attachments again and again. Being kind when it is easier to be cruel or maintaining a friendly disposition when it's tempting to make a cutting or sarcastic remark can often feel like pulling off a Band-Aid. It stings. It makes tiny little perforations to our sense of pride and asks us to humble ourselves and give up some our most prized strategies for defending our self-concepts. But it's worth dismantling that pride and renounce constantly having to defend our self-concept because that is often what keeps us trapped in samsara. The brahmaviharas free you, very gently, from the pull of our habituation and turn you into someone less reactive and more conscientious.
You can develop compassion for, let's say, somebody who did you wrong.
You can try to figure out what drove that person to act the way they did, put yourself in their place, even suspend your dislike/hatred for them, as you say.
But love is something else.
It is the easiest feeling to experience naturally but the hardest to strive to develop.
karuna (mercy/compassion) is the opposite of cruelty
mudita (selfless joy) is the opposite of resentment or jealousy
upekkha (balance or equanimity) is the opposite of craving.
Very good post from @Glow. Thanks for that. In particular for me, the difference between the imprecision of Western love formulations and the precise Buddhist definitions.
One of the great Buddhist findings is where you attach your being, becomes your experience. This is why metta bhavna, visualisations, puja, dedication of merit etc are practices or empowerment at the heart of many personal changes.
Each of us is karmically to a degree hard hearted. We could not exist with perfect open hearted being unless a protected child, cloistered sangha or a hermit.
We must balance our compassion with wisdom. Here is one of my favourite teachings:
(i)
With a commitment to accomplish
the highest welfare for all
(Who surpass my most precious ideals)
I will learn to hold them supremely dear
(ii)
Whenever I associate with others, I will learn
to think of myself as the least among all,
And respectfully hold others as being supreme,
From the depth of my heart.
(iii)
In all actions, I will learn to search into my own mind,
And as soon as an afflictive emotion arises,
to enable myself and others,
I will firmly face and avert it.
(iv)
I will cherish beings of bad nature,
And those oppressed by strong negativity and sufferings,
As if I had found a precious treasure
Very difficult to find.
(v)
When others, out of jealousy, treat me badly
With abuse, slander and so on,
I will learn to take all loss
And offer the victory to them.
(vi)
When one whom I have benefited with great hope
Unreasonably hurts me very badly,
I will learn to view that person
As an excellent spiritual guide.
(vii)
In short, I will learn to offer to everyone without exception
All help and happiness directly and indirectly,
And secretly take upon myself
All the harms and suffering of others.
(viii)
I will learn to keep all these efforts
Undefiled by the stains of discursive conceptions,
And, by understanding all phenomena to be like illusions,
I will be released
My teacher's teacher said to make sure to understand that love is real. That is versus all the skhandas as being mirages.
It's the reverse. Metta is kindness and karuna is compassion. But those refer to the brahmaviras. Love according to a lot of teachers is the mind itself when awakened or bodhicitta.
~Khenpo Gyamptso Tsultrim Rinpoche.
Hear hear. Love seems to 'happen' but it can't be made to happen. It can be allowed to happen. Love itself seems to have the choice, not us
.
That makes for a very distinct difference (relatively speaking) between love and compassion. We can't choose to love but we can choose to behave compassionately, even when filled with aversion. You can loathe someone and still speak kindly to them.
The Dalai Lama in his book the New Milenium said that one of the worst things we can do is pretend we love someone.
It may be just me, but when I have compassion for someone else, I develop some caring for them. When I have been compassionate, I become a lot more open to loving.
I can share the joy (mudita) and the pain (karuna) other people feel.
Given there is only one me and there are billions of others, the number of emotions for me to experience explodes, due to compassion. My emotional life would be poor and dull without other people’s emotions to share.
I suppose that’s one reason why solitary confinement is labeled as a form of torture.
(That’s from the movie Samsara.)
We can avoid drying up emotionally by throwing ourselves into the ocean of compassion.
Our brains do the trick with mirror neurons. They produce pain and comfort in our minds when we see it in other people. I understood the brain needs to self-correct. When we see pain, the brain must check if anything is wrong with our skin and sends the message that everything is fine. Without this correction the mirror neurons would actually produce physical pain if we see someone else is hurting. Pain in a phantom limb apparently can be reduced by watching how someone else’s corresponding (and real) limb is getting a massage.
Love is something else I think; it involves chemicals in the brain like dopamine and oxytocin:
http://www.youramazingbrain.org/lovesex/sciencelove.htm
Yeah, I know. I made a mistake, but editing now, would spoil the thread continuity.
.
I would say, thankfully, that love is extremely difficult to fake. You can affect a facsimile of love for a very short time, but I doubt anyone but a sociopath would be able to pull it off for very long. Sooner or later, the other person will pick up on it or you'll soon lose motivation.
EDIT: I missed an earlier post of yours where you explained what you mean by love, so I'm removing an irrelevant part of my own post.
@Zenff said:
This has hit home deeply with me, thank you for even writing it out
. Funny how that kind of stuff works 
.
I couldn't agree more, as when you say "Love is something else". Like I said earlier, love appears to have it's own mind and 'shows up' when the conditions are right, such as when we exercise karuna and mudita. Maybe we call on love this way, but it can't manifest (or, won't manifest) without these conditions?
It backs up the old humanist sentiments like "If you want friends, be friendly". If you are lonely, attend to the loneliness of others, and so forth.
I think the word "love" has been used very widely and fluidly to cover many different emotions and experiences. Since this is the case, I think using the word "love" in conversation can be tricky. The word "love" sometimes can come with extra baggage. In contrast, I have never experienced compassion with extra baggage. I think true love, true kindfulness, and the wish for others to be well are all the fruit of compassion.
So, ultimately, at the very heart of compassion (beyond any extra baggage such as attachment, desire, expectation)...I think love becomes the fruit of compassion...love will just very naturally and simply happen as the result of compassion and this love experience may feel different than your usual idea of love. Compassion is always the first step, in my opinion. Everything will always be experienced truly with compassion.
Well said @inyo. What comes first the chicken, the egg or the cockerels love for hens.
The term compassion is more precise and leads to love. However we can not have compassion for the three jewels, we have to luv them.
So perhaps compassion is the wise unfolding, practice if you will of the growth, widening, or spaciousness of the heart . . .
.