On Love (Part 3) - Ajahn Jayasāro
The kind of love that people are most interested in is surely romantic love. Nearly everyone hopes to be lucky, meet a soul-mate or a good life-partner, then to live together happily ever after. Truly loving someone and being loved truly by that person is the most popular of dreams. However, wanting to love and to be loved in this manner is usually bound up with defilements such as delusion and lust. Therefore it is vital to master how not to suffer excessively from loving or being loved.
Poets have tended to praise love as the supreme experience in life. Some scientists, on the other hand, see love as merely a result of chemical reactions in the brain that have evolved to support reproduction of the species. Which is it? Which comes first, the chicken or the egg, the brain or the mind? These types of arguments have been around for a long time and never come to an end.
A more interesting question is how we ought to behave with respect to love in order to derive the most benefit from it. Searching for the answer to this question begins with observing our own life, the lives of those around US, and the lives of the general population.
What is the appeal of love? In the initial stage, it is an effective antidote to boredom for those who find life stale, uninteresting, filled with only drudgery or emptiness, or for those who feel lost with no purpose for living. Love can create excitement and meaning.
Falling in love is intoxicating, a welcome agitation. Powerful emotional ups and downs as if regularly falling into hell and then rising back into heaven make lovers feel invigorated and alive.
Love has many other enticements. For couples living together, in addition to the ability to meet their sexual needs there is also the security of being the most important person in the world to the other person and a feeling of warmth and escape from loneliness. Having someone with whom we can be ourselves without pretension or concealment is a comfort in a busy, competitive and insincere world. Being sure that no matter what happens, our lover will not abandon US and will help US deal with our problems with empathy and sympathy, will encourage US when we are weary and in despair, will appreciate US genuinely, and will rejoice in our accomplishments—all these are certain causes of happiness.
In addition, if our mate is capable, successful, and well-respected, we feel proud. Love has many charms.
Personal love wouldn’t be so popular if it didn’t have a lot going for it. But as one who has lived the past thirty years as a celibate monk, I am probably not the most qualified to expand upon all of its joys; my readers will probably have to supply the points I’ve missed themselves. But after considering the good things that love can provide, please apply it to your own heart too: when we have determined the benefits of love and what we receive or want to receive from love, we might ask ourselves how much we in turn have given these things to our loved ones, and try to improve or correct our failings.
What are the things that we should share with our loved ones? Here are a few: joy, understanding, empathy, encouragement, respect, consideration, trust, patience, forgiveness, being a good counsel and the best of friends.
At the same time, if we want these things from them we must also let them know.
Don’t simply assume that they ought to know it themselves without being told, because many things that people should know instinctively, they don’t know at all or they used to know but have forgotten. Doesn’t it make sense for people who love each other to work on clear communication rather than resorting to resentful sarcasm? It should be more pleasant. Otherwise, what used to be sweet may turn rancid.
Love between two individuals gets a lot of attention. Movies, plays, novels, fairy tales and advertisements all seek to convince US that this type of love is the pinnacle of life. A life without it IS portrayed as imperfect and tragic. However, if we stop and contemplate for a moment, we ought to be able to see that romantic love in our own life, even if we’ve been fortunate enough to experience an almost storybook love, is never a cure-all. Love can alleviate some suffering at a certain level, but it cannot extinguish all suffering entirely. Even loving someone utterly and for eternity is not enough. Many Buddhists think little of converting to another religion merely in order to marry someone they love. Few have any idea of how much they have sacrificed and how little, relatively, they have gained
Young people often view love as the answer to every kind of problem in life. They think that simply loving and being loved is the main thing; with that in place everything else will work out by itself. But if we are willing to look more closely, experience teaches US that what determines long-term happiness is not so much the presence of love but the quality of our actions, words, and mind. Ultimately, a spiritually untrained person who takes love as a refuge is creating the conditions for disappointment.
On Love Part 3
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