The religious claim that their gods love them, and put great emphasis on this love. But do we need to be loved? Isn't love just an animal survival instinct? How much more satisfying is it to be liked by others rather than instinctly loved?
As a mother, grandmother, wife, sister and friend, I would prefer to be liked than loved.
How many of the religious believe that their god likes them?
Love. What does it mean to you?
A Buddhist Perspective on Unconditional Love
verses Selfish Attachments
"What in the world is the difference between loving a person and being selfishly attached to them?
Love is the sincere wish for others to be happy, and to be free from suffering.
Having realistically recognized others' kindness as well as their faults, love is always focused on the other person’s welfare. We have No ulterior motives to fulfill our self-interest, or to fulfill our desires; to love others simply because they exist.
Selfish attachments, on the other hand, exaggerates others' good qualities and makes us crave to be with them. When we're with them, we're happy, but when we're separated from them, we are often miserable. These selfish attachments are linked with expectations of what others should be or do.
Is love as it is usually understood in most societies really love? or selfish attachments ?
Let us examine this a bit more. Generally we are attracted to people either because they have qualities we value or because they help us in some way. If we observe our own thought processes mindfully, and carefully - we'll notice that we look for specific qualities in others.
Some of these qualities we find attractive, others are those our parents, or society value.
We examine someone's looks, education,
financial situation, social status. This is how most of us decide on whether or not the person holds any true value to us.
In addition, we judge people as worthwhile according to how they relate to us! If they help us, praise us, make us feel secure, listen to what we have to say, care for us when we are sick or depressed, we consider them good people, and it is this type of people we are most likely to be more attracted to.
But this is very biased, for we judge them only in terms of how they relate to "us", as if we are the most important person in the world.
After we've judged certain people to be good for us, whenever we see them it appears to us as if goodness is coming from them, but if we are more aware, we recognize that we have projected this goodness onto them.
Desiring to be with the people a lot who make us feel good, we become emotional yo-yo's - when we're with these people, we're up, when we're not with these people, we're down.
Furthermore, we form fixed concepts of what our relationships with those people will be and thus have expectations of them. When they do not live up to our expectations of them, we're very disappointed, or may become angry.
We want them to change so that they will they will match what we think they are. But our projections and expectations come from our own minds, not from the other people.
Our problems arise not because others aren't who we thought they we're, but because we mistakenly thought they were something they aren't.
Checklist: "I Love You if __________ "
What we call love is most often selfish attachments.
It is actually a disturbing attitude that overestimates the qualities of another person. We then cling to tightly to that person, thinking our happiness depends on that person.
" Unconditional Love, on the other hand, is an open and very calm, relaxed attitude."
"We want someone to be happy, and free from suffering simply because they exist. While selfish attachments are uncontrolling and too sentimental, Unconditional Love is direct and powerful. Selfish attachments obscures our judgment and we become impatient, angry, and impartial, helping only our dear ones and harming those who we don't like. Unconditional Love builds up others, and clarifies our minds, and we
access a situation by thinking of the greatest good for everyone. Attachments are based on selfishness, while Love is founded upon cherishing others, even those who do not look very appealing to the eyes. Unconditional Love looks beyond all the superficial appearances, and dwells on the fact that they are just like us: they want inner peace, happiness, and want to avoid suffering. If we see unattractive, dirty, ignorant people, we feel repulsed because our selfish minds want to know attractive, intellectual, clean, and talented people. Unconditional Love, on the other hand, never evaluates others by these superficial standards and looks much deeper into the person. Unconditional Love recognizes that regardless of the others' appearances, their experience is the same as ours: they seek inner peace, to be happy, to be free from sufferings, and to do their best to avoid problems.
When we're selfishly attached, we're not mentally and emotionally free. We overly depend on and cling to another person to fulfill our mental and especially our emotional needs. We fear losing the person, feeling we'd be incomplete without him."
However, this does not mean that we should suppress our emotional needs or become aloof, alone and totally independent, for that too does not solve the problem. We must simply realize our unrealistic needs, and slowly seek to eliminate them. Some emotional needs may be so strong that they can't be dissolved immediately.
If we try to suppress them or pretend they do not exist, we become anxious, insecure, falling into a depression. In this case, we can do our best to fulfill our needs while simultaneously working gradually to subdue them.
"The core problem is that most of us seek to be loved, rather than to love. We yearn to be understood by others rather than to understand them. In all honesty, our sense of emotional insecurities comes from the selfishness obscuring our own minds. 'We can develop self-confidence by recognizing our inner potential to become a selfless human being with many, magnificent qualities, then we'll develop a true and accurate feeling of self-confidence. And
then we'll seek to increase true unconditional love, without selfish attachments, to increase compassion, to cultivate loving-kindness, patience and understanding, as well as generosity, concentration and wisdom.'
"Under the influence of selfish attachments we're bound by our emotional reactions to others. When they are nice to us, we're happy. When they ignore us, or speak sharply to us, we take it personally and are unhappy. But pacifying these selfish attachment doesn't mean we become hard-hearted. Rather, without selfish attachment there will be space in our hearts and minds for genuine Affection and Impartial Love for them."
We'll be actively involved with them.
As we learn to subdue our selfish attachments, we can have successful friendships and personal relationships with others. These relationships will be richer because of the freedom and respect which the relationships will be based on. We'll care about the happiness and the misery of all human beings equally, simply because everyone is the same in wanting and needing inner peace, happiness. However, our lifestyles and interests may be more compatible with those of some people more so than with others and that is alright. In any case, our relationships will be based on mutual Love, mutual interests, and the wish to help each other in life."*
With Metta (loving-friendship, loving-kindness)
to everyone.
.
Reply:LEGITIMATE AND ILLEGITIMATE LOVE
You who believe! Do not take My enemy and your enemy as friends, showing love for them when they have rejected the truth that has come to you… (Quran, 60:1)
Sentimentalism, or in other words, romantic longing, makes itself known most often under the guise of "love." For example, as we will explore in the following pages, the romantic nationalists claim to love their country, for which reason they are hostile or even aggressive towards other nations. Or, we may consider a young man in love with a girl which he turns into the sole focus of his life: what leads him to write her poetry saying "I love you," and to become obsessed with her to the point of suicide, and, in fact, to "divinise" her, is the notion of "love." Then, there are homosexuals, those who fall under God's interdiction, and shamelessly and insistently practise their perversion; they too claim to have found "love."
As for the majority of people, they think that every emotion to which the name of "love" is ascribed is virtuous, pure, and even holy, and that examples of romantic longing, such as what we have mentioned above, are perfectly acceptable.
Love is indeed a wonderful emotion, accorded to humanity by God, but it is important to distinguish whether that love is real or not, and to consider who it is directed to, and what sentiments it is founded on. Such investigation should make apparent the difference between a sentimentalism that leads to perverse love, and real love, as revealed to us by God in the Qu'ran.
These issues we will examine in this book. But first, by way of preliminary information, let us give the meaning of love as it is found in the Qu'ran. According to the Qu'ran, love is to be shown to those who deserve it. Those who do not deserve it are not to be loved. We are even to distance ourselves from them emotionally, or, at least, to not feel inclined towards them. But those who deserve love, deserve it because of their virtue.
The only being who deserves absolute love is God, who created us all. God brought us into existence, proffered us with the countless blessings we enjoy, showed us the way, and promised us everlasting paradise. He helps us out of every anxiety and graciously hears our every call. It is He who feeds us until we are satisfied, cures us when we are ill and then restores our spirit. Therefore, he who understands the mysteries of the universe loves God above all, and loves whom God loves, that is, those devout individuals who conform to His will.
Reply:To me, love is all about giving.
Reply:I believe that God loves everyone, regardless of their faith or beliefs. God's love is unconditional. He does not love only Christians or only people of one race/color.
To me, love is just that. Unconditional. Caring for and respecting someone no matter what.
Reply:Humans are stupid and God is unknowable and love is just chemicals in the brain.
Reply:Im not religious,,but I do have a personal relationship with God,,,and yes I think I make him smile everyday,,as we all do,,regardless of who we are and what we believe,,I'M sure he shakes his head in confusion and disgust alot too,,,but overall I think he likes us pretty well,,,as well as loves us.
Reply:"Love is all we need." - the Beatles
Love is everything. This universe is powered by love. Our natural state is love. I think when we hear the word love, we think of romantic love, which can often be a distortion of what love truly is. Love when used as a verb, is an action, a positive action. It is a gift. We are receiving it over and over everyday, but we don't always see it. When we get rid of all the clutter in our minds, the distortions of truth, what is left is pure love.
We are told to "love our neighbor as ourselves," but we do not know what this means because in the West we are not accustomed to loving ourselves first. Love is unconditional acceptance. If we look around, anywhere love is not, is where we are putting conditions or allowing someone else to put conditions.
A world full of love is a peaceful place. I would even call it heaven.
Reply:Love is an emotion that generates acts of love.
Reply:I shall not take a risk to say better than it already said. Read Corinthians chapter N. 13. It is the very best description of love. The love of God is higher of all understanding and there is no more fine thing. If you don't know the love of God, I'm really sorry for you. The eye had not seen, the ear had not heard and that did not come to mind to a man, what God prepared to those who love Him. The love of God don't cease and no one can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord...........( Romans 8:38,39.)
Reply:Well I would prefer to be loved by someone that doesn't keep telling me to believe or burn in hell....
Reply:This is why children are so messed up today. Parents would rather win the "best personality" contest instead of loving your child, sister, and friend. Sometimes love means being the bad guy and taking on responsibility if someone is making bad choices. If you really want whats best for the people you "like" in your life, love them first.
Reply:love is a message from your soul ~ its uncontrollable and falls where it falls~ you have no say in it really
so family friends lovers and pets are all stung by th love bug~ it the currency of the next world
Reply:Their mythical god loves them in their fables like a predator loves it's prey
Reply:English only one word for Love
Greeks five words for Love.
So which one are you talking about ?
Love of a Parent (Parental love)
Love of a Friend (Brotherly love)
Love of Lusting (sensual love)
Love of Husband and Wife (In Holy Matrimony)
Love of God ( God's Love)
Then there are the love for animal, love of evil, love of horror movies, love to kill ; etc. What a confusing English speaking World this is!
Reply:Oh dear you don't understand God doesn't love. God is love.
You become part of God by loving. :)
The words you define your experience with don't matter. That's religion. All inspiration to love is good but none of it should be worshiped.
That's it...
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