Jump to content
Dharmaling Forums
Sign in to follow this  
Shenpen.Rinpoche

Is "love" A Lie?

Recommended Posts

I've received the following question on Facebook, and my answer is under:

 

"If by your opinion all is just an illusion, if we are giving the phenomena the names and around them creating diversity of feelings depends of our karmic lines and stances, how can we catch "love" and installed it with the loyalty, trust, respect to one person? If all than is just a creation in our heads it could be different by the time as our mind is transforming every second. So could we possible promise to other the loyality for the rest of our lifes when all is changing all the time for us?

Than is unfair to the other person to plan the future if we are so changable beings. Than the "love" - the phenomena wich we are using in a relationships is a lie. Than we cannot love all the time. We are only staying together under the auspices some past wishes and initial desires wich already had transformed."

 

Love is a very strange phenomenon, which I am not sure to understand fully, a complex mix of various reactions and projections, chemical and emotional. People seems so blinded when it comes to emotions! They lose their mind, and create so much suffering for themselves and others.

I understand well what Ultimate Compassion or 'Bodhicitta' (Awakening mind) is, taking all beings on same level of care, to dedicate one's life to help them find the key for their long-lasting happiness and Peace. We have understood the Path, the Truth of Buddha's Teachings, and we develop the main wish to help unconditionally all beings.

But the love which usually unit couples is a mix between blindness, attraction, and desires. All very impermanent phenomena, liable to quick changes! Is this "love"? I can't really say, I would call this "attraction". And on such basis, to promise a life time commitment might not make much sense.

 

I think people going together as couple should have, at first, a very similar understanding of life, how it works, what sustains it, etc. If we have different values and believes, we come quickly to a clash, to unfriendly situation. But it takes a bit of time before to find such compatibility/parity, that most people "jump" on first person they feel attracted to. If one thing is very changeable, it is attraction/repulsion. Because it is itself based on so versatile/changeable basis.

Most of our life (99,99999...%) we do base our understanding and reactions on the outcome of our unstable mind, which understand nothing to very little of the mechanism of life, mechanism of causality. The consequences are that we maintain or increase our level of suffering, misunderstanding, conflict, and unhappiness.

So, yes, out of this, to say to someone: "I'll love you all my life" is a complete blindness, to oneself and to others. One day, all the basis on which we loved that person might change, and then why to stay with that person in fact? Because we built a house together? Because we have a child? Because we are afraid to make drastic changes in one's life? Many people stay together on wrong basis, they are unhappy, depressed, and eventually sick. Is this a good example and good basis of life for the child/ren who are the apparent reason for staying as couple? We better find the strength and courage to change towards a better situation. There is no fatality, many things can change. It's not because we made a choice in the past, that we are doomed for eternity!

But at the same time, to escape one cage to enter another one is surely not the solution. So, one has to think very carefully, meditation, pacify the mind, before to make any further decision and change, to avoid recreating the same mistakes than before.

 

Most people can't stay alone. There is a constant quest of company, talk, laugh, drink, smoke, being mindless. They think that this way they escape suffering and unhappiness. And one day they die (tonight, tomorrow, in one, ten or thirty years) without to have solved or understood anything significant; so they'll come back, with the karmic luggage of past life, and fall in same traps again and again.

 

As long as we do not understand that what we do perceive is of the same nature of our mind, produced by our mind (like in a dream), we think that "outside" is independent, existing from its own side. On such basis, we believe in duality, and of course we are looking for external sources of satisfaction, without ever finding any ultimate happiness, chasing rainbows, ...

When you do understand and experience how what we call 'reality' comes to existence, empty of self-inherent existence, you are not fooled anymore by appearance, you never feel lonely anymore, never seek desperately for any object of desire. You are in Peace, a Peace and Happiness which are not subject to change. You do not try to 'catch' anything but experience what comes, and what you see as helpful for others.

 

It doesn't mean you can't live in society or even a couple life, but what you do, is done with a clear understanding of causes and consequences, not led by impulses, desires, blindness. You understand the impermanence and roots of phenomena, therefore living the moment without constantly either reliving the past or projecting into the future.

In Peace.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Continuation of the FB exchange... :)

 

Question:

"Why did a creator give us the emotions and instincts than or to lead us or to confused us?

So songs and poems about love and desires are just a path to reach more of that insane "deep blue". There is no sense than. Than we can love every human being we just have to focus our mind to go on that way of conscious sentiment or something like that. Not with a "blind hart" but with a common sense. Than the instincts and "hormones", electricity between two persons which are attractive to each other are the primary barriers related to weak human body?"

 

Answer:

Which creator? If there would be a Creator, why would he has created us at all? To play games? Because he was bored? And what would be the finality, to come back to him? To merge in his consciousness? If there is a creator, why would he let some children to born in silk and some other to born in mud? Some to have "a silver spoon in their mouth" from birth, and some to die in unbearable suffering? This is sadistic and un-fair.

Then, who would have created the Creator? We have past the time it was enough to say "you can't understand", "the ways of God are not understandable", "shut up and believe blindly", ...

 

We believe in the law of cause-and-effects. Everything has a cause. This life comes from what causes we have accumulated in the past. And what we do now is preparing what we will experience next. Unbeatable logic. And what can't be explained is not by hypocrisy, but simply because our human mind can't yet apprehend some concept, such has "when did this all started?". But when did this all started is irrelevant to progress in this life, and reach Enlightenment. And when Enlightened, we will surely have the answer to that question.

 

So, nobody gave us emotions; we developed them ourselves, on the basis of our misunderstandings, attachments, greed, cravings, from lives to lives, since times our human mind can't fully understand.

And these disturbing emotions are indeed blinding us, pushing us to act or speak without thinking, to think without being even aware of the process of thoughts. Because of this, we accumulate so much negative causes that it results in suffering and unpleasant experiences, and lower rebirths, caught in the "wheel of conditioned rebirths" (Samsara).

 

So, yes, disturbing emotions are a barrier to our evolution, expression of our weakness... And the whole society we are living in is based on ego, grasping, attachment, etc. All is made to increase these attachments, in order that you buy, consume, change your mind, buy again, throw, buy, think you need this, want that, etc. All is made that you remain blind. If you open your eyes, you become free, free from servility, free from consumerism. Religions and States want to have "good little soldiers", easy to manipulate through desire and fear. This whole "samaric matrix" needs your ego and feeds on your blindness. If you could produce a pill to Enlighten people, they would kill you right away!

 

Only once we "awake", open our eyes to the true nature of the reality we are living in, we start to make conscious choices, and progress towards a state of mind which doesn't create any further negative causes, and develops Wisdom; walking out of the Wheel of conditioned rebirths.

 

Personally, I do prefer the word "care" to the word "love". The later is too complex to define, and as I wrote already, a mix of attachment, desire, attraction, etc... Sure, the word "care" could also be subject to various definition. But I like to think about the type of attention a parent can have for his or her child i.e. a complete and unconditional dedication of time and energy for the well being of the child; the ability to forget oneself so much the dedication if complete.

If you add to this dedication a correct understanding of the true Nature of phenomena, which then remove the attachments part, all sentient beings can be considered the same way.

 

The usual mistake from those who do not understand the Path, is to think that once you are not attached anymore, you become indifferent, "emotionless". But it is not that you don't "love" anymore, but that you "love" everyone the same way. Actually, you develop Compassion and then the "Mind leading us towards Enlightenment for the sake of the others", and you include all sentient being sin your "field of care".

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Question:

"To care/love all beings the same is strange. Relation and intensity of parent/child or partner/partner- relatonship is diffrent as for example to neighbour or stranger or client. I cannot care the same about all my clients as I am feeling about my child or... "

 

The type of relations and the intensity in these relationships are of course different even after having achieved Enlightenment, and this difference is based on the causes created through lives between beings. Circumstances and relations are causes based, but the mind having Realized Bodhicitta looks at all sentient beings in an equal way.

Once one has gone beyond the concepts, there is no more child, friend or enemy, husband/wife, strangers, etc... There are beings, sentient beings, consciousnesses who need help to walk towards Liberation and Enlightenment.

 

When we think in this way, yet having our strong ego, it seems all becomes 'flat', 'tasteless', and we think that this is not 'life'! Of course, our ego doesn't want to let go, and is able of any self-protection, placing your mind in depression, doubts, anger, all to take you away from the Path which would bring you to its annihilation. Get ready, the ego is very skillful in protecting itself! But continuing to follow it is keeping your head under the water, your existence into the cycle of conditioned rebirths, subject to changes, creation of karmas which can bring you from heaven to hell, to animal realm, etc...

 

It's all a matter of choice. Causes, consequences.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Would you agree Rinpoche that there is a classification of love we might call spiritual love - the kind of love that is more a pure emotion based on care and devotion of the guru-student kind of relationship? And would you further agree Rinpoche that we could enter into such a relationship of our own free will and mindfulness and promise to cherish such a relationship - such a love (in the pop singer's words: like a candle in the wind) and togetherness throughout this stormy lifetime?

 

In some way Rinpoche would you agree love could be likened to taking refuge in the Guru as well as the three jewels?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
Sign in to follow this  

×
×
  • Create New...