Concept of LOVE in Buddhism

Long long ago in the history of the world, well before the origin of the English language, the Buddha gave to mankind the concept of LOVE. It is something down to earth, without any affiliations to persons or places beyond this living world which is known to us and seen by us. According to Buddhist teachings, love must stretch across from the human heart, horizontally to every other living thing in the cosmos, man and bird and beast. It means being friendly towards the entire ecosystem, without any discrimination whatsoever. In Buddhism, the equivalent of love is metta or maitri. Its meaning is friendliness, i.e. the state of being a friend. It implies total absence of enmity and hostility towards another.

Leaving aside the concepts of love for a moment, we got to reckon with the fact the absence of friendliness or love as we call it, results in the production of vulgar and violent basic human motivations like enmity and hostility, resulting in wars and invasions in the world as mass movements. The driving force behind such activities is, more often than not, arrogance and claims of superiority generated individually or collectively through ethnic identities, religious loyalties and political ideologies.

Myths of both the east and the west, India and the western world, have chosen to link love with eroticism. They invariably combine love with sex, unmindful as to, which generates which. Hence their production of mythical characters like Eros, Cupid and Ananga. In their world of art, painting and sculpture, they present their Lord of Love as piercing the human heart with arrows, call them whatever you will as flower darts or any other. Love does and must precede sex and exist well ahead of it.

In Buddhism, metta or the premier concept of friendliness in love heals and comforts the human heart. It never bleeds, the lover or the loved. It is the primary basis which generates the survival and continuance of all life. Anywhere and everywhere, this concept of love or metta is always lofty, noble and magnanimous. As Buddhists when we say in our spiritual culture Sabbe satta bhavantu sukhitatta, our theme always is May all beings be well and happy.

True love as presented in the Buddhist concept or metta alone is capable of generating in the world Peace on earth and goodwill among men.

Professor Dhammavihari 20^th September 2004