Love vs Attachment

So I just finished the lesson about love in Joseph Campbell's series.

One thing that I can't help but wonder about is the idea of Love (Amor) and attachment.

Obviously, Jedi here are not like their fictional counterparts from the SW universe in that we're not banned from forming romantic attachments.

But it makes me wonder - a lot of the Jedi that I have encountered on this forum do subscribe to the idea of minimizing attachment to free the self from unnecessary physical and emotional burdens. It's a very Buddhist notion of attachment leading to suffering.

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?

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!

I think love has it's place in a Jedi's life. It belongs as much as compassion does and is, I think, linked to compassion. When we feel love for another it is much easier for us to be compassionate toward that person. Avoiding unnecessary attachment, however, is also important. We must be wary of love that creates an attachment that could bring us down. I do feel that love can be fostered without turning into an unhealthy attachment.

Love that causes us to behave irrationally, on the other hand, can be dangerous. We must strive to think with a clear mind at all times and love can cloud that thinking in some cases. I think that placing a limit on what we will do for love can be important. There can definitely be too much of a good thing and love is no exception.

I am one person. I am a fully complete man in my own right. The only way I would even date another person is if I thought that we could eventually become one. The unity that Joseph Campbell talks about is totally possible. I have seen it in a select few couples that I have encountered in my life. The vast majority of couples that I have witnessed are merely doing their best to maintain civility for the sake of their kids or because they feel like it would compromise their integrity to go back on the commitment they made. I respect those people for putting in that effort to maintain their relationships. I would agree with anyone who says that relationships take hard work and compromise. It's not easy to die to self.

The Jedi in the movies have no attachments because the attachment is a way for the dark side to gain a foothold. In fact, the only attachment that they put up with is the attachment that forms between master and apprentice. And even then, look at the effect that attachment had on Obi Wan when Darth Maul killed Qui-Gon Jinn. Imagine how devastated he would be if it had been a wife or child that he witnessed being killed. He would have been like, instant super-fear-hate machine.

My theory is that if you can find the right person, the two can truly become one. I think it is that ultimate suffering thing that Campbell was talking about when he talked about the "wounds that can be healed only by the weapon that delivered the wound." There is bound to be some pain when the two become one, but what a solid one they will be. With two sets of eyes looking for threats, they become more impervious to outside influences. Two hearts fighting for a common goal are less likely to get discouraged than one solo heart that has no one to encourage him when times get tough. If the unity makes you a stronger person, then I think I wouldn't even call it an attachment. It's more of a conversion. This reminds me of Bill and Ted's friend, Station. Now there's a "two becoming one" analogy for ya.

I know it's an idealistic view of marriage, but, as I said before, I am already complete. I do not need attachments to make myself more complete. I have people in my life that I enjoy being with and I put great effort into maintaining healthy relationships with them. I love my friends, but my attachment to them is not sufficient to cause me unbearable suffering if I were to lose them. Nevertheless, if I was presented with the unity that I'm talking about, I wouldn't resist for a microsecond.

Ah, what a complicated topic, thank you for bringing it up.
I haven't completed that lesson of the IP yet (it's next!), so I'll be interested to see if my views change at all after I watch the video.

To me personally, love is always going to mean attachment of some kind. I'm attachment-prone, without a doubt. And I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing in and of itself. It just means that I have to be aware of the more negative consequences of attachment such as jealousy and dependency. I may be totally in love with someone, but if they don't feel the same way, I should learn to let go because that is what is best for them. I can't be jealous if they are with someone else, because if that person makes them happy, then that's better for both of them.

I don't want them to become my entire life, or for me to become theirs. I somewhat disagree with Campbell that you can have your other self, and a union of two things to make whole. In my mind we should all be working to make ourselves whole by ourselves, and then we can meet someone who complements our wholeness with their own different flavour of wholeness. We will all have our own different values, interests, and hobbies, and I don't believe in sacrificing them just to spend 100% of your time with someone.

Attachment will lead to bad things. If I lost someone I was attached to (a friend, family member, whatever), then yes, I am going to be very sad and upset for a while. However, I would hope that a level of self-control and self-awareness would help me accept those feelings and then move past them.

I guess it depends what people think a level of unhealthy attachment is. Obviously stalking, jealousy, dependency etc. are not good. But if two people are crazy in love and perfectly happy, and very attached to each other, is that a bad thing?

Love is a wonderful thing. Growing up I had no example of healthy love nor did I have a drive to find it. As I understood more and figured out it was me that can make my own self I decided to find a Love I wanted to pass and wanted to be proud of, NOT the unfaithful cheating lying shadow I saw on a daily basis. I took it upon my self to find Love, a Love I wanted. As I searched I found many people who said they love and fewer who proved it. I found in some cultures they tie hands in a ritual and even live with the "Knott" on the mantel as a symbol of their decision. Many different people do it different. Many different cultures have different practices and definitions. I found mine. I found my own love in every where I looked and now I do what I can to GIVE it. Doing this, I was very weary of attaching blame and hate to the path...which can weigh and some times steer me in the wrong direction...I found me and my likes and what I want, the love I want to give...not get.
Something happens in our world when we start to think like this. A ...change...occurs when we loose our focus of attachment of what I want and make a better person rather than trying to fix every one else....


as some would say this path is the ability to add value to what exist already ...with no attachment , the end result is nothing intended by the maker, yet so beautiful and un mistakably valuable by every one when seen.
Good luck on your path friend. Pm any time! we are never alone in this wonderful Temple!

Miss_Leah wrote: But it makes me wonder - a lot of the Jedi that I have encountered on this forum do subscribe to the idea of minimizing attachment to free the self from unnecessary physical and emotional burdens. It's a very Buddhist notion of attachment leading to suffering.

Mm.. If a person wants to minimize attachment to free the self from something, it is a form of wanting.. A form of attaching to a desire to free the self from something.

It's a very Buddhist notion of attachment leading to suffering.

When minding about attachments leading to suffering, I find this part of Buddhism difficult to understand, how can a person suffer if we do not have alternatives to compare suffering in life with? Or do we have something, that gives us a 'not suffering feeling'? How should we know what suffering in life is when we do not know the alternatives as we 'know' life?

Aqua wrote: When minding about attachments leading to suffering, I find this part of Buddhism difficult to understand, how can a person suffer if we do not have alternatives to compare suffering in life with? Or do we have something, that gives us a 'not suffering feeling'? How should we know what suffering in life is when we do not know the alternatives as we 'know' life?

As I learned it, suffering is negative or harmful feelings. But according to Buddhist tradition, it's also across lifetimes, not just our own, via Karma. Karma (which is the result of positive and negative behaviours) keeps us in the wheel of suffering (Samsara) which is characterized by rebirth through many lifetimes. Basically, if we're good, we'll be reincarnated in a better form/life and if we're destructive, we'll be reborn in a lower form of life. Throughout these lives, we strive to be reincarnated on a higher level - the final one being Nirvana. Nirvana is a blissful state where we no longer feel suffering (and is on another plane on consciousness than the physical one)

In order to know what those positive behaviours are (characterized by the mantra "Right speech. Right thought. Right Action"), one has to actively learn through spiritual teachings. If someone doesn't know suffering (or know they are causing suffering) due to ignorance, they will continue to be trapped in the wheel of Samsara and never reach Nirvana. This is why active study is so important, so we can know and recognize what behaviours lead to suffering (of ourselves or another)

Wow, Buddhism in a nutshell But really, the desire to be free of suffering is not considered to be an attachment, but a natural compulsion, just like wanting to nourish oneself isn't considered an attachment.

I've written about this before, a couple of years ago. I'll try to dig that up later ...

There is no place for the "vs" in the Love - Attachment complex. They are not at odds with one another. Attachment is a part of love ; without it, there is no love, for it is a biological and psychological as it is moral. Then again, practising non-attachment is also a very loving thing to do. And since we were taking this up after the Campbell lesson, we would be talking about romantic love rather than another sort, right ?

Campbell starts out talking about the troubadours of the 12^th to 14^th Centuries. What he fails to mention though is that the yearning, pining, poetic love for the maiden was never to be consummated (though sometimes it was). Those were largely entertainments put on for already married noblewomen mainly. Often, the troubadour had never even met the woman he was so beautifully languishing over through his heartfelt verse ... The way that love, marriage and the "couple" was seen in those days was wildly different than we have become used to it today. Our notions of Love and Couplehood (regardless of its composition) are relatively recent, dating back only at the earliest to about the end of the 18^{th Century}. Marriage remains what it always was : a socio-economic contract establishing an administrative unit smaller than a community. Not that that's a bad thing, just that is not a promise to "be in love forever".

So, let's just get all of the imagination about what makes for a couple out of our minds so that we can actually talk about Love "and" Attachment.

Love for someone isn't a choice, it is generally a bitter discovery ; a feeling like a cold that won't go away -- and develops into pneumonia. Someone begins to take on a particular significance, different from everyone else. No one really yet knows why this happens, involving quantities of ocytocine to hose down the nervous system, making us just stoned-stupid on our own bio-chemistry. Thus, when in love with someone, it is unrealistic to be "reasonable" about it. Love is a meta-emotion arising from repeated feelings of Joy, so it isn't even processed in the same hemisphere of a functional brain, let alone one that is doped up on self-produced aphrodisiacs ...

No two people are going to be at exactly the same "high" at the same time, and when one discovers that one is "in love" with another, it is not necessarily 'joyous' -- it can be agony, a real bad-trip on steroids. There is that constant irrational search for "a sign" that the other person is "interested", one that may never come, but is always hoped/prayed for or imagined. The smallest, silliest aspects of Life have some sort of connexion to that "special other person". Every song on the radio is about him/her ... every film, story, or even bloody news broadcast. The lover has moved into your head before either of you ever have the tiniest fleeting notion of moving in together. As far as detachment (notice, I did not say "non-attachment") goes - forget it. Not without neuro-surgery -- or moving to a different planet.

Franscesco Alberoni's research indicated three distinct phases to romantic love : first, there was the "amour naissant" - or beginning love. For all intents and purposes here, it's that nasty cold I was telling you about before. Next, should the other person have, to some degree, similar feelings and the couple forms, that is "l'état amoureux" - or being "in love" state. During this time the new couple explores their couplehood - sexually, domestically, socially ... essentially all the aspects of conjugal life with this other person. This is the stage where the intimation occurs, boundaries set (and sometimes tested) and the attachment (healthy quantities of dopamine taking over for the ocytocine) develops ~ or dissolves. If it does not dissolve however, the couple will settle into the state of love, which is strangely like a "best-friendship" : complicit, co-operative and much calmer.

Of course the "in-love" state can come back, and should occasionally : usually this is be overcoming hardships together, learning new things together, discovering things together ... or childbirth. All the other stuff we've read in 12^th Century literature or seen on the telly/in films and get mixed up with relationships doesn't matter much. That is just entertainment that gets some of those same brain-drugs going.

So ... finally : attachment. It is not wrong to enjoy one's dinner nor is it wrong to enjoy having sex with someone. These are perfectly natural responses to a well-functioning organism. Where "attachment" kicks us in the parts that we enjoy stimulating with our 'other' is when it becomes an ego/identity characteristic that we don't want to give up. Actually, these are the sorts of mistakes that end up doing a lot of relationships in that one has to detach from. It is wonderful to make love to someone with whom one is in love, but one ought to never let oneself believe that the other is a possession, or is a guarantee for life or any other sort of ego-commodity. Even the phrase "I have a boyfriend-girlfriend-partner-husband-wife..." is dangerously deceptive. The most accurate we can be is "For the time being, I am fortunate that s/he loves me" (and hope that it is true).

Thus, it is perfectly normal to 'hope' that the love will continue, and it is also biological -- dopamine does 'attach' us to our loved ones. What we need to practice non-attachment in is that image of what this relationship does for our ego, our image, how we feel about ourselves and what we "get" from it. That is not guaranteed and sometimes turnes a loving couple into a pair of vampires sucking the already dead blood out of one another 'til they just dry up ...

Certainly, the Couple does have a character to it symbiotic with those of the persons that constitute it. This is why when Campbell was talking about 'Sacrifice', this is made never to one another but to the health and well-being of the Couple. 'Sacrifice' - to render sacred - is always to something higher order.

It is the finest thing in the universe to love someone. What non-attachment needs to apply to is all the mixed up, mischievous "me" meanings that we fantasise into it ...


from a thread "Love is not Enough", 05 December 2014

Alexandre Orion wrote: (Darren talked me into doing this .... ) :blush:

Love is not Enough :huh: ? "enough" for what ?

It will never be “enough” to satisfy all of our interminable desires, cravings for comfort or greed for mental, material or bodily luxury. It is not that “Love is not Enough”, but that Love doesn’t work like that …

It probably is quite enough though, when properly responded with the proper partner, to allow the supra-entity of the Union Itself to flourish.

The issue does not come about from an insufficiency in the Nature of Love Itself, but of all the things that we are conditioned to associate with it (as Proteus was pointing out via Krishnamurti).

From here out, my explanations repose a lot on the apophatic – I’ll talk about what it is not and use an exaggerated number of metaphors. I’m just crappy like that … But at the same time, the subject is not about what Love is, but really about what ‘not Enough’ is.

All the “if s/he loved me” bull-shit that fosters expectations which, disappointed, can only amplify the dissatisfaction which appears to be of the other.

In other words, we don’t recognise what a flourishing Union feels like. It is not ‘the other’ but the expectations that turn relationships sour.

The Love can very much be there, and very strong – it is “enough” in and of itself – but it cannot satisfy the cravings of a starved ego.

It seems that a terrifying lot of desires get heaped onto the expectations of what love is supposed to bring to one’s own life and very little about what one is supposed to emit. Then again, it is quite likely that one just might not know … It simply works and that is all.

Every time I have had that horribly painful privilege of falling in love, I could certainly not say “why” I felt it. I truly feel that if one can answer “why” one loves, then it is actually Reason and not Love that is going on. Others couldn’t ever very easily see the Reason for it either. They did often recognise the characteristics of the Union emerging from the relationship though …

It is not a reciprocity relationship, it is not give and take, it is not a cooperative effort nor any of the other neurotic codswabble that we’ve been consoling ourselves with since the time that all of our relationships have been so Reasonable that they easily fall apart after a handful -- maybe a head-ful -- of distractions.

Marriage, for instance, is a socio-economic contract – it is not necessarily a lovers’ relationship.

That which comes from the Union of two souls who are best suited to be together is not a ‘joint-effort’ to bring it about. It is a natural phenomenon that comes about quite easily on its own because all of the elements (intellectual, cultural, spiritual) are present.

Just as the right atmospheric conditions to not have to ‘work at’ generating a powerful bolt of lightning … it just happens. ‘Tis the same for the most powerful of human Love, and the result is greater that the properties of its components.

So, no … if you’re ‘working at it’, you’ve got a project, not a love relationship.

Now, I don’t expect most of you to believe me about that because you’ve all heard all your lives how good relationships take ‘work’. You’ll probably believe that still for a while … that is fine. Yet, by believing that, all that one can really anticipate with anyone is a project. So, good luck with that ...

When we love, it is only Love – the regard of the other as indispensable to oneself, the Union is an entity in itself. It is naturally occurring. It ‘happens to’ us more than we ‘do’ it.

Our notions, desires and doubts can keep it from happening though.

One does not sacrifice (“sacrifice” is a key word here) to the other person, but to the Union – rendering it “sacred”.

I’m not even sure that true Love is a case of bringing both partners to the apex of an individual potential, but the Union coming to its potential.

Of course, it isn’t Love either when one partner consumes the other. That is called a vampire.

Curiously, the Union coming to its potential can be by the interactions of not only the compatibility of talents but also how the flaws of the individual partners harmonise.

Like in musical relationships, sometimes one has to play a little off-key in order for there to be harmony at all ; in personal relationships, the same phenomenon arises – whereas what is a character flaw in the individual, combined with an asset or even another character flaw of the other, by way of the dynamics of that particular Union a quality emerges.

And like Campbell says, ‘you just feel it when you’ve met that person’. It is not one plus one making two, but one plus one making one – the valences attract, and the relationship takes on its own emergent characteristics.

So, we shouldn’t be looking for 50/50 deals, or any other negotiation belonging to economics. If it is truly Love, the accounts are always very naturally balanced.

Personally, and maybe I’m just weird, when I fantasise about someone I Love it is rarely according to one’s typical notion of erotic. It is “erotic” but not necessarily sexually so …

I dream about disagreements and irritations, about that nasty little moment of annoyance when those character flaws that are ours properly grate up against one another and produce the friction that also somehow supplies the warmth. I fantasise about just the sparkling moments of everyday Life that are so exquisitely magical, spontaneous and unpredictable. No one can 'work at' impredictability. Purely fiction, absolutely fantasy but absolutely fantastic and oh, so endearing.

You know, like even after a phone call and two text messages s/he STILL forgets to get what you asked for from the store on the way home … :blink:

Certainly I can imagine what ‘making love’ can be like, because that sort of thing has happened before … :whistle: … but that is not really “fantasising”. Mind-blowing sex is not the same phenomenon as ‘making love’ to someone with whom the connexion transcends the body parts that we slog together for a while : there is an element of terror in making love to someone that one truly loves that there is not in the case of casual sexual escapades. So, we can fantasise about ‘sex’, whereas we cannot fantasise about ‘making love’.

At least I can’t …

This is the same terror when approaching it as when one approaches something holy. The ‘stupor and trembling’ of approaching the Deity, the Union with the Divine. :ohmy:

And at the same time, there is an aspect of familiarity, as though you’d been making love to that person for millennia.

Since orgasm sets off some common chemical responses within us that promotes a feeling of attachment in many cases, it is ephemeral in the case of casual sex. In the case of love-making between lovers, it reinforces the attachment that is already there. But the attachment that is there is not purely chemical …

***

So, Love may not be enough to solve every problem we create for ourselves, either individually or as a World. It may not be so great for balancing the budget deficit, for stopping bullets and bombs, for curing diseases or for reversing global warming. It can be immortalising, but only if it is respected.

In summary, it is quite “enough” to be what it is.

Please realise, I'm not any sort of an expert about this -- tant s'en faut. I'm just a poet ... :blush:

MOYERS: How do you get that experience? ;

CAMPBELL: Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts -- but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message. Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. It tells you what the experience is. Marriage, for example. What is marriage? The myth tells you what it is. It's the reunion of the separated duad. Originally you were one. You are now two in the world, but the recognition of the spiritual identity is what marriage is. It's different from a love affair. It has nothing to do with that. It's another mythological plane of experience. When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is recognition of a spiritual identity. If we live a proper life, if our minds are on the right qualities in regarding the person*, we will find our proper male or female counterpart. But if we are distracted by certain sensuous interests, we'll marry the wrong person. By marrying the right person, we reconstruct the image of the incarnate God, and that's what marriage is.

MOYERS: The right person? How does one choose the right person?

CAMPBELL: Your heart tells you. It ought to.

MOYERS: Your inner being.

CAMPBELL: That's the mystery.

MOYERS: You recognize your other self.

CAMPBELL: Well, I don't know, but there's a flash that comes, and something in you knows that this is the one.

MOYERS: If marriage is this reunion of the self with the self, with the male or female grounding of ourselves, why is it that marriage is so precarious in our modern society?

CAMPBELL: Because it's not regarded as a marriage. I would say that if the marriage isn't a first priority in your life, you're not married. The marriage means the two that are one, the two become one flesh. If the marriage lasts long enough, and if you are acquiescing constantly to it instead of to individual personal whim, you come to realize that that is true -- the two really are one.

MOYERS: One not only biologically but spiritually.

CAMPBELL:Primarilyspiritually. The biological is the distraction which may lead you to the wrong identification.

MOYERS: Then the necessary function of marriage, perpetuating ourselves in children, is not the primary one.

CAMPBELL: No, that's really just the elementary aspect of marriage. There are two completely different stages of marriage. First is the youthful marriage following the wonderful impulse that nature has given us in the interplay of the sexes biologically in order to produce children. But there comes a time when the child graduates from the family and the couple is left. I've been amazed at the number of my friends who in their forties or fifties go apart. They have had a perfectly decent life together with the child, but they interpreted their union in terms of their relationship through the child. They did not interpret it in terms of their own personal relationship to each other.
Marriage is a relationship. When you make the sacrifice in marriage, you're sacrificing not to each other but to unity in a relationship. The Chinese image of the Tao, with the dark and light interacting -- that's the relationship of yang and yin, male and female, which is what a marriage is. And that's what you have become when you have married.
You're no longer this one alone; your identity is in a relationship. Marriage is not a simple love affair, it's an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one.

MOYERS: So marriage is utterly incompatible with the idea of doing one's own thing.

CAMPBELL: It's not simply one's own thing, you see. It is, in a sense, doing one's own thing, but the one isn't just you, it's the two together as one. And that's a purely mythological image signifying the sacrifice of the visible entity for a transcendent good.
This is something that becomes beautifully realized in the second stage of marriage, what I call the alchemical stage, of the two experiencing that they are one. If they are still living as they were in the primary stage of marriage, they will go apart when their children leave. Daddy will fall in love with some little nubile girl and run off, and Mother will be left with an empty house and heart, and will have to work it out on her own, in her own way.

MOYERS: That's because we don't understand the two levels of marriage.

CAMPBELL: You don't make a commitment.

MOYERS: We presume to -- we make a commitment for better or for worse.

CAMPBELL: That's the remnant of a ritual.

* omission is my own
~ The Power of Myth, p. 14

I remember that post of yours Alexandre! Happy to see it again!


Attachment inside love gives me a double feeling, to be able to have love feels 'good' somehow.. but when changing the words and saying that it is like attaching the self gives me a difficult feeling. Sometimes I like to let things go and come back to it later.. but when people say that they try to create a 'forever' thingy thing with love? And saying with it that they do not want to let go.. gives me a feel that they try to fill up their own black hole inside their self. :blink:

Funny to mention that I did have word with some Jedi about it lately.. Some are 'obsessed' with attachment, almost like it is their very first goal towards love. It makes me feel highly uncomfortable, and yet it is part of love.. How can it be that these parts 'love' can feel so different.. Why are so many people seeking for an everlasting situation?

I really like the idea of different forms of attachment - the natural love-bond and the possessive.

I could certainly imagine the Jedi Path teaching the acceptance and recognition of the purer natural form of Love and striving to avoid the possessive form.

Personally, I think that love is an integral part of life, but I couldn't reconcile it with the desire to avoid attachment. I think this is a great solution!