Is love an attachment?

Stomp661 SG

When you love someone, you are attached to someone.Is it true?

An Eternal Now SG

Sentient beings are attached to everything whether they like or dislike, love or hate, them.

A Bodhisattva is someone who has unconditional love for all sentient beings, a love not tainted by passions and attachments. A Bodhisattva is someone who abides in awareness and presence, so he is not caught up/identified/attached to/lost in thoughts and feelings but is able to utilize them skillfully.

A Bodhisattva is no longer attached to persons, appearance, and emotions, because he has seen the empty nature of things and persons. No longer attached to anything, he still spontaneously act out of love and compassion for the sake of all sentient beings.

A Bodhisattva sees and experiences whatever feelings and actions as being like a flight path of a bird in the sky, like painting on the surface of water, the moment they appear they self-liberate leaving no traces. There is nothing graspable or substantial there, no attachments.

Vimalakirti Chapter Seven, The Goddess. (partial excerpt)

"Thereupon, Manjusri, the crown prince, addressed the Licchavi Vimalakirti: "Good sir, how should a bodhisattva regard all living beings?"

Vimalakirti replied, "Manjusri, a bodhisattva should regard all livings beings as a wise man regards the reflection of the moon in water or as magicians regard men created by magic. He should regard them as being like a face in a mirror; like the water of a mirage; like the sound of an echo; like a mass of clouds in the sky; like the previous moment of a ball of foam; like the appearance and disappearance of a bubble of water; like the core of a plantain tree; like a flash of lightning; like the fifth great element; like the seventh sense-medium; like the appearance of matter in an immaterial realm; like a sprout from a rotten seed; like a tortoise-hair coat; like the fun of games for one who wishes to die; like the egoistic views of a stream-winner; like a third rebirth of a once-returner; like the descent of a nonreturner into a womb; like the existence of desire, hatred, and folly in a saint; like thoughts of avarice, immorality, wickedness, and hostility in a bodhisattva who has attained tolerance; like the instincts of passions in a Tathagata; like the perception of color in one blind from birth; like the inhalation and exhalation of an ascetic absorbed in the meditation of cessation; like the track of a bird in the sky; like the erection of a eunuch; like the pregnancy of a barren woman; like the unproduced passions of an emanated incarnation of the Tathagata; like dream-visions seen after waking; like the passions of one who is free of conceptualizations; like fire burning without fuel; like the reincarnation of one who has attained ultimate liberation.

"Precisely thus, Manjusri, does a bodhisattva who realizes the ultimate selflessness consider all beings."

Manjusri then asked further, "Noble sir, if a bodhisattva considers all living beings in such a way, how does he generate the great love toward them?"

Vimalakirti replied, "Manjusri, when a bodhisattva considers all living beings in this way, he thinks: 'Just as I have realized the Dharma, so should I teach it to living beings.' Thereby, he generates the love that is truly a refuge for all living beings; the love that is peaceful because free of grasping; the love that is not feverish, because free of passions; the love that accords with reality because it is equanimous in all three times; the love that is without conflict because free of the violence of the passions; the love that is nondual because it is involved neither with the external nor with the internal; the love that is imperturbable because totally ultimate.

"Thereby he generates the love that is firm, its high resolve unbreakable, like a diamond; the love that is pure, purified in its intrinsic nature; the love that is even, its aspirations being equal; the saint's love that has eliminated its enemy; the bodhisattva's love that continuously develops living beings; The Tathagata's love that understands reality; the Buddha's love that causes living beings to awaken from their sleep; the love that is spontaneous because it is fully enlightened spontaneously; the love that is enlightenment because it is unity of experience; the love that has no presumption because it has eliminated attachment and aversion; the love that is great compassion because it infuses the Mahayana with radiance; the love that is never exhausted because it acknowledges voidness and selflessness; the love that is giving because it bestows the gift of Dharma free of the tight fist of a bad teacher; the love that is morality because it improves immoral living beings; the love that is tolerance because it protects both self and others; the love that is effort because it takes responsibility for all living beings; the love that is contemplation because it refrains from indulgence in tastes; the love that is wisdom because it causes attainment at the proper time; the love that is liberative technique because it shows the way everywhere; the love that is without formality because it is pure in motivation; the love that is without deviation because it acts from decisive motivation; the love that is high resolve because it is without passions; the love that is without deceit because it is not artificial; the love that is happiness because it introduces living beings to the happiness of the Buddha. Such, Manjusri, is the great love of a bodhisattva."

caleb_chiang SG

Attached in what sense? If the person so not love you back leh?

An Eternal Now SG

In Buddhism, craving, desire, ignorance is known as the cause of suffering, and this is taught in the Four Noble Truths by the Buddha.

Why ignorance causes suffering? Ignorance is attachment to a self. Realization is seeing through the illusion of self. Having the illusion of self perpetuates the endless cycles of seeking, whether it is someone seeking to get, or remove oneself from, an object. Without a sense of 'me' as a reference point, there can be no craving or aversion, because craving and aversion is always a 'movement' of 'me' towards and away from some 'thing'. Without two opposing poles there can be no movement towards or away, hence this duality and sense of separation is the root of all attachments and suffering. Seeing this we understand that the Three Poisons in Buddhism, which is Craving, Aversion and Ignorance, these fetters are interlinked.

So it is not 'love' that is the cause of suffering but the attachment and craving that usually comes with it due to the illusion of separation/self/duality. It all involves around the sense of self, manifesting in many ways. In the case of relationships it manifests as an attachment of 'posessing somebody'. And the 'loss of somebody' (the person left 'me') or perhaps not getting back the other person's love ('me' not getting 'that') is also very painful. Or it could manifest in other ways like 'I hate that person' or 'I am going to ignore that person', a.k.a. dualistic attraction, aversion and ignorance. It is all the manifestation of the sense of self, and the sense of subject/object separation. When we realise the nature of reality we will be able to experience what Vimalakirti Sutra stated above, the love that is nondual because it is involved neither with the external nor with the internal

That endless cycle of seeking and craving and the ignorance (the sense of self) is known in Buddhism as Dukkha or Suffering.

To let go of all these attachment, we observe the dynamic, impermanent nature of all manifestations, and see that they do not consist of or pertain to a self (anatta). Nothing makes up a self. Seeing thus we gradually come to the realization that there is nothing to grasp in reality nor is there someone at the center who can grasp. There is just an ever changing dynamic process of process, event, manifestation and phenomenon, but nothing to hang on to, and no one who could 'hang on' to something.

Practicing bare attention of each moment of our sensate reality and constantly reminding oneself of the 3 characteristics: impermanent, unsatisfactory and not-self nature of all phenomena is taught by Buddha as Insight Meditation or Vipassana. This leads to enlightenment. We can practice vipassana all the time which we should.