Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Buddhism and relationships
lotusbuds
Explorer
Hello all. I've introduced myself in the intro section and was asking some questions here. I am reposting some of them to start a topic on its own instead of trolling the intros lol.
Here is one of my questions, I just copied and pasted:
Regarding relationships. Buddhism teaches us about detachment and learninig to let go. I am wondering how you all feel this impacts your own relationships with say, a spouse/boyfriend or girlfriend/significant other? Does this principle of detachment mean that we must love everyone equally? I cannot imagine loving a stranger in the same way and to the same degree that I love my fiance. Am I misunderstanding or misinterpretting? How has Buddhism affected your love relationships? I don't want Buddhism to isolate me from my fiance. I hope this aspect can be clarified?
Here is one of my questions, I just copied and pasted:
Regarding relationships. Buddhism teaches us about detachment and learninig to let go. I am wondering how you all feel this impacts your own relationships with say, a spouse/boyfriend or girlfriend/significant other? Does this principle of detachment mean that we must love everyone equally? I cannot imagine loving a stranger in the same way and to the same degree that I love my fiance. Am I misunderstanding or misinterpretting? How has Buddhism affected your love relationships? I don't want Buddhism to isolate me from my fiance. I hope this aspect can be clarified?
0
Comments
I don't think Buddhism says you must do anything special. No one can be any good-er than they actually are. Sure, we can talk up a firestorm about attachments and detachment and compassion and joy and ... well, make your own laundry list... but none of it means any more than it means to you. There is no heavenly mandate. Buddhism observes. Buddhism suggests. Buddhism is not a threat- or promise-based exercise. Hell and heaven are sales pitches used by others.
What does Buddhism suggest? In this case what does it suggest about relationships and love and distaste? My view: Just pay attention and take responsibility. If you love your fiance, love your fiance ... and pay attention to what actually happens. If you think a stranger is a pain in the patoot ... well OK ... just pay attention, take responsibility and see what actually happens.
It is the attentive and responsible mind that has the potential to produce the peace and happiness anyone might seek. Trying to get too perfect by next Thursday doesn't help and probably won't work. Admire anyone you like; disdain anyone you like ... but pay attention and take responsibility ... day after day, week after week, year after year ... and see what happens.
Others here will have wiser counsel. This is obviously just my take.
Best wishes.
I look at it this way - When the Buddha talks about detachment when it comes to love and relationships, I believe he meant letting go of the "neediness" of relationships and love. You know, thoughts and actions that result in the negative aspects of love relationships; jealousy, clingy-ness, demanding devotion, emotional manipulation or abuse, etc.
I can't believe Buddha meant for every Buddhist everywhere to give up having relationships, loving someone, getting married, raising children all to "prove" devotion to the path and/or to enlightenment. I believe those love/relationship detachment guidelines are strictly for those seeking a cloistered/cleric lifestyle, not the everyday Buddhist going about his daily business in the everyday community.
YMMV. Peace.
Buddha praised couples and said they enjoyed bliss together. His rules for monks were because monks are giving their lives to training, which is one kind of practice, but not the only one or necessarily the best one.
Some people can hardly love at all. Some people can't love anyone but themselves. Others love their family and friends. And some love indiscriminately. Yes, but it's not a 'you must', it's more 'this is where the training takes you'. Not being able to imagine something has little to do with whether it is possible or desirable. Whatever happens, is so rarely how we imagine it will happen.
Attachment in Buddhism (to me) does not mean not loving, not caring, not enjoying life with your family. Quite the opposite. It means freeing yourself, your loved ones and your relationships from the things that create suffering in those relationships, as someone else said, jealousy, greed, control, clinging.
There is a vast difference between "I love having my husband/children in my life" which is where I am now, versus "I cannot imagine ever living without my husband and/or children, they is my whole life and I'd be nothing without them" which is how I once was, and how I see many people as thinking.
I am not at a point yet where I can say I love everyone as much as I love my kids and husband. But I am at a point where I understand what that means and that it is possible, and that I can attempt to see even in the "worst" of people that they are deserving of love and compassion the same as I share with my husband. I find it hard to see how you can love everyone equally, the same as you. But I have seen people who do it, so I know it's possible.
I have found that my relationships with everyone in my life have improved and gotten closer with my practice of Buddhism. I feel less isolated, less afraid, less anxious, less clingy than I did before. My husband is a very nonpracticing Catholic (to the point he only considers himself Catholic because right now he doesn't know what else to consider himself, he doesn't believe in many of their teachings) and that does not cause any friction in our relationship at all. Buddhism is something that he does not share with me at that point, but that is ok. Because we can bring all the things from Buddhism without talking about religion, into our family because they are just good ways of living.
In the book it also mentions to start cherishing people within your immediate circle and then work your way to all living beings. Cherishing should also be relative to each individual. Some people like to be alone so cherishing them would be respecting their wishes and not forcing yourself upon them. It also doesn't make sense to treat people outside of your immediate circle like the people within your immediate circle. Being kind to strangers and seeing them as people that deserve happiness and not harming them or seeing them as outsiders is still cherishing.
No!
Buddhist practise
;will help allow you to be present for your partner where you might not always have been able to be.
;will help you see the world through your partners eyes in ways that you might not have been willing to before.
;will help you allow your partner to be the best success they can be.
I think Buddhist practise is the dropping of whatever limited your ability to fully love.
You will no longer have to cradle it so meagerly in fear that there might not be enough of it for both your partner and the rest of the world
you said: There is a vast difference between "I love having my husband/children in my life" which is where I am now, versus "I cannot imagine ever living without my husband and/or children, they is my whole life and I'd be nothing without them" which is how I once was, and how I see many people as thinking.
That is an excellent way of putting it! I wish there was a "LIKE" button on posts.
Experience helps to steady things down and that experience is aided by a meditation practice. Every day or every week (your life, your choice), just set aside some time to meditate.... 5 minutes, 10, 20, 30, 60 ... whatever. In meditation, the imaginative mind calms down a bit and there is time to find a foundation that is less an uncertain Buddhist and more an experienced one.
Take your time. Whether you will turn into an aardvark or marry a unicorn ... all this imaginative stuff diverts you from the life that is right in front of your nose,
Patience, courage and doubt are your great allies. Just put them to work and the need for perfection will naturally diminish.
Karmic imprint is attachments. Overcoming ignorance frees us from karmic imprints. Say you always stole things shopping. That would leave a karmic imprint on your next life.
Just make sure it is a relationship that helps you to grow spiritually. Here is a compass you can depend on.
A bodhisattva’s practice is to rid ourselves of bad friends(or relationships)
With whom, when we associate,
our three poisonous emotions come to increase;
Our actions of listening, thinking, and meditating come to decrease;
And our love and compassion turn to nil.
***poisons: desire(attachment), anger(hatred) and ignorance***