Date Sent: December 07, 2013
QUOTE: On the tree of life are the cages of desires holding captive the birds of attachments. Love roams freely.
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Understand the difference between Love & Attachment.....from a Swami.
Love brings happiness & peace. Attachment, ownership and possessiveness brings pains and miseries - ALWAYS! No exceptions!
Samsaric (material) person CANNOT love...it is only attachment and ownership...therefore Samsaric person suffers from pains and lack-of-peace, most of his life.
The purest from of love one can see is love-of-a-mother...unfortunately it is still tainted with attachment....therefore comes packaged with pains and sufferings for the mother.
Difference Between Love & Attachment - By OM Swami
"What is unconditional love?" someone asked me the other day. "How do I love someone unconditionally?" In this post and the next, I'll write a bit about love and how I see it. Although, in the past I've written on this subject elsewhere, yet, allow me to further elucidate this topic. "What does it even mean when we say I love you?" I asked a group of people. "It means we have feelings for the other person," one answered. But what does having feelings mean? Before I write about unconditional love or even just love, it would help to distinguish between love and attachment. Here's a little story for you:
A man, the quiet type, was sitting with his friends in a local inn. After he had a couple of drinks, he opened up a bit and said to his friends, "Do you love me?"
"Of course, we do," said his friends, "that's why we are here together."
"So, do you know what I need?"
No one answered.
"If you don't know what I need then how can you say you love me?"
This says it all. Love is about understanding what the other person needs and not what you think they should need. This is the key difference between love and attachment. The former is about finding yourself in the happiness of the other person, whereas the latter is about feeling happy to have the other person your way. We can't say we love someone unless we find out what do they actually need and make an attempt to give them that. Attachment is like buying a golden cage for the bird you love, feeding it the finest food, it is wanting to keep that bird within your sight, and love is opening the cage and setting it free. Granted, the problem arises when the bird says I want to eat your food and I want to rest in your cage but I want to fly free at my leisure and will. Well, welcome to the world of relationships. Strange but real…
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