On Love (Part 10) - Ajahn Jayasāro

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” (lokavidū), 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. Personally, I really liked this style of teaching from my very first exposure to it. Coming from a secular background, I found it refreshing to discover a religion that did not consider doubt in the teaching to be a sin or an insult to the teacher. I was happy to discover I could investigate Buddhism without feeling a need to anaesthetize my intellect. And yet it was far more than a profound philosophy.

The issue of love is then a matter for investigation. We are not expected to adopt a particular Buddhist attitude to love, but simply to take a deep interest in looking at it in the wisest way. The Buddha wanted US to learn carefully what it 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.

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 (kalyāṇamittatā) to each other.

Love and wise friendship do not necessarily go together. To be a good friend of someone we love, we must train ourselves to have virtue, to develop generosity, morality and meditation as much as possible, to try to understand ourselves and them, and to try to help them understand themselves and US. We should keep developing good communication skills. Let me repeat my point that good communication does not come by itself with love like free software in a new computer. It is an art to be mastered. We can’t expect to communicate well simply because we have functioning mouths and ears. If a couple with different views become protagonists and refuse to give in until they’ve won the point, they are violating the principles of Dhamma.

One side may win a small little war, but both sides lose the peace. A better way is to see that we are on the same side: we are a team with a problem to solve together. We must listen well and speak well before we can succeed.

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. Cultivating Dhamma together will make the couple’s relationship absorb more and more Dhamma principles, and become less and less of ahindrance to reaching the goal of spiritual liberation. Householders who are each other’s good friends trust each other and give encouragement when times are hard and their partners feel dispirited. They know how to listen and speak to each other and to act as a calm and prudent counsel. They understand and forgive transgressions by accepting each other as unenlightened human beings with defilements. They harbour no thoughts of victory over, or of taking advantage of, the other. Instead, they have the courage to point to what is truly precious with respect and good intention at the appropriate time and place. At the same time, they are always ready to listen to suggestions, comments and cautions from each other. This, at least, is the ideal to move toward.

So let me summarize one more time: Love is a part of the world. It has a bright side, a dark side, and a grey area. Buddhadhamma teaches US to learn about love in order to find the way to minimize the dark and grey parts and maximize the bright part. We were born saddled with ignorance and cravings. Love is a part of life involved with defilement. Some kinds of love are like a poison and grow directly from ignorance and craving.

Some kinds of love are controlled by ignorance and craving, but can be freed from them in the way that one can remove a fish bone from one’s throat. Some kinds of love contain only a little ignorance and craving and can be used to fuel the development of a wholesome life. The pledge to be good friends (kalyāṇamittatā) is a life’s ideal and is important to such development. In addition, we must learn to understand the nature of love and make lovingkindness (mettā) a clear objective and a part of our way of life.

In Dhamma practice, wisdom acts as the direct antidote to ignorance by examining the reality of life and the world with a stable, stilled and unbiased mind sustained in the present. The direct antidote to craving is the systematic and integrated development of wholesome mental states. In the case of love, the most prominent of these virtues are lovingkindness and the effort to be a good friend. 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 mettā.

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 (upekkhā).

It is a miracle that such a love exists, and that every single human being has the ability to develop it. When we watch the news and see the cruelty and heedlessness of our fellow human beings, the feelings of depression and despair that can arise may be dispelled by reflecting on our innate ability to feel mettā. It’s true that human beings can be awful creatures, but it’s also true that they have it within them to be better than they are.

Given the nature of mettā outlined above, practicing to educate our love means to:

Make our love less conditional.
Make it less discriminatory and less preferential.
Reduce its capacity to cause US suffering.
Cultivate wisdom and equanimity.

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