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Me, Justice and the Four Immeasurable
So I was reading this link (http://viewonbuddhism.org/immeasurables_love_compassion_equanimity_rejoicing.html) on the four immeasurable yesterday and I found out something fundamental about my personality. I've always had a natural empathy for people. I've always played the devil's advocate even for people who sometimes did really bad things. I like to say, I do tend to love people. Not in the sense that I deeply cherish everyone's existence...but in the sense that I try to act in a way that takes their happiness into consideration. I try to put myself in other people's shoes.
According to that link the first of the four immeasurables, Love, could be defined as wanting people to be happy. I do, for the most part.
I have a big capacity for forgiveness. I always say I'm pretty incapable of holding grudges. I noticed that for the first time, I hold a grudge to someone I was pretty attached to. I found it so strange I just couldn't let go. I also have a very deep sense of moral justice. Not the justice done in courts, but the one in daily life. What is ethical and what is not. What is just. The point has never been retribution, and I can forgive people many times....but for some reason, I seem to have a hard time forgiving that one person from the bottom of my heart.
And now I know why. The second of the four immeasurables is Compassion. Now I have lots of empathy, I don't like people to suffer BUT (and this is one big but).....according to the definition of compassion present on that link ("wanting others to be free from suffering") I don't know how much I truly believe in Compassion being more important than Love.
I want people to be happy, but I understand that it's because they often escape from suffering that they end up being unhappy. I think in terms of karmic consequences (that's one of the things that drew me to buddhism), so I'm very mindful of the repercussions of always escaping reality.
How can I really forgive this person, when I do kinda want her to FACE HER DEMONS once in her life so that she LEARNS so that she can be happy? I truly don't want her to be unhappy (at all), I love her, but I do feel really hurt for being called cruel and judgmental (I was adamant she was being unwise in her life choices) ?
Basically she thought I lacked compassion, and I thought she lacked wisdom. I can be tough with my love...but it's always comes from a place of really concern and I can't get people to get that!!!! Help?
Bonus question : can one love without being compassionate? Can one love with compassion alone? Can one love with wisdom alone?
According to that link the first of the four immeasurables, Love, could be defined as wanting people to be happy. I do, for the most part.
I have a big capacity for forgiveness. I always say I'm pretty incapable of holding grudges. I noticed that for the first time, I hold a grudge to someone I was pretty attached to. I found it so strange I just couldn't let go. I also have a very deep sense of moral justice. Not the justice done in courts, but the one in daily life. What is ethical and what is not. What is just. The point has never been retribution, and I can forgive people many times....but for some reason, I seem to have a hard time forgiving that one person from the bottom of my heart.
And now I know why. The second of the four immeasurables is Compassion. Now I have lots of empathy, I don't like people to suffer BUT (and this is one big but).....according to the definition of compassion present on that link ("wanting others to be free from suffering") I don't know how much I truly believe in Compassion being more important than Love.
I want people to be happy, but I understand that it's because they often escape from suffering that they end up being unhappy. I think in terms of karmic consequences (that's one of the things that drew me to buddhism), so I'm very mindful of the repercussions of always escaping reality.
How can I really forgive this person, when I do kinda want her to FACE HER DEMONS once in her life so that she LEARNS so that she can be happy? I truly don't want her to be unhappy (at all), I love her, but I do feel really hurt for being called cruel and judgmental (I was adamant she was being unwise in her life choices) ?
Basically she thought I lacked compassion, and I thought she lacked wisdom. I can be tough with my love...but it's always comes from a place of really concern and I can't get people to get that!!!! Help?
Bonus question : can one love without being compassionate? Can one love with compassion alone? Can one love with wisdom alone?
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Comments
Can one love with compassion alone? Yes, but with a tolerance
Can one love with wisdom alone? Human ''love'' and wisdom are in the opposition.
Otherwise, we talk about love to whole world and universe.
I hope it will exist but very few human beings are capable of it for now.
From where are stand : YES.
During our life span we offer ‘’love’’, ''friendship'', commitments to the ideas etc.
However, as all you say - all this is not lasting. Our feelings, emotions, reasoning keep changing too.
My hat goes to people who know objectively the ultimate truth from the beginning of their existence.
When I've come even close to Buddhist ideas - I had a really hard time to acknowledge that I have to care about spiders / I have a phobia/ as much as for my kids.
I know that from the global and ethical view it should be the same. This huge gap in emotional ‘’reality’’ and Buddhist wisdom has created a big confusion.
.
Without those primeval instinct humanity would not be where it is now.
Are we in the place we should be?
Definitely not, but I don’t see another way that evolution could has created consciousness.
Does it matter how much I try, I can’t see Buddha teaching in dinosaurs and whatever followed after. TILL NOW!!!
Regardless of our agreement on that point, I don't get where you are getting. Do you have some advice? I'm still not sure I understand what you mean. That we aren't really capable of loving?
Fivebells : I've cut ties with her a long time ago. We don't talk, we don't see each other, I don't have her contact or anything really, and she's on the other side of the world. I'm really just asking what I'm doing wrong inside my head/heart.
Is my long-sighted compassion a bad thing? Should one strive for no suffering at all? How are people going to learn if they don't face their suffering, instead of running away from it?
Should I drop the tough love? This episode has deeper implication for my view on love. I want to learn from my mistake here, if there ever was one.
Fixing everyone is a pretty hard job, and to be that "stuck" fixing everyone can eventually leave you feeling pretty empty. I have a (former, maybe not even alive anymore) friend who was a hopeless alcoholic and I finally just had to give her up. It was hopeless.
So, from what I can gather from what you have posted, you have a friend on the other side of the world, that you don't have contact with, that you tried "tough-love" with and it didn't work, and you received some negative feedback on your own behavior and outlook regarding this "tough-love", and somehow you're still carrying that around with you? How long has that been? Has there been enough time for that to fade out of your life naturally?
Where are you feeling stuck exactly? Are you attached to the outcome with this friend, or are you so stricken with the reaction to your "tough-love" that you can't let go of it?
The latter. I'm struck by her reaction to my "tough love", since she is someone I know cares a lot about me (like she does all her exes), is more experienced than me in the relationship department and someone I would describe as being very loving in general. A really big hearted person. And because she told me I needed to move on and had to open the door of my heart (this was when I learned she had gotten a new boyfriend a couple of months after we broke up)....and that I can't talk anymore about our unfinished business, now that she has a new boyfriend.
I had criticized her for moving so fast (indirectly) and she says one can't plan love, and that I analyze love too much and all that crap, and that I was too rigid. Coming from the first person I really opened up to, and someone I respect (apart from not being able to be single for long) in matters of love....it just hurts me a lot to think my brand of love is not really love at all and that people can really move on so quickly.
She made me feel kinda guilty because I know I can be harsh on people I love (by being too ethically demanding of them) but I put all my heart into that relationship. And is making me feel bad for doing it, after she moved on so quickly.....but at the same time she makes me feel I'm not doing relationships the right away, if I still feel bad. She told me to open my heart....she makes it sound like there's something wrong with me for not accepting things....and at the same time like there is nothing wrong with her for falling in love so quickly after all her relationships (and NEEDING a relationship to be happy).
She is just the first person to make me really question my moral choices in life. It's the first time I've needed reassurance from a third party on whether I was having the right attitude. And she is someoneI respect immensely in matter of love...even though I think she doesn't think things through enough....so it makes me feel like a very judgemental and petty guy whose heart is too small to deal with love....
I mean she isn't doing something out of the ordinary for people. But I can FEEL it that most people conduct their romantic lives too rashly....I can't deal with people being insensitive towards someone they profess to have loved by not giving them closure.
Sorry for the drama.
I agree with you that people conduct their romantic lives too rashly- like the "spark" or the "chemistry" has to remain in the relationship all the time. So-called "romantic love" is really just a chemical reaction in the brain, and, to me, it's absurd to think that that is going to remain in the relationship forever. So I myself believe that one CAN in fact "plan love", that if two people make a commitment to a relationship they can plan to get through the times when the "feeling" of love, which is really just a complex form of infatuation.
I get the impression that you are a commitment-oriented person, and obviously she is not. She left you abruptly because "you can't plan love", and wanted you to... "open your heart" to her choice to move on abruptly and not give you closure?
This is the most I have seen you write about yourself the entire time you have been posting to this forum. I get the impression that you are a "solid" type of personality, and that you place a lot of importance on commitment and honoring commitment and working day by day on commitment. It appears to me that she brought you up short by ending the relationship abruptly, moving on to another man, and not giving you closure.
So maybe she did not have the particular qualities you need in a relationship? You appear to need someone who will honor a commitment, and she didn't do that.
So from a Buddhist point of view, this is just one of those things that people would recommend that you just sit with the pain and frustration, maybe recognize its impermanence, and do that until the pain just goes away by itself, or diminishes enough that it doesn't disrupt your ability to be in a relationship again. I may have my philosophical history wrong here, but if I remember right, Epicurus was a Stoic, and would have done something like just feeling the pain until it goes away by itself, sort of savoring it like a fine wine, if you will.
And, man-to-man, if I understand you right, I respect your intentionality as far as being commitment-oriented, and I would guess that that quality in you would make you a "good catch" when the right relationship comes along for you.
That's my take on it, if I understand you correctly.
Epicureanism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurus_And_Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His determinism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom very little is known—Epicurus believed that the greatest good was to seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquility (ataraxia) and freedom from fear, as well as absence of bodily pain (aponia) through knowledge of the workings of the world and the limits of one's desires. The combination of these two states is supposed to constitute happiness in its highest form. Although Epicureanism is a form of hedonism, insofar as it declares pleasure as the sole intrinsic good, its conception of absence of pain as the greatest pleasure and its advocacy of a simple life make it different from "hedonism" as it is commonly understood.
In the Epicurean view, the highest pleasure (tranquility and freedom from fear) was obtained by knowledge, friendship, and living a virtuous and temperate life. He lauded the enjoyment of simple pleasures, by which he meant abstaining from bodily desires, such as sex and appetites, verging on asceticism. He argued that when eating, one should not eat too richly, for it could lead to dissatisfaction later, such as the grim realization that one could not afford such delicacies in the future. Likewise, sex could lead to increased lust and dissatisfaction with the sexual partner. Epicurus did not articulate a broad system of social morality that has survived.
Still....the seems to have accepted it all pretty fast, and got herself a new boyfriend. I was hurt. We knew we couldn't be together but her ability to just switch off emotionally that quick....6 months, but it felt too fast specially since we kept in contact for 4 months after it....with the occasional lamentation about the situation in between. I did express how difficult it was being for me to forget her a couple of times...and she did show some sympathy (she's not the kind of person to ignore my pain). She is very much interested in committed relationships....she just has difficulty being happy without being in one. She had only a small number of relationships, all of them pretty big, including a marriage. So she had no trouble with commitment....just very adamant about being in a relationship as the way to be happy.
I can recognize that we might not be quite on the same intellectual level....but we were emotionally. I do think in the long run we would have problems, since I am just very adamant about being the best person I can...and my moral perfectionism would wear her down. In buddhist terms she is full of compassion...just not very wise. So, yes I think I do someone more wise in a relationship for it to work. But that's not the point anymore, since i don't want to be in a relationship with her. I think I got over her. This was my first true love, so it's not like I can compare it to something else ya know? I don't constantly think about her like I used to, and I'm generally happy. I'm just very much OBSESSED over healing completely and not repressing stuff. It's just that....I have no reason to stop loving her ya know? Things didn't end on a sore note. The relationships stopped against our will. I do want the best for her....in a sense I'll always love her. I just want to make sure I'll never bring past issues into a new relationship.
I mean cause the tricky thing here is what you mentioned....The pain diminishing enough that it doesn't disrupt my ability to be in another relationship...How can you know? I don't feel quite in love with her anymore. I accepted most of it. I know I felt kind of weird kissing a girl on a date a couple of months ago and stopped it because I wanted to be sure I was over her. I still feel slightly betrayed...but she doesn't occupy my mind all the time. I kinda feel over it all. But a part of me wants her to feel bad about how her heart let me go that quickly....
I am very much about committed relationships. I know today she wasn't the girl for me. But I don't feel indifference towards her. I just don't want to be that guy that thinks about a past girlfriend when he is in a new relationship ya know? I'd feel REALLY bad about it.
I always disliked having lots of relationships in life, because it all feels icky to me. Besides, my role models are my parents who are each other's first and only love and have been married for almost 40 years....so dating or serial monogamy just feels weird to me....I want to feel this is the woman of my life without any regrets, when I'm in a relationship.
EDIT: Yeah, Epicurus struck a chord with me in more ways than one. It is very similar to buddhism, that's how I even found buddhism.
I know exactly where you're coming from; I used to do the same thing. Hell, I still do it. I'm doing it right now, to you.