All you need is love (The Beatles)
To my curious mind, this is a fascinating quotation! Unfortunately, the word “love” is used to describe such a wide variety of conditions that it’s almost like saying, “All you need is, er, something”.
Of course, many of the things we call love are tinged with delusion and/or unnecessary and unproductive pain. Romeo and Juliet is billed as a love story, but in the end they don’t get what they want, so they blithely kill themselves. Is the inability to cope with loss really a sign of love? Imagine if the Beatles had sung to the world, “All you need is an inability to cope with loss”!
A view that shocks many mainstream-ish people in the West, but sits very comfortably for us Buddhists, is: “If it hurts, could we perhaps use a different word rather than love?” One way to describe this feeling of pain is “attachment”. Yes I know I know, “detachment” sounds so dull to so many people! But does it make any sense at all to choose to undergo pain in the name of something – love – that doesn't necessarily require pain? No it doesn't!
Although so many people blindly order the fries with the cheeseburger, it is in fact possible to have the cheeseburger without the fries.
When you first declared to a new partner, or to your newborn child, “Darling, I love you!”, did they ask, “Would you like pain with that?” Or did you just assume it was part of the package?
I'm sometimes asked: is unconditional love possible without attachment? Actually it's only possible without attachment.
All you need is love :-)
Of course, many of the things we call love are tinged with delusion and/or unnecessary and unproductive pain. Romeo and Juliet is billed as a love story, but in the end they don’t get what they want, so they blithely kill themselves. Is the inability to cope with loss really a sign of love? Imagine if the Beatles had sung to the world, “All you need is an inability to cope with loss”!
A view that shocks many mainstream-ish people in the West, but sits very comfortably for us Buddhists, is: “If it hurts, could we perhaps use a different word rather than love?” One way to describe this feeling of pain is “attachment”. Yes I know I know, “detachment” sounds so dull to so many people! But does it make any sense at all to choose to undergo pain in the name of something – love – that doesn't necessarily require pain? No it doesn't!
Although so many people blindly order the fries with the cheeseburger, it is in fact possible to have the cheeseburger without the fries.
When you first declared to a new partner, or to your newborn child, “Darling, I love you!”, did they ask, “Would you like pain with that?” Or did you just assume it was part of the package?
I'm sometimes asked: is unconditional love possible without attachment? Actually it's only possible without attachment.
All you need is love :-)