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"L" is for the way you Look at me...
SillyPutty
Veteran
Okay, so, I read something interesting today about love. It went something like (paraphrasing, of course): "Love is an emotion we find in samsara, therefore we cannot trust it." I suppose the author was trying to imply that even love is something false and delusional. But... I had to get everyone's insights on this, because I'm not sure I quite understand. Maybe because I'm equating love with compassion?
For me, when I say the word "love," I don't think of the song I posted above. I take the word "love" quite seriously and feel there is only one true form of the word: unconditional love. Everything else, to me, is "puppy love" or "a crush" or "romantic love" or just plain ol' "lust." I would like to think that unconditional love and compassion, however, are one in the same. Are they?
And on that note, do you believe that we as human beings are capable of unconditional love? Truly? How about those who are enlightened? Are only enlightened human beings capable of unconditional love then? Are other sentient beings not capable of unconditional love? If anything, I would venture to guess that many other animals/sentient beings are capable of unconditional love, but then again, that's just perhaps me assigning supposed "human" traits to the animals I love (there's that word again!) so much.
So many questions... sorry about that! I just love talkin' 'bout love!
5
Comments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love
The author you paraphrase above is speaking of "eros" (erotic love). Unconditional love, or compassion, is "agape" -- or, in Pali, "karuna."
The conditions we DO place on others (and ourselves!) in order for love to be given is what must be realised as delusion: the idea that we are separate beings existing independently. This is why cultivating equanimity is important in Buddhist practice-- something I wrote in my journal:
"When all conditions are accepted with equanimity, they are no longer conditions."
The boundaries and conditions we place on others is in actuality obstacles we place around ourselves, not around others--which would be funny except that it leads to so much pain and strife for everyone.
"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." ~ Rumi
un-enlightened beings, rather we like it or not, have attachments to the person we are in a relationship with.
But both can have unconditional love.
The un-enlightened person can still love you even though there are boundaries that at first may seem like conditions, such as, if you cheat on me, the relationship is over..but I still love you as a person without conditions. These boundaries are there so as not to cause suffering to the other person.
The enlightened person however, Like a buddha, has no need for relationships because he can see the danger in the attachments... attachments leads one away from the path. The Buddha said
"monks, I do not see even one other form that so obsesses the mind of a man as the form of a woman." -Anguttara Nikaya 1
he went on about the other senses and said the same about men obsesses the mind of a woman and so on...
but out of unconditional love and compassion he taught the dharma. He also did give advice to married couples as well but I dont think that has anything to do with this post.
Don't ask me what I just wrote above. I have no idea what I'm talking about and am babbling at this point.
Compassion can be looked at as completely logical and rational instead of idealistic and likened to feeling sorry for someone. We don't bandage our finger because we feel sorry for it, we try to heal it because it is a part of us. There is also cancer which is also a part of us but it will do the whole harm ultimately and so we wish to get rid of it.
As for romantic love, I've just fallen in it with a beautiful woman and I don't think my path will be hindered or my universal love made any less by swearing to protect, love and honour her.
Okay, so now that I've said that, please don't read any further because I'm going to go all emo on everyone and totally contradict everything I just stated above (not intentionally, but this is just how my mind works).
While on the topic of being in a romantic/loving relationship, I don't know if it's the cynic in me, the dysfunctional childhood and young adulthood I had, or the fact that some Buddhist traditions say that having a mate keeps you off your path due to issues of desire/attachment, but... right now in life? I could really care less about having a romantic partner. I feel like I've been there, done that, and have found that being with someone else to make my life feel "complete" has only made it more complicated in many ways in hindsight. Again, maybe it's because I didn't really ever know what a "healthy, loving, romantic" relationship looked like growing up. But even when I look around, I see just so much... dysfunction. Everywhere I look there are just so many people who bring all their baggage into a relationship which always just compounds things. (And I include myself in this equation, of course.) People think that searching outside themselves for someone else will make them happy or their life better. And then when they want to have kids on top of it, I just cringe. I understand no one is born perfect and relationships are things which help us to grow and face our issues, but I think the point I'm trying to make here is, I think we're all so unaware of our own issues, that we become co-dependent and cling on to others, hoping that they will bring balance to our lives, when in fact, we need to do that for ourselves first before ever really finding a healthy, loving, romantic relationship.
So now as I look back on everything I wrote in this thread, it's no wonder I want to be a nun.
And, no, I wasn't high when I wrote this.
Enjoyed the song, I did.
I enjoyed the read, also. Thanks for posting!
personaly I have had the struggle of wanting to become a monk for the same reasons you just stated...and yet...what I long for is a love that goes beyond the physical, beyond buddhist ideals, someone I can sit in silence with and feel the same love and energy without saying a word. I could go on...but i dont want to make your thread about me.
You have a beautiful spirit.
_/\_
"What is love I ask?"
Beyond conceptual thought...
silence- share a glance.
( The shared glance is not the outer shell we call self...but the silence that is love beyond words and language. The essence that you mentioned with no way to say what that is..and yet you feel the truth of it. )
I think that's great you feel that for your children. I would think it's a given; that parents would love their children without any conditions. Sadly, I see there are so many sick and hurting people out there nowadays, that I don't think this whole "I love my children unconditionally" is given statement anymore. These people can't even love themselves-- how are they loving their children "unconditionally"? (And I don't mean that comment to come off judgmental... it just seems to be what I perceive to be truth nowadays.)
Anyway... that wasn't really a question or anything... just a mini rant I suppose. The concept is strange, though. We are able to love someone unconditionally if they are considered our family (specifically our children), yet some stranger on the street-- whom shares the same universal consciousness and love that "we" do-- does not fit into the equation. What makes one person more lovable and valuable than the next? If we pick and choose whom we "unconditionally love", isn't that putting conditions on love to being with? And following that thought, is it really love to begin with?
Don't mind me... I'm just talking out loud. I'm trying to figure out why I do the things I do and feel the things I feel. I don't know why it's so easy for me to love someone I know or even an animal, but so hard to love someone that drives me crazy in the workplace. Is my love really, truly real for those whom I love, or is it a superficial kind of love since I cannot apply that same heart-felt energy to someone whom I feel has hurt me? It's just all very confusing. In one moment I feel that true love is so easy to share and receive, then in the next, I doubt if I'm doing it right... or should be doing it at all and just worrying about feeling content and that's all.
Being willing to do something--ANYthing for someone you personally love is due to the fact that you *personally* love them. In other words, the ego comes into play just by virtue of the fact that there is that pre-existing personal relationship. There is nothing wrong with that per se, but this confuses what the term "unconditional" refers to.
The unconditional aspect isn't the conditions of WHAT you would do for someone but rather WHO you would do it for--if you would do it for ANYone (whatever the action), then it is THOSE conditions that are transcended. That is the meaning behind unconditional love / compassion.
True compassion is impersonal because WHO that person is (and WHO you are) are not factored into the act of compassion. Compassion transcends both the particular conditions that make the *I* and the *you*.
In unconditional compassion, there are no conditions called *I* and *you*.
So:
1. Unconditional love = compassion = agape = caritas (where we get "charity" in the ORIGINAL sense of the word, which has also been degraded) = karuna = impersonal
2. "Love" = romantic love (in most cases) = eros = amor = personal
I wouldn't go so far as to say romantic love is "bad" per se, but it can easily lead to some inner confusion because of its link to sexual desire. And familial love (philia in the Greek) also is a conditional love (conditioned by blood relations). There are many other kinds of love one could say too, such as love of country, or of one's race, or one's political affiliation. All of these conditioned loves are tied to desire, various kinds of attachment.
Of course, the Beatles song wouldn't sound as cool if the chorus went "All you need is unconditional love!" would it? haha
Personally I prefer to just say "compassion" rather than [unconditional] love -- just saying "love" -- certainly in English -- is incapable of expressing it.
Because of the wrong view of self. "my" children..."my" husband\wife..."my" parents.
The ego clings to the idea of a self and attachments to things and people it associates with as "me, myself I and mine"
A stranger on the street? not "mine" so it dont matter as much..... Wrong views you see? ^_^
May 6-10th.
That means....love a teacher! Say Thank-you, if you know one.
Volunteer to me a room mommy.
Be a walk the hall, dad.
Join the PTA.
Do what you can!
Love your Teacher this week!!
Show a teacher gratitude.
I don't view my kids as "mine" as in property or any such thing. It is simply a word to identify who exactly I am talking about. If I said "i love kids unconditionally" then it would not be so clear what I really meant by my statement. They are "my" kids because they grew in my uterus and I gave birth to them. They do not, however, belong to me in any sense. I am simply looking after them and guiding them until they can do it for themselves. Simply having children, to me, is not nearly the same sense of "MY kids! They do what I tell them, when I tell them, I own them!" as other people seem to have.
I guess for me, the distinction comes because I can imagine situations of one of my kids doing something horrible, and being able to see them and love them exactly the same as I do right now. Without question. Now, while I can develop and practice compassion for, say, the surviving Boston bomber, I cannot honestly say that I could go visit him in jail and say that I would feel the same immense love and understanding that I would feel if he were one of my children. But I can imagine being his mom. Perhaps one day my practice will allow me to do so. But not yet. But I do have compassion for him.
I just don't adequately have the words to say exactly what the difference is in my mind between unconditional love, and compassion. Compassion I guess is more being able to see the world from someone else's point of view, to put myself in their shoes and think about how they may be thinking or feeling, or simply just feeling a sense of sadness that they are so far removed from what their true nature is, and so on. Unconditional love (again, just to me, not defining for anyone else) is more"I love you and I will be here for you no matter what. I understand you, and I will be here to support you and help you through and hold you and listen to what you have to say without judgement, without conditions. Nothing you could do or say could make me not love you."
Just a couple of quick definitions that I've heard Buddhists make. Love is wanting others to be happy and compassion wants another to be free of suffering of some kind. So they're certainly related but compassion seems to add the condition of suffering to love.
Also there is conventional love where there is a you and them. Then there is an enlightened type of love that Thich Naht Hahn has compared to like soothing your hand if you hurt it. There isn't the thought of "oh my poor hand, I'll rub you and wish you felt better". When you hurt your hand you just automatically reach to comfort it because it is a part of you.