What do you think?
On Love
In learning about love, these are the kinds of questions we can ask What is love? What are the advantages and drawbacks of love? How does love arise? How is love sustained? How does love decay and end? What are the impurities of love? What preserves and purifies love? How should we behave with respect to love so as to maximize happiness and minimize pain?
Freely available
Freely available
45 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 2010
About the author
Ajahn Jayasaro
11 books29 followersAfter joining Ajahn Sumedho's community as an anagārika in 1978 he travelled to Thailand to ordain at Wat Nong Pah Pong in 1979.He received full ordination by Ajahn Chah in 1980 and was abbot of Wat Pah Nanachat from 1997 to 2002.
Jayasāro has been involved in educating Thai people about the ivory trade. In 2018, Jayasāro authored a biography of Ajahn Chah entitled Stillness Flowing.
In 2019, Jayasāro was honoured with a royal title from Thailand's King Vajiralongkorn (Rama X).
On 9 March 2020, Jayasāro was granted Thai citizenship by royal decree.
He currently lives alone in a one monk monastery in Thailand.
Jayasāro has been involved in educating Thai people about the ivory trade. In 2018, Jayasāro authored a biography of Ajahn Chah entitled Stillness Flowing.
In 2019, Jayasāro was honoured with a royal title from Thailand's King Vajiralongkorn (Rama X).
On 9 March 2020, Jayasāro was granted Thai citizenship by royal decree.
He currently lives alone in a one monk monastery in Thailand.
Ratings & Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
April 30, 2021
Fantastic! This little book must be a shock to Westerners as a whole - it shakes the fundaments of what we belief (or think we know) about love, it challenges to think what exactly love means and why it is so important to us. It changed my own perspective on some aspects of love especially in relation to those closest to me. We are so used to calling different actions and feelings by the label of love that we do not even realise anymore that some of that are not love at all. How did we ever get to the stage where we see jealousy as love? Much of what we call love is simply desire or liking something a lot or fear of hurting feelings. Indeed we need wisdom to steer through the labyrinth and truly show love and accept and receive love without any attachments.
January 31, 2023
WOW, this book is good! Genuinely one of the best non-fiction readings of my life! And so few have even read it! DEFINITELY recommended to those seeking to know more about love from a Buddhist perspective, in fact it's as close to a perfect recommendation as you can get.
June 22, 2021
Uma boa leitura, quer já se tenha algum conhecimento do Budismo ou como primeira abordagem.
Sempre bom relembrar que apego, ciúme e chantagem emocional, não são expressões do Amor (incondicional) ❣
Sempre bom relembrar que apego, ciúme e chantagem emocional, não são expressões do Amor (incondicional) ❣
July 22, 2026
The author’s favorite story is the Eightfold Path; the greatest “happy ending” is enlightenment.
Growing up, happy endings always involved love. But people involved are either part of the problem or part of the solution. Additionally, regarding love, does it add to suffering we experience or compound it? Short answer: it depends. On the kind of love and how you care for it.
We need to approach love and life with wisdom and understanding because we all strive for happiness and try to avoid suffering at all costs. However, we strive for things.
It’s crazy how the defilements (kilesa, i.e. negative mental states such as greed, hatred and delusion) sneak into love if people are unaware of the dhamma (Buddha’s teachings). Other emotions get intertwined in love too, which makes it difficult to discern what one is really experiencing.
The Buddha teaches that absolutely everything can be a problem without wisdom, but with it, it's not. With it, it can lead to joy and happiness and not harm.
But what is love? How do we get it? Keep it? Lose it? Etc.
Love can be used to describe several types of attachment. But there’s a difference between love and like–he’s not talking about like (i.e. ice cream, etc).
Love as the devotion to intangibles (i.e. love of country or religion, etc.). It can give us purpose and meaning, but it can also lead to extremes like killing for it–especially if we are right and others are wrong. But these are false views, and have led to untold suffering. Empathy leads to more intelligence. Self-righteousness is an intoxication. When someone tries to persuade us to look down on someone else or hate them, they are not being a “good friend” (kalyanamitta), but a “bad friend” (papamitta). Once we adopt a thinking or philosophy, we should check its rightness with the power of Dhamma. Test it: does it seem as reasonable when we have been calmed through meditation as it does when our mind is inflamed?
This 2nd type of love has implications for social stability and peace.
Personal love: love for parents, siblings, relatives, friends, spouses, children, and grandchildren. These first three types all lead to suffering because of the human heart.
Lovingkindness (metta), which is expressed universally without bias for all living things. This 4th type is on the path to liberation.
The Buddha points out two limitations of mundane love:
The lover, the beloved and the love itself are all impermanent by nature. Fluctuations and changes prevent permanence and a real refuge.
The lover, as an unenlightened human being, will always bear in their negative emotions (defilements/kilesa) and cause negativity in a relationship at any time. Mundane love is already difficult, but with ignorance and unwise desires, it becomes even more so. (7)
Those who have what the Buddha called the “right view” (samma ditthi) train themselves to follow the Four Noble Truths. They strive to avoid the inherent deficiencies of love. They strive with all they think, say and do to achieve and give as much happiness as possible with unconditional love.
Some question this approach just mentioned, but the Buddha said that if something is real, it will withstand scrutiny. We need to examine our hearts of all feelings–including love.
As spiritual people, we strive to understand love. When done without bias, impurities will dissolve and disappear, and we will reap the benefits.
Child-Parent love:
From the beginning, we experience their love and then here in Thailand Thais strive to reciprocate that filial love with our gratitude.
The suffering that arises from this relationship is redeemed by the joys of experiencing the other side of the relationship as one gets older. (9) Parents can endure their own suffering, but what comes from kids is almost unbearable.
However, this relationship still leads to suffering.
Romantic love:
Most are invested in this kind. They want a soul mate. To be loved and love the other happily ever after is the goal. But delusion and lust mess love up. Therefore, it is vital to master how to avoid suffering in this context. (11)
Poets praise love as the ultimate experience. Scientists say it's just chemical reactions in the brain.
But what is its appeal?
It is an antidote for boredom. But it can also provide meaning. (11)
The ups and downs help people to feel alive.
There are many other enticements:
Meets sexual needs
Security
Warmth
Escape from loneliness
Be real with
Faithful
Helps us deal with our problems with empathy and sympathy
Encouragement from despair and fatigue
Appreciate us
Rejoice in our accomplishments
If they are capable, successful and well-respected, we feel proud. (12)
As a celibate monk for the past 30 years, I might not be the best for this topic. However, how have you given these things to our lover and how have we improved from our failings?
Work on clear communication and not resentful sarcasm. (13)
Love can alleviate suffering to a certain degree, but not completely. Some Buddhists marry someone from another religion, but don’t realize how much they have sacrificed and how little, relatively, they have gained.
Some young lovers think it will completely satisfy, but few realize the requirement of the quality of our actions, words and mind. (15)
Sometimes suffering comes as a result of assuming it will fully satisfy you. (15)
The Buddha kept pointing to the fact that we suffer through cravings that arise when we don't understand ourselves. Suffering ends because ignorance-based cravings (tanha) end, not because I love you and you love me. (15)
…we demand love give us something it cannot. (16)
The lover, the beloved, and love itself are sankhara: conditioned phenomena unable to maintain themselves continuously in one particular state. EX: Separation from loved ones.
If you never consider the nature of life, you leave yourself vulnerable. The magnitude of suffering varies in accordance with the degree of attachment. (16)
We can pray and give alms all we want, but we can't change the inevitable. (17)
Some promise to love someone forever, but whoever can guarantee this? (17)
If love just happens without intention, and it resembles falling into a pit, how can we guarantee it will or won't happen again? (18)
We have to reassure people of our love for them, which is a kind of pressure. (18)
Sometimes people say they love someone when they don't know how to discern their ambiguous feelings. (19)
Worry and concern are a type of impurity regarding love. For example, worrying about a child out late, but it needs to be relinquished. (19)
Attachment causes us to accept another person's suffering as our own. Sometimes our suffering exceeds theirs. Nevertheless, Buddhadhamma tells us plainly that mental suffering is caused by mistaken ways of thinking about life, not by particular events or relationships.
Developing mindfulness (sati) is an art, a life skill that can ease suffering. We need to take responsibility for our own mental health.
Excessive worries can be extinguished with the power of mindfulness together with inner stability and calm (samadhi). Rational concerns can be managed by reminding ourselves that things happen due to causes and conditions. (20)
We need to learn from the outcomes….occasionally singing to yourself a verse or two of Que sera, sera may help. To my mind, it's one of the great non-Buddhist texts. (21)
Some struggle with their partner’s parents.
Sometimes jealousies occur. It may be that the one you love doesn’t get along with some friend, OR they get along too well.
A friend of the author admired Gandhi–especially his beliefs on ahimsa (nonviolence). Years later they talked and the friend became a father and said if someone tried to hurt his son, he would kill them. The author says that making exceptions–even for the sake of love–is not ahimsa. (22-23)
Suffering can also come from being too comfortable with your partner–you need to be able to stand on your own.
To summarize, love has many benefits and pitfalls.
Buddhism says it focuses on the true nature of things, which is impermanence. Love is temporary. Think of the Buddha’s four sights.
Don’t waste your time over petty things.
Learning how to recognize the ideals, desires, and expectations that we project onto the other is a difficult task but an important one if we are to reduce our suffering. (27)
…to be able to help them to change we need patience, perseverance, and respect for and acceptance of the present situation. Starting off from the position that they should be other than the way they are is one extreme to be avoided. Assuming that they will always be the way they are right now is the other extreme. The middle way involves an understanding of causes and conditions, and of the art of the possible. (28)
In extreme cases the deification of love can lead to violence or murder…how many people unhappy in love dream of violence every now and again? (29)
The true culprit is not a person but an identification with love, thinking that a life without loving a particular person is worthless and meaningless (a low love IQ).
In England, about 500,000 women experience domestic violence a year. It happens to men too (hugely underreported). Alcohol is often involved.
Sometimes love can make you blind. But a couple wise enough to let go of their viewpoints, adapt and make compromises can survive. (30)
The Buddha taught that the principal condition for a couple to live together happily is a shared standard of conduct, beliefs, and values. (31)
All impermanent things are inherently imperfect.
We can get the right view by reflecting on its pros and cons.
Apart from spiritual training there is no way to fix things (we are blind, they are who we are or we are guilty and say we are just bad). There is no choice; we must control the dark Karma. (33)
Sex is a natural part of romantic love, but according to the Buddha’s teaching it is a hindrance to the development of inner peace and wisdom. An enlightened being transcends sexuality, but the Buddha recognized few people are interested in liberation from sexual desires, so he emphasized conduct that does not harm the self or others, which is one of the five precepts. (34)
Sometimes sex in a relationship causes problems because people have different desires.
Precepts are intended to be boundaries. By keeping precepts and caring for the quality of their actions, we create the foundation for achieving the joy of concentration (samadhi), which is incomparably superior to sexual pleasure. (36-37)
People who value rightness can conquer their hearts if they truly wish to. When the feeling of temptation has passed away, we gained the insight that as compelling as the feeling was, it was just that, just a feeling. No more, no less.
Middle-aged men with younger mistresses are often not just indulging in the physical pleasures of sex, but reacting to a barely conscious fear of death…Times of war reveal stark evidence of the relationship between the preoccupation with sex and the fear of dying. (38)
Sensual pleasures may console us, they may conceal us or help us forget some reality of life for a while, but they also harm us by weakening the resilience of the heart and mind. When we get used to seeking the easiest and quickest escape from emotional problems, our wisdom faculty starts to atrophy. (39)
The most reliable guarantee of security from defilements is to understand our emotions and know how to manage them. (39)
Love can lessen our selfishness. We may seek our lover’s happiness more than our own, but that too is futile. It can make us forget our capacity for liberation, which can be a waste of a human birth.***
(Don’t waste your life book by John Piper)
We suppress our anger at coworkers for fear of professional repercussions. Then we take the anger out on our spouse. (40)
There are different levels of love:
The lowest is when another person gives us something we want such as sexual pleasure, wealth, position, social recognition, or fame, which is unsustainable.
A more refined way is when people manipulate people to get what they want, especially within a family. Be ready to handle various emotional appeals–you must be ready to separate love from needs, desires, rights and obligations.
Ignorance (avijja)is not knowing, or having wrong knowledge. We lack an unbiased experience of the reality of life. We assume incorrectly that ultimately we are a self (atta) that feels, thinks, is unhappy or happy, is permanent and independent, and owns and dictates our life. This leads to craving. (43)
In the sentence, “I love you,” what does “I” refer to? Is it the same today, as yesterday, or of a year ago, 5, or 10? Is it the same person? Not quite the same, not quite a different person either.
What we are experiencing directly, moment by moment, is actually attachments to the body and to feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and emotions. Why are we always so restless? It is because we seek to protect and nourish this imagined self. Taking a natural process to be a thing, a verb to be a noun, is the root cause of our suffering. (43-44)
It is through the failure to penetrate the truth of anatta that feelings of deficiency, of imperfection, of loneliness, form the backdrop of human life.
If we have the courage to examine the emotions of various suffering in our hearts, then these things will naturally diminish. We will see that they are not real. They are only emotions that naturally arise and fall away.
The more they search for their personal gain, the more they encounter mistrust, loneliness, anxiety, pride, open fear, and aggression. (45)
Wanting something so much in fear of losing it once we get it can lead to suffering. Loving too much and wanting what others cannot give are painful.
Reflecting on love's deficiencies isn't likely to cause people who truly love each other to stop loving or to love any less. What it does is allow love to be governed by a measure of wisdom. When we view love not only as a desirable part of life, but also as something incapable of giving us true and permanent happiness, the importance of spiritual practice should become clear. (46)
Dhamma practice is training ourselves to be intelligent from things from the past, present, and what will come. It is not restricted to certain times and places.
…two things that ought to be the most important subject of our studies: happiness and suffering. For the most part, our education systems are of little help. By emphasizing the kind of knowledge that can be tested, and by being focused primarily on preparing children for future careers, they neglect the development of wisdom. However, highly educated we may be, if we are unable to detect the rise and fall of mental states, we will always endure unnecessary suffering. (47)
The Buddha wanted us to see clearly that all things in life are impermanent and uncertain, that they flourish and decay according to causes and conditions. Wholesome things can decay, and unwholesome things can be purified (Increasingly toward the path of loving kindness (metta).
…the love that is fueled by ignorance and craving will diminish or disappear altogether. The love based on wisdom, understanding, and the desires that spring from them will persist and mature. (49)
The Buddha did not teach by using the threat of hell or the promise of heaven. Rather, he announced that he was “a knower of all worlds” (lokavidu), that he had clearly seen the way things are and was expounding it. He said the Dhamma was verifiable and he encouraged people not simply to believe in it, but to put it to the test. He said we must analyze and consider for ourselves whether or not what he taught is true. (49)
The Buddha wanted us to learn carefully what it (love) really is because all parts of the world are always ready to create suffering for those without wisdom, and always ready to lead to happiness for those with wisdom. (50)
From my observations I would say that the problems of householders are caused less by the lack of love, and more by not being good friends (kalyanamitta) to each other. (50)
When two people lead their lives with Buddhadhamma as a refuge and try to be each other's good friend, they have a chance to enjoy life-long happiness in their family. (51)
Training ourselves to practice restraint, to keep track of our emotions, to let go: these are at the heart of the negating side of the practice. But at the same time we need a positive ideal to cultivate. That positive ideal is provided by the pure love called metta.
The distinguishing characteristics of a pure love are:
It is unconditional
It is boundless, a wish for all living beings to be well.
It is not a cause of suffering
It is governed by wisdom and equanimity (upekkha) (53)
Given the nature of metta outlined above, practicing to educate our love means to:
Make our love less conditional
Make it less discriminatory
Reduce its capacity to cause us suffering
Cultivate wisdom and equanimity
Metta is a pure love because it is free of attachment to the idea of self (atta).
The Buddha said that the unconditional love a mother bears for her only child is the closest approximation to this love in the world at large. But for the one who cultivates a metta, that love is not restricted to one's child, but is felt for all that lives.
The quality of metta which is perhaps the most difficult for lay Buddhists to develop is universality. (55)
Love that is born of ignorance and contains defilements tends to lead to a bittersweet life in which pleasure and pain seem hopelessly entangled. In contrast, metta arises from abandoning the concern for self and from perseverance and relinquishing defilements. Metta As a part of the Eightfold Path that leads to liberation. It is a virtue that is always present in the mind of enlightened beings. To follow in their footsteps, we should thus seek to recognize and abandon jealousy, envy, vengefulness and other defilements that make our love a heavy burden. (56-57)
Equanimity, the neutral, unbiased state which arises from wisdom, as a place to rest our minds when we are unable to help our loved ones achieve happiness.
The end does not justify the means. If we help someone to escape the consequences of their unskillful actions, they will definitely be happy about it. But in the long run, we may be harming them by undermining their sense of responsibility and restraint. (57-58)
The way to give metta to oneself …Is by thinking of the virtues that we most desire such as peacefulness and the absence of anger, about how good and beautiful and impressive they are, and then to speak silently in our own heart: May I be happy. May I be peaceful and calm. May I be without stress.
Growing up, happy endings always involved love. But people involved are either part of the problem or part of the solution. Additionally, regarding love, does it add to suffering we experience or compound it? Short answer: it depends. On the kind of love and how you care for it.
We need to approach love and life with wisdom and understanding because we all strive for happiness and try to avoid suffering at all costs. However, we strive for things.
It’s crazy how the defilements (kilesa, i.e. negative mental states such as greed, hatred and delusion) sneak into love if people are unaware of the dhamma (Buddha’s teachings). Other emotions get intertwined in love too, which makes it difficult to discern what one is really experiencing.
The Buddha teaches that absolutely everything can be a problem without wisdom, but with it, it's not. With it, it can lead to joy and happiness and not harm.
But what is love? How do we get it? Keep it? Lose it? Etc.
Love can be used to describe several types of attachment. But there’s a difference between love and like–he’s not talking about like (i.e. ice cream, etc).
Love as the devotion to intangibles (i.e. love of country or religion, etc.). It can give us purpose and meaning, but it can also lead to extremes like killing for it–especially if we are right and others are wrong. But these are false views, and have led to untold suffering. Empathy leads to more intelligence. Self-righteousness is an intoxication. When someone tries to persuade us to look down on someone else or hate them, they are not being a “good friend” (kalyanamitta), but a “bad friend” (papamitta). Once we adopt a thinking or philosophy, we should check its rightness with the power of Dhamma. Test it: does it seem as reasonable when we have been calmed through meditation as it does when our mind is inflamed?
This 2nd type of love has implications for social stability and peace.
Personal love: love for parents, siblings, relatives, friends, spouses, children, and grandchildren. These first three types all lead to suffering because of the human heart.
Lovingkindness (metta), which is expressed universally without bias for all living things. This 4th type is on the path to liberation.
The Buddha points out two limitations of mundane love:
The lover, the beloved and the love itself are all impermanent by nature. Fluctuations and changes prevent permanence and a real refuge.
The lover, as an unenlightened human being, will always bear in their negative emotions (defilements/kilesa) and cause negativity in a relationship at any time. Mundane love is already difficult, but with ignorance and unwise desires, it becomes even more so. (7)
Those who have what the Buddha called the “right view” (samma ditthi) train themselves to follow the Four Noble Truths. They strive to avoid the inherent deficiencies of love. They strive with all they think, say and do to achieve and give as much happiness as possible with unconditional love.
Some question this approach just mentioned, but the Buddha said that if something is real, it will withstand scrutiny. We need to examine our hearts of all feelings–including love.
As spiritual people, we strive to understand love. When done without bias, impurities will dissolve and disappear, and we will reap the benefits.
Child-Parent love:
From the beginning, we experience their love and then here in Thailand Thais strive to reciprocate that filial love with our gratitude.
The suffering that arises from this relationship is redeemed by the joys of experiencing the other side of the relationship as one gets older. (9) Parents can endure their own suffering, but what comes from kids is almost unbearable.
However, this relationship still leads to suffering.
Romantic love:
Most are invested in this kind. They want a soul mate. To be loved and love the other happily ever after is the goal. But delusion and lust mess love up. Therefore, it is vital to master how to avoid suffering in this context. (11)
Poets praise love as the ultimate experience. Scientists say it's just chemical reactions in the brain.
But what is its appeal?
It is an antidote for boredom. But it can also provide meaning. (11)
The ups and downs help people to feel alive.
There are many other enticements:
Meets sexual needs
Security
Warmth
Escape from loneliness
Be real with
Faithful
Helps us deal with our problems with empathy and sympathy
Encouragement from despair and fatigue
Appreciate us
Rejoice in our accomplishments
If they are capable, successful and well-respected, we feel proud. (12)
As a celibate monk for the past 30 years, I might not be the best for this topic. However, how have you given these things to our lover and how have we improved from our failings?
Work on clear communication and not resentful sarcasm. (13)
Love can alleviate suffering to a certain degree, but not completely. Some Buddhists marry someone from another religion, but don’t realize how much they have sacrificed and how little, relatively, they have gained.
Some young lovers think it will completely satisfy, but few realize the requirement of the quality of our actions, words and mind. (15)
Sometimes suffering comes as a result of assuming it will fully satisfy you. (15)
The Buddha kept pointing to the fact that we suffer through cravings that arise when we don't understand ourselves. Suffering ends because ignorance-based cravings (tanha) end, not because I love you and you love me. (15)
…we demand love give us something it cannot. (16)
The lover, the beloved, and love itself are sankhara: conditioned phenomena unable to maintain themselves continuously in one particular state. EX: Separation from loved ones.
If you never consider the nature of life, you leave yourself vulnerable. The magnitude of suffering varies in accordance with the degree of attachment. (16)
We can pray and give alms all we want, but we can't change the inevitable. (17)
Some promise to love someone forever, but whoever can guarantee this? (17)
If love just happens without intention, and it resembles falling into a pit, how can we guarantee it will or won't happen again? (18)
We have to reassure people of our love for them, which is a kind of pressure. (18)
Sometimes people say they love someone when they don't know how to discern their ambiguous feelings. (19)
Worry and concern are a type of impurity regarding love. For example, worrying about a child out late, but it needs to be relinquished. (19)
Attachment causes us to accept another person's suffering as our own. Sometimes our suffering exceeds theirs. Nevertheless, Buddhadhamma tells us plainly that mental suffering is caused by mistaken ways of thinking about life, not by particular events or relationships.
Developing mindfulness (sati) is an art, a life skill that can ease suffering. We need to take responsibility for our own mental health.
Excessive worries can be extinguished with the power of mindfulness together with inner stability and calm (samadhi). Rational concerns can be managed by reminding ourselves that things happen due to causes and conditions. (20)
We need to learn from the outcomes….occasionally singing to yourself a verse or two of Que sera, sera may help. To my mind, it's one of the great non-Buddhist texts. (21)
Some struggle with their partner’s parents.
Sometimes jealousies occur. It may be that the one you love doesn’t get along with some friend, OR they get along too well.
A friend of the author admired Gandhi–especially his beliefs on ahimsa (nonviolence). Years later they talked and the friend became a father and said if someone tried to hurt his son, he would kill them. The author says that making exceptions–even for the sake of love–is not ahimsa. (22-23)
Suffering can also come from being too comfortable with your partner–you need to be able to stand on your own.
To summarize, love has many benefits and pitfalls.
Buddhism says it focuses on the true nature of things, which is impermanence. Love is temporary. Think of the Buddha’s four sights.
Don’t waste your time over petty things.
Learning how to recognize the ideals, desires, and expectations that we project onto the other is a difficult task but an important one if we are to reduce our suffering. (27)
…to be able to help them to change we need patience, perseverance, and respect for and acceptance of the present situation. Starting off from the position that they should be other than the way they are is one extreme to be avoided. Assuming that they will always be the way they are right now is the other extreme. The middle way involves an understanding of causes and conditions, and of the art of the possible. (28)
In extreme cases the deification of love can lead to violence or murder…how many people unhappy in love dream of violence every now and again? (29)
The true culprit is not a person but an identification with love, thinking that a life without loving a particular person is worthless and meaningless (a low love IQ).
In England, about 500,000 women experience domestic violence a year. It happens to men too (hugely underreported). Alcohol is often involved.
Sometimes love can make you blind. But a couple wise enough to let go of their viewpoints, adapt and make compromises can survive. (30)
The Buddha taught that the principal condition for a couple to live together happily is a shared standard of conduct, beliefs, and values. (31)
All impermanent things are inherently imperfect.
We can get the right view by reflecting on its pros and cons.
Apart from spiritual training there is no way to fix things (we are blind, they are who we are or we are guilty and say we are just bad). There is no choice; we must control the dark Karma. (33)
Sex is a natural part of romantic love, but according to the Buddha’s teaching it is a hindrance to the development of inner peace and wisdom. An enlightened being transcends sexuality, but the Buddha recognized few people are interested in liberation from sexual desires, so he emphasized conduct that does not harm the self or others, which is one of the five precepts. (34)
Sometimes sex in a relationship causes problems because people have different desires.
Precepts are intended to be boundaries. By keeping precepts and caring for the quality of their actions, we create the foundation for achieving the joy of concentration (samadhi), which is incomparably superior to sexual pleasure. (36-37)
People who value rightness can conquer their hearts if they truly wish to. When the feeling of temptation has passed away, we gained the insight that as compelling as the feeling was, it was just that, just a feeling. No more, no less.
Middle-aged men with younger mistresses are often not just indulging in the physical pleasures of sex, but reacting to a barely conscious fear of death…Times of war reveal stark evidence of the relationship between the preoccupation with sex and the fear of dying. (38)
Sensual pleasures may console us, they may conceal us or help us forget some reality of life for a while, but they also harm us by weakening the resilience of the heart and mind. When we get used to seeking the easiest and quickest escape from emotional problems, our wisdom faculty starts to atrophy. (39)
The most reliable guarantee of security from defilements is to understand our emotions and know how to manage them. (39)
Love can lessen our selfishness. We may seek our lover’s happiness more than our own, but that too is futile. It can make us forget our capacity for liberation, which can be a waste of a human birth.***
(Don’t waste your life book by John Piper)
We suppress our anger at coworkers for fear of professional repercussions. Then we take the anger out on our spouse. (40)
There are different levels of love:
The lowest is when another person gives us something we want such as sexual pleasure, wealth, position, social recognition, or fame, which is unsustainable.
A more refined way is when people manipulate people to get what they want, especially within a family. Be ready to handle various emotional appeals–you must be ready to separate love from needs, desires, rights and obligations.
Ignorance (avijja)is not knowing, or having wrong knowledge. We lack an unbiased experience of the reality of life. We assume incorrectly that ultimately we are a self (atta) that feels, thinks, is unhappy or happy, is permanent and independent, and owns and dictates our life. This leads to craving. (43)
In the sentence, “I love you,” what does “I” refer to? Is it the same today, as yesterday, or of a year ago, 5, or 10? Is it the same person? Not quite the same, not quite a different person either.
What we are experiencing directly, moment by moment, is actually attachments to the body and to feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and emotions. Why are we always so restless? It is because we seek to protect and nourish this imagined self. Taking a natural process to be a thing, a verb to be a noun, is the root cause of our suffering. (43-44)
It is through the failure to penetrate the truth of anatta that feelings of deficiency, of imperfection, of loneliness, form the backdrop of human life.
If we have the courage to examine the emotions of various suffering in our hearts, then these things will naturally diminish. We will see that they are not real. They are only emotions that naturally arise and fall away.
The more they search for their personal gain, the more they encounter mistrust, loneliness, anxiety, pride, open fear, and aggression. (45)
Wanting something so much in fear of losing it once we get it can lead to suffering. Loving too much and wanting what others cannot give are painful.
Reflecting on love's deficiencies isn't likely to cause people who truly love each other to stop loving or to love any less. What it does is allow love to be governed by a measure of wisdom. When we view love not only as a desirable part of life, but also as something incapable of giving us true and permanent happiness, the importance of spiritual practice should become clear. (46)
Dhamma practice is training ourselves to be intelligent from things from the past, present, and what will come. It is not restricted to certain times and places.
…two things that ought to be the most important subject of our studies: happiness and suffering. For the most part, our education systems are of little help. By emphasizing the kind of knowledge that can be tested, and by being focused primarily on preparing children for future careers, they neglect the development of wisdom. However, highly educated we may be, if we are unable to detect the rise and fall of mental states, we will always endure unnecessary suffering. (47)
The Buddha wanted us to see clearly that all things in life are impermanent and uncertain, that they flourish and decay according to causes and conditions. Wholesome things can decay, and unwholesome things can be purified (Increasingly toward the path of loving kindness (metta).
…the love that is fueled by ignorance and craving will diminish or disappear altogether. The love based on wisdom, understanding, and the desires that spring from them will persist and mature. (49)
The Buddha did not teach by using the threat of hell or the promise of heaven. Rather, he announced that he was “a knower of all worlds” (lokavidu), that he had clearly seen the way things are and was expounding it. He said the Dhamma was verifiable and he encouraged people not simply to believe in it, but to put it to the test. He said we must analyze and consider for ourselves whether or not what he taught is true. (49)
The Buddha wanted us to learn carefully what it (love) really is because all parts of the world are always ready to create suffering for those without wisdom, and always ready to lead to happiness for those with wisdom. (50)
From my observations I would say that the problems of householders are caused less by the lack of love, and more by not being good friends (kalyanamitta) to each other. (50)
When two people lead their lives with Buddhadhamma as a refuge and try to be each other's good friend, they have a chance to enjoy life-long happiness in their family. (51)
Training ourselves to practice restraint, to keep track of our emotions, to let go: these are at the heart of the negating side of the practice. But at the same time we need a positive ideal to cultivate. That positive ideal is provided by the pure love called metta.
The distinguishing characteristics of a pure love are:
It is unconditional
It is boundless, a wish for all living beings to be well.
It is not a cause of suffering
It is governed by wisdom and equanimity (upekkha) (53)
Given the nature of metta outlined above, practicing to educate our love means to:
Make our love less conditional
Make it less discriminatory
Reduce its capacity to cause us suffering
Cultivate wisdom and equanimity
Metta is a pure love because it is free of attachment to the idea of self (atta).
The Buddha said that the unconditional love a mother bears for her only child is the closest approximation to this love in the world at large. But for the one who cultivates a metta, that love is not restricted to one's child, but is felt for all that lives.
The quality of metta which is perhaps the most difficult for lay Buddhists to develop is universality. (55)
Love that is born of ignorance and contains defilements tends to lead to a bittersweet life in which pleasure and pain seem hopelessly entangled. In contrast, metta arises from abandoning the concern for self and from perseverance and relinquishing defilements. Metta As a part of the Eightfold Path that leads to liberation. It is a virtue that is always present in the mind of enlightened beings. To follow in their footsteps, we should thus seek to recognize and abandon jealousy, envy, vengefulness and other defilements that make our love a heavy burden. (56-57)
Equanimity, the neutral, unbiased state which arises from wisdom, as a place to rest our minds when we are unable to help our loved ones achieve happiness.
The end does not justify the means. If we help someone to escape the consequences of their unskillful actions, they will definitely be happy about it. But in the long run, we may be harming them by undermining their sense of responsibility and restraint. (57-58)
The way to give metta to oneself …Is by thinking of the virtues that we most desire such as peacefulness and the absence of anger, about how good and beautiful and impressive they are, and then to speak silently in our own heart: May I be happy. May I be peaceful and calm. May I be without stress.
September 19, 2020
This book is not long. You may read it in just one sitting. If you already have an understanding of the teachings of the Buddha, it will mean more to you. Or perhaps it might be your introduction to Buddhism. I recommend it for anyone who would like to understand how they might be truely loving.
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Search the title and author's name and the book may be downloaded for free.
October 15, 2024
a lovely quick read written by a celibate buddhist monk - nice reminder of how we can sometimes justify unhealthy emotions and anxieties under the guise of love, and how love is something ever changing and requires compassion! an unforgettable template for how to love unconditionally and universally ☺️
and a very fresh approach to a definition of love! one not considered in conventional western society
and a very fresh approach to a definition of love! one not considered in conventional western society
October 6, 2018
Exceptional
June 13, 2020
best book on love i've ever read.
May 9, 2023
A really interesting contemplation on what love is from a Buddhist perspective.
April 14, 2014
Worth reading !
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