Is there a difference between love and attachment? Three reflections below:
Reflection 1: our senses leave impressions on the mind. It occurs to me that perhaps attachment could be thought of as our concern for the impression that an outside object or person leaves on our mind. In other words, attachment is concerned with our thoughts and expectations of another person.
And perhaps love is not carrying regard for the impression in our mind, but rather concern for the object in and of itself. i.e. care about the person not about one’s impression of the person?
Reflection 2: the most recurring Bollywood movie theme acrross decades now is boy meets girl, but parents disapprove. Why is this theme so persistently recurring and resonant?
Perhaps the parents have one conception of happiness and the children different. As audience we get to see the tension and drama that entails. I.e we carry a 'model of happiness' in mind and want to apply it. (sva-dharmame melu. Maro dharmamu bhayankaramainadhi, acharanaluku anuchinamainadhi - is the traditional belief).
Reflection 3: If the above hypothesis is true, then we wear masks to play roles - husband, wife, brother, friend, employee etc.
I am quite taken and indeed disturbed by the notion of masks. I wanted to share two poems. One by Paul Laurence Dunbar who was the son of slaves at the turn of the century in America.
The second is also a poem and one that I penned a decade ago that I have shared with you prior – while not in the same league as Dunbar by any means either in meter or truth bespoken, it does accurately reflect my concern regarding this topic.
We Wear the Mask (Paul Laurence Dunbar)
WE wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!
Mask
In life as occasions bear
You choose the mask you wear
When the day is finally done
All masks come undone
The best mask of all
Is when your parents call
Their gift of life so precious
Never render specious
The worst mask of all
Is the one you wear to earn
To gain food and shelter
Trading your soul in return
Without these various masks
You sure cannot survive
For it is not in your hands
When you live or die
But know behind the veil
Rests what is vital and true
Discover it, and joy will prevail
Don't confuse the mask with you
9 comments:
'Love' does not have any expectations.
Example ( not a good one) - A cow's love for it's calf.
Attachment ( or infatuation ) does require some amount of expectation ( One who is attracted or attached to some one ) does requrie some reciprocation.
Further, true love in humans is almost non existent. This is because 'thinking' gets in the way of it. In the above example, the cow does not 'think'! It is simply an intutive act. But thinking humans look for some parameters to make them love. Much more can be said about the subtle differences between the two.
Love is from the heart, attachment from the mind
If Love = soul then Attachment = body
If, Love = Mountain then Attachment = Hill
Love : "A strong positive emotion of regard and affection"
Attachment: "An appendage to an email"
Helen Fisher has written a bit about the differences (including brain chemistry) between romantic love and long-term attachment
Love creates a desire to overcome any issue between you and creates a proactive desire to keep it alive.
Attachment covers a broader group (including newly acquired dogs), is conditional and may wither if there has been little contact recently.
I don't do love or attachment. I do verbal-jihad
Haidt provides an interesting subsection titled: “Why Do Philosophers Hate Love?”
“If you are in passionate love and want to celebrate you passion, read poetry. If you ardor has calmed and you want to understand your evolving relationship, read psychology. But if you have just ended a relationship and would like to believe you are better off without live, read philosophy. Oh, there is plenty of work extolling the virtues of love, but when you look closely, you find a deep ambivalence. Love of God, love of neighbor, love of truth, love of beauty – all of these are urged upon us. But the passionate, erotic love of a real person? Heavens no!
In the ancient East, the problem with love is obvious: Love is attachment. Attachments, particularly sensual and sexual attachments, must be broken to permit spiritual progress. Buddha said, ‘So long as lustful desire, however small, of man for women is not controlled, so long the mind of man is not free, but is bound like a calf tied to a cow.’ The Laws of Manu, and ancient Hindu treatise on how young Brahmin men should live, was even more negative about women: ‘It is the very nature of women to corrupt men here on earth.’
In the West, the story is a bit different: Love is widely celebrated by the poets from Homer onwards. Love launches the drama of the Iliad, and the Odyssey ends with the lusty return of Odysseus to Penelope. When Greek and Roman philosophers get hold of romantic love, however, they usually despise it or try to turn it into something else. …When a man loves a beautiful body he must learn to love beauty in general, not the beauty of one particular body. He must come to find beauty in men’s souls, and then in ideas and philosophy. Ultimately he comes to know the form of beauty itself….
The later Stoics also object to the particularity of love, to the way it places the source of one’s happiness in the hands of another person, whom one cannot fully control. Even the Epicureans, whose philosophy was based on the pursuit of pleasure, value friendship but oppose romantic love. …Lucretius compares love to a wound, a cancer, and a sickness. The Epicureans were experts on desire and its satisfaction; they objected to passionate love because it cannot be satisfied….
Christianity brought forward many of these classical fears of love. …Rather, Christian love has focused on two key words: caritas and agape. Caritas (the origin of the word ‘charity’) is a kind of intense benevolence and good will; agape is a Greek word that refers to a kind of selfless, spiritual love with no sexuality, not clinging to a particular other person. …As in Plato, Christian love is love stripped of its essential particularity…. Love is remodeled into a general attitude toward a much larger, even infinite, class of objects.”
And then the verdict:
“Caritas and agape are beautiful, but they are not related to or derived from the kinds of love that people need. …Monkeys and people need close and long-lasting attachments to particular others. …[A]gape is real, but usually short-lived. It can change lives and enrich lives, but it cannot substitute for the kinds of live based on attachments.
There are several reasons why real human love might make philosophers uncomfortable. First, passionate love is notorious for making people illogical and irrational, and Western philosophers have long thought that morality is grounded in rationality.” [Me: A central target of the book is the refutation of this belief as the result of new scientific discoveries, a hint of which is in the above mentioned ‘A Path Forward’ email.]
Haidt then goes on to show how, from the outset of sociology with its founding by Durkheim and a hundred years of further studies have confirmed, “people need obligations and constraints to provide structure and meaning to their lives.” Or as the title of this section puts it, “Freedom Can Be Hazardous to Your Health.”
Nice musings... not sure I want to touch the love vs attachment thoughts. But I'll say this: the two poems on Mask are profound and call for self reflection.
I like how you ended: "Discover it... [but] don't confuse the mask with you." Beautifully said, with pinpoint precision.
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