Baby, who do you love?

I am sometimes asked if Buddhists should be free of all attachments, and thus all love.

As in so many facets of this Way of Life, I feel to say YES! ... and NO! Like two faces of a no-sided coin, without the least incongruity or conflict.

I feel that we can love passionately, be totally connected to and romantically united with people in this life, maybe some special things too we hold dear.

At the same time, we must be willing to let go, hold lightly ... also we must see that realm beyond me and you, two people to love, separate beings and things.

All these faces of Love can be known at once. What results is a Love beyond and sweeping in and giving birth to a "me" to love "you" and no me, no you too.

What can result is, for example, at the time we may lose someone we love ... a broken heart hand-in-hand with a Heart Never Broken. We may cry tears of loss tasting too that nothing is lost, nothing can be lost. Yet we cry.

I think that, in early Buddhism, the idea was for monks to move away from a romantic love as a source of "attachment" and "passions". In later Buddhism as it moved through China, Japan, Tibet and now the West, perhaps the above flavors of attachment-without-attachment, passionate love-free of the passions, etc., became better mastered.

Oh, and beware the "false Zen" mentioned in the writing who, so removed from the people and things of this world, is lost in a cold emptiness.

Cook from 209
Hixon from 195

Gassho, J