How does Buddhism regard love and attachment? Can love turn into attachment, and is attachment always bad?
Draft: Ivan
The early suttas do not forbid care and goodwill, but they warn against craving, appropriation and the fear of loss. Love can turn into one of these. At the same time, not every bond and not every desire falls under the ban.
The suttas have no direct terms for “love” and “attachment”, let alone an opposition between them. Pali has several different words for the shades of these notions. What one is instructed to develop is:
- metta (mettā, active friendliness);
- and karuna (karuṇā, compassion - the active wish to lessen another’s suffering).
These are two of the four so-called immeasurable qualities (the brahmaviharas; the other two are sympathetic joy, muditā, and equanimity, upekkhā). These qualities are to be extended “immeasurably”, to all beings.
The different shades of what we often put into the word “love” look like this in Pali:
- taṇhā - craving, thirst;
- rāga - passion, lust;
- pema - tender affection;
- piya - “dear”, “beloved”.
Of the feeling for someone close one would rather say pema, and the person himself would be called piya. Buddhism and the Pali canon speak of pema with utter clarity (Dhp 213): from pema sorrow is born, from pema fear is born. In MN 87 and Ud 8.8 the theme of attachment is developed more fully still: sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection and despair are born from what is dear. The more dear ones, the more suffering. It is worth noting, at the same time, that Snp 1.8, for example, takes a mother’s readiness to protect her only child as the image of the strength with which one should develop a boundlessly kind heart towards all beings.
Besides the various senses of love and attachment above, there is also upādāna, which is literally translated as “attachment”, but in the Pali canon it is, rather, a technical term: one of the links of dependent origination, coming after taṇhā and before bhava. Buddhism distinguishes four kinds of clinging:
- kāmupādāna - to sensual pleasures;
- diṭṭhupādāna - to views;
- sīlabbatupādāna - to rules and observances;
- attavādupādāna - to the notion of a “self”.
What we call love is usually a bundle of different feelings. In parental care there is genuine care and there is anxious holding on. Romantic love often starts well and degenerates into jealousy and control. We say “I love this person” and mean “I need this person, I am afraid to lose him, I feel bad without him”. That is exactly how the other becomes “mine”.
Is attachment always bad? For taṇhā and upādāna the answer is unambiguous: they are to be abandoned. But not every desire is taṇhā. For example, chanda (chanda - wholesome desire, interest, readiness to act) is one of the four bases of spiritual power (iddhipāda). In a certain sense a paradox arises: leaning on desire, one abandons craving - a person hears of another’s liberation, wants the same, and in the end abandons that desire too (AN 4.159). When Ananda calls good friendship (kalyāṇamitta) half of the holy life, the Buddha corrects him: it is the whole of the holy life (SN 45.2). And even the Buddhist teaching itself is compared to a raft: after crossing to the other shore (reaching awakening), one does not carry it further on one’s head or shoulder (MN 22).
Where to read: MN 87 - on how sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection and despair are born from what is dear; Snp 1.8 - the Karaṇīyametta-sutta, on boundless goodwill; MN 22 - the simile of the raft.