Let’s say I’m in love with someone. Do I have a boyfriend here? Jack. Okay, so Jack is my boyfriend – this is a really good example now – I am attached to Jack, and I also love Jack. We all understand this, okay? This is a perfect example of how to identify the difference between love and attachment.
So due to some karma between us from the past, I meet this bloke, I see him over there, and immediately the story starts. We all know this one, isn’t it? I go, “Oh wow, that divine guy I met last night!” Before you know it, Jack and I, we’re a couple, right? We’re an item, okay? So attachment is running berserk.
Attachment, first of all, is dissatisfaction: “Oh, I haven’t got a boyfriend. Where’s a boyfriend?” Looking, looking, looking, looking. “Where’s the boyfriend? I’m so lonely, everybody else is so happy, they’re all walking around with happy partners,” you know?
Then there’s Jack. And attachment is like over the moon, finding this person. Attachment is dissatisfaction, emotional hunger, and when it finds Jack, it’ll exaggerate his qualities and he’ll appear divine to me – we know that’s true – from the tip of his head to his toenails. We know that is true, isn’t it? Attachment!
You think Jack is just this divine person, everything about him is divine. But attachment is simply a liar – and attachment to food is the same. When you see the food in the beginning, you can’t believe the deliciousness: when you go to that restaurant, and you see all the other people with their meals, you can’t wait for your meal to come.
So where’s the love? In the beginning of a relationship, it’s mostly attachment. Now, it happens to be I’ve got some virtue, so I also love Jack. What does that mean? Well, love is altruistic, love is not deluded, love does not exaggerate, love is based on virtue, love is a valid state of mind: love is a delight in Jack’s happiness, love is the wish that he be happy, love thinks of Jack, love goes out to him.
Attachment is totally I-based. Now, if I have mainly attachment – please hear this – if I have mainly attachment, I will be like a vampire: I will eat him for breakfast and spit out the bones and go to the next person. I’ll be what we call a “narcissist”; I’ll be all those words we call in the West like “self-centered,” “narcissistic,” blah – that just means masses of attachment.
That’s why we misuse other people, because there’s no love there: I get what I want, I get my sex, I get my money, and I chuck him out, you know, or abuse him, one or the other, isn’t it? We know that. That’s attachment, it’s totally self-centered. But we can’t tell the difference between love and attachment.
A person I know whose husband of 50 years died, and now it’s three years later and she’s still saying, “The greatest pain I have ever known.” And then she says, “That’s what you get from loving somebody.” But from the Buddhist analysis, that pain is what you get from having attachment to somebody! But we simply do not see the difference – it’s tragic.
We can’t see attachment, we don’t dissect it, we don’t notice that it’s enormous. It comes from a lack, a feeling that we’re not a nice person, it comes from an empty space inside us, it comes from me thinking I’m nothing on my own.
Then the more I have this low self-esteem, the more I think I’m nothing, the more the emotional hunger, the more I’ll dump onto this object. It’s really wicked, because I’m making this object – him! – appear divine, which means I believe he is the cause of my happy feelings and it is his job to give me happy feelings, which means it is his job to do everything I want every second. That’s attachment! It’s a vampire, you know?
Now, if we have any love, that mitigates it. Then I’ll try to be patient, I’ll try to be forgiving. But it’s really hard work when my attachment doesn’t get what it wants.
And of course if attachment is getting what it wants – he’s giving me everything I want every second – if I’m really emotionally hungry, I still won’t be satisfied! He’ll tell me 47 times a day, “I love you, Robina” – and I’ll keep begging for more.
Look at our dear mothers: you visit her every second day, you feed her your blood, you text her all day. What does she say? “You don’t love me!” I’m not being rude, that’s the suffering of attachment.
So we’ve got this huge hole inside. That’s attachment: “I’m nothing, I expect him to fill it up.” All that’s attachment, and it’s a nightmare: massive expectation, massive demand. That’s not love!
Love is altruistic. Love is, “May you be happy.” Love sees him more clearly, it thinks of him, and it’s the antidote to attachment. And we can see it’s hard work! You can love your baby as long as it behaves nicely, but if your baby wakes up seven times a night, eventually you’ll practically want to kill it! It’s too much hard work!
If your attachment’s getting what it wants, love is easy, you know, but it’s limited. That’s the trouble, it’s limited, you know?
Love and attachment are so totally different, you can’t believe it. And we have to see the difference: attachment is I-based, love is other-based.
But the interesting part is love makes me happy, and attachment makes me miserable – forget about making him happy and him miserable! We’ve got to realize that.
But when we think of benefiting others and loving others, we think, “Oh, what about me? I’m left out.” No, you’re not! This is the interesting part: you are the beneficiary of love, you are the beneficiary of your love, because it makes you happy: positive thoughts make us happy, virtuous thoughts make us happy, negative thoughts make us unhappy.
We are the beneficiary of loving somebody else, but we have to see the difference between love and attachment – we assume they’re the same.
If you’re like a bodhisattva, and you have enormous love for Jack, you’d be blissfully happy, you’d have the best sex on the planet, you’d love each other, you’d be happy, because you haven’t got attachment, haven’t got anger, haven’t got jealousy – you would not suffer! And when he dies, it’s not going to break your heart: you’ll still be sad, but you won’t be broken, you know?
Love and attachment are so different, and it’s so hard to see the difference. Right now we don’t have love unless we have attachment, and we don’t have attachment if we don’t have love, so we assume they’re the same. But they’re different!
Do you understand me, people? It’s so difficult, but we have to see the difference.