Love vs Attachment

Miss_Leah wrote: But then there's Love as Campbell describes it: your other self, a union or two parts that were once whole. Is that not the ultimate attachment? The ultimate suffering - both of yourself and the other?

I don't subscribe to this definition of love, when Campbell said this it felt cheap and as if he was making excuses for his own relationship to listeners, or that he was trying not to offend them, when he was so bold with his other ideas.

What place do you think Love/Amor has in the Jedi community? My own thoughts on the matter are still disorganized, and flavoured by my previous studies in Buddhism, but I've love to know others' thoughts!

"Love" is a nice little song and dance, something to distract and pass the time, but it's no more real than anything else. I CERTAINLY don't need anyone else to "complete" me. Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy all of the entry stuff enough to repeat it when given the chance, I adore flirting and laughing and doing silly romantic things, and sometimes I fool myself into thinking maybe I'll give something long term a chance (mostly to make them happy), but I hate being "claimed" and am always ready to be done after a few weeks. Being in a long term relationship involves tons of effort and is never worth the distraction from what you really want to do. I'd rather be free to follow my own goals without having to answer to anyone

I'd rather just have a big pack of friends. Even if it's flirty friends, just friends. We can't be distracted or in pain if we never become more attached than that, we're just happy people staying happy, working together and having fun... and that's better than anything a romantic partner could give me, plus I don't have to get bored with just one person forever, bleh.

Ignoring brief bursts of lust, individual desire and artificial social contracts, any sort of strong connection seems to imply a greater chance of developing attachment. Perhaps it is an ongoing physical attraction, shared intellectual thought and goals in life, or maybe even a slightly nebulous mix with unknowns which might be called a spiritual connection. In my experience curiosity drove a lot of my attachment - being curious to the strong connection.

I guess because quite simply it offers the perception of potential benefits. It's important to note connection being a 2 way process, not the satiation of desire, but rather the balancing of strengths and weakness between two people. Like even in simple terms 2 heads are better then 1, but it's ongoing capability/benefit perhaps assumes assimilation, and not accommodation, as the basis of the efforts to facilitate the connection.

I reckon if we accommodate another person, then the connection competes with itself, but unfortunately assimilation seems like something which is a bit tricky if not impossible to manage proactively without avoiding attachment, so rather it lays in reaction - which in this context seems confronting and disarming.

But I think this is where the benefit of it can be found, that we can develop a capability to trust without developing vulnerability so that the partner can be a creative representation of your own ideals. Like climbing a slipping rope, you need to grasp the thing not to fall off but also know when to let go and move your hand otherwise gravity is going to bring you both down sooner or later - gravity being the chaos inherit in the complexity of life and sharing space and resources etc.

Yet while it makes sense to want more of a good thing, we end up viewing the progress of the relationship in those original or idealized terms which then runs the risk of getting all tied up in knots.

So I still struggle with this one, because a strong love is like being a new entity of shared parts, where the connection transcends attachment.... and the best I can do is as above generate my own strength from that and use that connection to also transcend attachment within myself
:S

I like anakin's definition of compassion in attack of the clones.... compassion is unconditional love

You can love yourself and others unconditionally without fear as long as you can accept that nothing is forever, if you accept that then there are no worries of attachment...everything fades with time, everything dies, everything changes...

RyuJin wrote: I like anakin's definition of compassion in attack of the clones.... compassion is unconditional love

He was just twisting things to break the rules though. I agree that compassion is unconditional love, but not the way he was saying it. Dishonesty could never end in love, just manipulation.

His creep factor was way over 9000.

RyuJin wrote: You can love yourself and others unconditionally without fear as long as you can accept that nothing is forever, if you accept that then there are no worries of attachment...everything fades with time, everything dies, everything changes...

I think you've hit the nail on the head. To avoid destruchive attachment, accept that changes WILL happen.... so don't get too attached to the present situation. Very wise!

Snowy Aftermath wrote:
His creep factor was way over 9000.

RIGHT?!??!!? I'm so glad I decided to watch the Clone Wars animated series, because it helped me not hate Anakin. 100% creeper in the prequel films. I STILL can't watch the "Stop looking at me like that" scene without shuddering.

I think his words about compassion were true, but he was not applying them in his situation.

This excerpt from Buddhist Bootcamp, by Timer Hawkeye really touched me.

"...when I heard about an old man who introduced the woman he was with as, "The woman who walks beside me," that statement had no trace of possessiveness or ownership in it; she wasn't "his" anything. I finally understood the quote, “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction” by Antoine de Saint-Exupery"

If the person to whom you are thinking about attaching yourself is not looking in the same direction as you, it might be wise to rethink the attachment. 2 Corinthians 6:14

Anything and everything can - and indeed does - lead to suffering of one sort or another, all of the time, to somebody somewhere. Of course that doesn't mean that everything should be permitted unrestrictedly or prohibited pending specific circumstance, or if it does I wouldn't be willing to make that call myself. Morality is at any rate more complicated than that. It isn't and nor should we pretend like it is about binary states like that of joy as opposed to suffering or the do against the don't. There is nothing inherently wrong with reducing complex matters to simple patterns, but one can never do that without losing nuance that is often inexpendable and that is the single most devastating flaw of every moral framework, no matter how sophisticated the authors at times think theirs is - the pretence to answer genuinely complex issues with childishly simplistic solutions.

I believe taking something like the code (which I think serves as a moral framework) literally or even at face value is just what you described: Oversimplifying a pattern by cutting off all its nuances for the sake of the letters. So is the notion to think this pattern was designed to answer the question itself rather than to point you in a direction to find your own answers. This is where binary logic fails: gathering up all the nuances.

Loving unconditional without holding on when it is time to let go – this obviously is not a binary pattern. It’s not a ‘now is okay’ and ‘now it’s time to go’ kind of thing and I’d argue it was not supposed to be either.

I am not a very emotional person. But love vs attachment is something that I think a balance has to be found.

I was raised thinking that love and attachment were weaknesses to be exploited. It was not something that I wanted or needed in my life. But then I met my spouse. We make each other better, we do not take away from each other or try to control or prevent each other from growing.

I love my spouse. I WANT my spouse in my life, but I do not NEED my spouse in my life. From the beginning of my relationship I told my spouse this.

When your child leaves home, you can see a struggle of love vs attachment. The parents love the child and want to see them succeed and have to let them go, but that attachment really makes it hard sometimes.

Maybe love is selfless and attachment is selfish. Just pondering, I am really not good with the emotion thing.