Love as karuna

[1]

Poonam Srivastava [1]

With Valentine’s Day falling tomorrow, love is in the air. But love can be a confusing emotion that is capable of causing us both joy and suffering. There is an enlightening conversation between the Buddha and King Pasenadi from the book Old Path, White Clouds by Thich Nhat Hanh, which expounds on the Buddhist thinking on this subject.
Thich Nhat Hanh quotes the King while asking, “Teacher Gautama, there are some who say you advise people not to love. They say you have said that the more a person loves, the more he will suffer and despair. I can see some truth in that statement, but I am unable to find peace with it. Without love, life would seem empty of meaning. Please help me resolve this.”
The Buddha answered with a very pertinent response, as per the book, “Your majesty, your question is a very good one, and many people can benefit from it. There are many kinds of love. We should examine closely the nature of each kind of love. Life has a great need of the presence of love, but not the sort of love that is based on lust, passion, attachment, discrimination and prejudice.
“Majesty, there is another kind of love, sorely needed, which consists of loving kindness and compassion, or maitri and karuna.
“Usually when people speak of love they are referring only to the love that exists between parents and children, husbands and wives, family members, or the members of one’s caste or country. Because the nature of such love depends on the concepts of “me” and “mine”, it remains entangled in attachment and discrimination…
“Maitri is the love that has the capacity to bring happiness to another. Karuna is the love that has the capacity to remove another’s suffering. Maitri and karuna do not demand anything in return.
“In maitri and karuna there is no discrimination, no “mine” or “not mine”, hence, no attachment. Maitri and karuna bring happiness and ease suffering. They do not cause suffering and despair.”
We can examine our feelings of love based on the above paradigm. Love should not become a prison of selfishness for the people involved in a relationship where we are entangled in chains of expectations and attachment with the people we love. Such a route is bound to cause grief.
Even as per the thinking of Hindu Advaita philosophy, love from a position of ego consciousness is cause of peril. Instead if we can see every other being and object as our own extension and reflection, love grows to encompass the whole of existence. It then does not remain a limiting binding force. It is like choosing one eye over the other for greater love. You can’t, because they are an equal part of your own body; exactly the feeling of ideal love experienced by a saint for all.
Bhakti bhaava is another good expression of such undivided love. Like the Sufi love for God and Meera’s love for Krishna, let love become an emotion that dissolves our vanity and vices into the sweet ocean of selfless, limitless love.

Poonam Srivastava, author of T-Junction Crossing Over for Change, can be contacted at m4moment@gmail.com