Love

Simone Weil considered it a direction, not a place. I think she was on to something. She equated it with attention, and felt it was the best gift we could give to anyone who was suffering.

Isaac of Syria said it’s a scourge for those who don’t want it. It can thus be really painful.

Pema Chodron said (along with a lot of Buddhists and others) that it arises quite naturally as soon as we recognize there is no particular boundary between us and any other. It is the biggest deal ever and at the same time, no big deal at all.

It can be ecstasy and it can be painful. Depends who confronts you when love comes. I consider  the icon of Christ on the cross to be the ultimate image of love. It can be quite wonderful. It can also cause you to die for your love, and even for all beings.

All of this is a lot different than hearts-and-flowers romantic item we’re familiar with. I just want to spell out the meaning of love as I see it before the other view completely takes it over: a direction rather than a location. And it does turn out that a directional approach makes all the difference in the world.

I think I first saw it slipping away in the fight for same-sex marriage in California. (Full disclosure: I am in a same-sex marriage myself. My partner and I took it on when the Supreme Court ruled that it had all the rights of traditional marriage. That it was not, in the words of the great Ruth Bader Ginsberg, not a “skim milk” kind of marriage.) The argument of the lawyers seemed to be an intellectualized version of “love is love,” the idea being that love is everyone’s calling, and that same-sex feels about the same as heterosexual love. And love is positive, regardless of what “kind” it is. And anything that increases love in the world needs to be celebrated, not regulated.

My heart immediately goes out to those who miss out on love, and there are many. Who because of unattractivness or just plain bad luck don’t attain it.

When it is said to be the most important thing in life. I think the number of people experiencing it has declined.

This love is what’s celebrated in weddings these unlucky ones are required to attend. Marriage is not a requirement these days—like it used to be. It has morphed into something unheard-of in the history of the world. Men and women mix like they never have before. Occasionally, or after much toil, they identify The One. Hopefully this will jive with the other person. If not, it’s back to the drawing board.  If it works, if each of the individuals finds in the other The One, then they go ahead and have a real relationship, followed by a marriage that is a relationship of equals, having as many children as are allowed by birth control drugs, usually two. They then often divorce, throwing the vows they made to the wind as soon as in as they perceive that the marriage does not meet their perceived needs. Through it all the sex act is their way of communion, the symbolic center of the marriage. Expressing the love they originally felt. This, of course, bears no relation to love and marriage they have happened throughout history.

I think here is the place to talk of the inadequacy of language. Love, as well as most hard-to-talk-about things (like God, enlightenment,  bodhicitta, and the like) cannot be contained in any language. Those who say things like “if you can’t describe it, it likely doesn’t exist” (mostly logical-positivist philosophers) are wrong. English is one of the few languages originating in Europe that makes a distinction in terms of intensity, between “love” and “like.”  The whole purpose of the Zen koan practice in which I participate is to realize we can’t express the ultimate truth, but then we have to express it anyway. “You have to say something,” as Katagiri Roshi always used say.

And it turns out acknowledging that something is inexpressible actually frees you up to express it skillfully in words. “Love” is no exception. Dzigar Kongtrul wrote an entire book about the Tibetan word “tsewa,” which usually is translated into the English word, “love,” though that’s only the closest word we have.  It really means the sort tender heart from which the enlightened mind arises. There is of course no English word for that. It’s a help that the various varieties of love are totally above language.

And here is where visualizing love as a direction comes in. The problem with love as a feeling or as a static phenomenon experienced by attractive people in their twenties is that it doesn’t work in that way.  Love, inexpressible, is beyond anything we can express. If you read my essay about sex, “A Pebble in My Shoe,” you’ll see that I believe that the physical act of sex is continually transcended in favor more subtle and powerful forms of intimacy. I think the sort of love that is found in sex is what love is thought to be. And I do take that sort of romantic feeling  is the real thing. Though it has to go beyond that to work.

I think it is most often apparent in the lives of some celibate monastics. Their renouncing of literal love frees them up to be intimate with all things, all people. It is necessary to say that this sort of celibacy is rare, but it is most often seen in monasticism.

I think that love, as it has come to be known, shares some of the heresy of evangelicalism, in that it is all about emotion.  When love, like all ultimate things, is beyond anything we can express in language. But love and being born again look to emotions as the ultimate thing, and “prove” the transcendence of the absolute. One of the wisest things I ever read was one of the editorials the Zen teacher Robert Aitken wrote for TURNING WHEEL, which was the magazine of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. In it he spoke of Avalokitesvara/Chenrezig/Kannon/Guanyin/Kwaseum Bosal, who is said to be the enlightenment being of compassion. He said that we do wrong to regard him/her as a symbol of perfect compassion. We should instead regard that bodhisattva as still learning ways to be compassionate. Still seeking that blessed direction. Even now.

And that’s why, basically, I consider the view of love as only romantic to be misguided unless it is also admits the  painful and difficult too.

Herewith, my model of love as an evolving thing. I the love experienced by the young and attractive is the real thing. But it has to be put in the direction of something  ever greater.

“Love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams,” as Dostoevsky said, speaking  through Father Zosima in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. It’s bliss. It’s suffering. It’s helping your fellow human, even to the consequence of death, if that becomes necessary. It’s no big deal.