On a recent MIG forum, we were in a general discussion about people’s experience of insight and someone (apologies, I can’t remember the name of the person who it was), asked what about love?
So: Where does love fit in to the overall process of the path of insight? First of all, in time honoured fashion, we need to define our terms. Love is, dare I say it(?) a little over-used nowadays. Most people experience love firstly as the feelings they have for their nearest and dearest. So this would oŌen be a spouse, partner, or child or a grandchild. And then there are friends and other family members, etc. And then most Buddhists will have practised Metta and compassion meditations and will thereby have developed a healthy, outward looking positivity and love on a possibly global level.
In the Buddhist tradition, an important distinction is made between metta and pema. The latter can be said to contain an element of clinging. An easy way to identify this in our above examples, will be to consider say, a grandchild. If your grandchild is playing with other children, would it be true to say that your feelings for the one are more special than all the others? That specialness is an attribute of pema. It indicates that although there are many positive emotions involved, (so much better than negative!), there are also limitations or a sort of compartmentalising going on regarding those feelings. The path of insight will also involve a gradual change from pema to metta as we let go of clinging to any aspect of a self.
For us, this doesn’t mean we will lose any of our positive regard for our family and friends; it’s just that the nature of those feelings will gradually be transformed. Indeed metta and compassion are an invaluable part of our path: most of us will need to work upon our feelings for ourselves and our own processes, just as much as on those feelings for say ‘difficult people’.
Nowadays, the very high value that people place upon family, makes the story of how the Buddha gave up his family quite a hard ‘sell’. But that is what he did: giving up the narrow confines of love for a few in order to offer the means of overcoming suffering for everyone.
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