On Love (Part 5) - Ajahn Jayasāro
Another difficulty that may accompany love is discomfort with our partner’s families. Sometimes our partner’s parents or siblings don’t like US; sometimes they do but we don’t like them. Sometimes there’s a particular issue involved, but it’ ร often j ust a clash of personalities. Many people will admit that if they had a choice they would not want to have anything to do with some of their relatives at all, but they put up with them out of a sense of duty in order to keep peace in the family. Some may be fortunate and get on well with everybody, but for many people relationships with the family and friends of the ones they love are a burden attendant on love rather than a bonus.
The aim here is not to denigrate love, but to develop a more rounded, nuanced understanding of it. We may observe for instance how love relationships can weaken other friendships. Jealousies can flare up. It is difficult for US if an old friend doesn’t get on with the person we love—or if they seem to get on too well. Without love this suffering would not occur; it occurs as a direct result of love. Discriminating boundaries and bias are inherent in personal love. The fact that you have stronger feelings for your partner than for the people you pass on the street every day is precisely the point. Its specialness is its allure. But this love, for all it gives us, cannot lead to peace.
One of my relatives used to look up to Mahatma Gandhi as his hero when we were at school together. He was very impressed by Ahimsa, the non-violent method of opposing oppression that Gandhi developed. After six years as a monk in Thailand I went back to visit home for the first time. One day while talking to my relative, I asked him if he still admired Gandhi. He said that he did but that as his life had changed so had his views on non¬violence. He was by then a father of two small children and he confessed that if anyone tried to hurt his children he would not hesitate to kill them if he had to. He was now devoted to non¬violence except in exceptional circumstances. Afterwards I reflected how, while I sympathized with my relative’s feelings, it seemed to me that once you allow for a concept of “unfortunate necessity” or “special cases” then non-violence is effectively lost. Ahimsa with exceptions is not Ahimsa. That day I realized how love, even the beautiful love between father and child, can undermine our life’s ideals.
Some lucky people have excellent life- partners. After years and years together they still greatly enjoy each other’s company. They don’t grow apart, they still go everywhere and do things together; they speak to each other sweetly without grumpiness or nagging. But even this kind of happiness, idyllic as it sounds, tends to have a long-term disadvantage. It tends to make US negligent and too complacent to commit ourselves to spiritual training. It’s like sitting comfortably on a cushy sofa and not wanting to get up to go to work. Finally, no matter how much people love each other, eventually they must part in accordance with the ironclad law of nature. Obviously, those who have become too dependent on their partner will suffer from having developed no strength of their own.
To summarize, love gives many benefits. It guards against loneliness and brings warmth and companionship to life. But it is not an unalloyed good: it is still bound up in the cycle of birth and death, inherently incomplete. It can cause suffering at any time for all who lack wisdom, and without spiritual education the difficulties that it brings to our lives are unavoidable or at least difficult to avoid.
It is not the goal of Buddhism simply to find faults in love, but to teach US to open our hearts to the true nature of things. We should do this because contemplation and understanding of the way things are is the path to the end of suffering. One method of doing this is to regularly reflect on the simple truths of life and let them soak in. We remind ourselves that it is natural for US to get old, we cannot avoid getting old; that it is natural for us to become ill, we cannot avoid becoming ill; that it is natural for US to die, we cannot avoid dying. Separation from all of our loved ones and treasured possessions will happen, sooner or later, without a doubt. So we are free to love if we wish, but it is wise to constantly bear in mind that the time we have to spend with our loved ones is limited. It might be for a short period of a few months or years, or a longer period of 10 years, 20 years, 50 years. But no matter how long we are together, ultimately it is merely a temporary association.
The human body is composed of elements borrowed from nature, and we may have to relinquish it at any time. If we reflect on the impermanence and uncertainty of our lives together, it should be easier for US to let go of mutual annoyance and to forgive each other instead of bickering over unimportant matters. All those pointless arguments and huffs and sulks are a sad waste of time for people whose time together is limited. We don’t have the luxury of heavenly beings. If they have petty quarrels over small godly things it doesn’t really matter because they have millions of years to patch things up while they sit around stringing garlands, singing songs and so on. We human beings don’t have that much time. Even young people die every day, from diseases, in accidents and wars. Reflecting on the fragility of life and impermanence makes our love more intelligent and gives it the protection of wisdom.
Dhamma practitioners reflect on separation and death every day in order to train the mind to accept the undesirable truths that we find difficulty in accepting. Without complacency, we need to do this consistently and for a long while, not just occasionally. If we do so, then when someone dies, even when it’s someone close to us or someone we love, even if the death is sudden, the very first thought in our mind will be that all things {รankhara) are truly impermanent and how correctly the Buddha taught us. For spiritual practitioners, the sorrow that occurs is tempered by the firm right understanding of the way things are.
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