Love is the Key Motivation

[icy]

In day to day life if you lead a good life, honestly, with love, with compassion, with less selfishness, then automatically it will lead to nirvana....We must implement these good teachings in daily life. Whether you believe in God or not does not matter so much; whether you believe in Buddha or not does not matter so much; as a Buddhist, whether you believe in reincarnation or not does not matter so much. You must lead a good life.

And a good life does not mean just good food, good clothes, good shelter. These are not sufficient. A good motivation is what is needed: compassion, without dogmatism, without complicated philosophy; just understanding that others are human brothers and sisters and respecting their rights and human dignity. That we humans can help each other is one of our unique human capacities. We must share in other peoples' suffering; even if you cannot help with money, to show concern, to give moral support and express sympathy are themselves valuable. This is what should be the basis of activities; whether one calls it religion or not does not matter.... In simple religion, love is the key motivation.

[dsiluvu]

There are Three kinds of motivation based on the Lamrim : Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand: A Concise Discourse on the Path to Enlightenment by Pabongka Rinpoche. There are three kinds of motivation....

Ati?a wrote in "Lamp of the Path" (verse 2) that one should understand that there are three kind of persons:

    1. persons of modest scope;
    2. persons of medium scope;
    3. persons of high scope.

Persons of modest motive search for happiness within samsara; their motive is to achieve high rebirth. Buddhists traditionally consider that this domain includes followers of most non-Buddhist religions who strive for a rebirth in a "heaven".

What I understand from this scope of motivation is that it is still quite a self one and not selfless. The person is only concern for his own self and to end his own suffering.

Persons of medium motive are searching for their own ultimate peace and abandon worldly pleasure. This includes the paths of pratyekabuddhas and ?ravakabuddhas, which seek personal liberation alone, the traditional goal of H?nay?na practice.

This motivation still isn't the highest form of motivation, it is still very much concern about one's own liberation.

Based on their insight of their own suffering, persons of high motive seek by all means to stop the suffering of all beings. This is the Mah?y?na path of the samyaksa?buddhas.

So I guess in a nut shell LOVE is a great start but LOVE for other's happiness is even greater! x

[dsiluvu]

And after the motivation, one does the virtuous "act" e.g. feeding the homeless, cleaning the Lama's abode/temple/center etc... you do a good dedication to sela that good deed/action. This then will reap the meritorious blessing from the divine forces and we can eventually do even more... and it grows from here on in. And how to give your motivation an energy that will be merits that helps one take a good rebirth! The below is one of my favourite Dedication prayer and if we could all live to practice this... it would be universal love

Shantideva’s Dedication Prayer
From The Bodhicharyavatara

The following is one of H.H. the 14th Dalai Lama’s favourite dedications, extracted from Chapter 10 of the Bodhicharyavatara of Master Shantideva.

May all beings everywhere
Plagued by sufferings of body and mind,
Obtain an ocean of happiness and joy
By virtue of my merits.

May no living creature suffer,
Commit evil or ever fall ill.
May no one be afraid or belittled,
With a mind weighed down by depression.

May the blind see forms
And the deaf hear sounds.
May those whose bodies are worn with toil,
Be restored on finding repose.

May the naked find clothing
The hungry find food
May the thirsty find water
And delicious drinks.

May the poor find wealth,
Those weak with sorrow find joy;
May the hopeless find hope,
Constant happiness and prosperity.

May there be timely rains
And bountiful harvests;
May all the medicines be effective
And wholesome prayers bear fruit.

May all who are sick and ill
Quickly be freed from their ailments.
Whatever diseases there are in the world,
May they never occur again.

May the frightened cease to be afraid
And those bound be freed;
May the powerless find power
And the people think of benefiting each other.

For as long as space remains,
For as long as sentient beings remain,
Until then may I too remain
To dispel the miseries of the world.

[michaela]

I think, this discussion is more appropriate to General Buddhism forum.  However, for the sake of discussion, this is my opinion about love:

I have read Lamrim and recites Shantideva dedication prayer daily.  However, initially, even now, I found that implementing love and compassion in my daily life is rather challenging because I have so many negative habituation.  When encountered with challenging situation, that usually invoke my anger, my first reaction through habituation was anger.  When this first reaction arise, you did not have any chance to think about Lamrim.  So the way to train this is by not reacting to the anger that arise spontaneously.  After that, the mind need to be trained with various good deeds and reasoning so love and compassion will become pervasive in your mind.  From my experience, the process is quite painful because there is a constant battle between your reasoning and negative habituation.  My mind has become a constant warzone between what my negative habituation think as “fair and just” and what my reasoning think is “fair and just.”  This is a clash between a contradictory point of view.

Over time, the force of negative habituation become weaker and weaker.  During this battle, the Lama’s blessings and example are very important to me.  Everytime, I feel that I wanted to give up, I just remember my Lama and the example he is setting.  Sometimes, one or two sentence that he said during our rare encounter really touched me and makes me cry uncontrollably on the spot.  That one or two sentence keep me going and help me to battle the negative forces in my mind.  I personally think that the biggest war is within oneself.  Once you conquer your mind, you can conquer the world.

[kris]

Moderators please move this post to "General Buddhism"..

[Ensapa]

Love has always been the basis of the Mahayana and Vajrayana teachings, but how many people actually observe it? There are so many practitioners out there who got stuck on this point...they can be very loving and inspired and very charged after reading Shantideva or some teaching on compassion and think that they have achieved that state or that level...but when they get bitten by mosquitos they lose their temper and kill the mosquito. As lay practitioners, it is very obvious that we have not reached the level that we are stable, but why is it that people often end up lying to themselves about this aspect? I have met a practitioner who only shows compassion selectively: only to poor people, but not to rich people, only to animals, but not to spirits. He was extremely arrogant and antagonistic towards spirits, and tells me he has mastered compassion and he understood what it was all about. Interesting way of seeing things....but that also means that he is lying to himself on this compassion thing. So how do we avoid such a trap?

It is very easy to be 'compassionate' towards someone or something that is weaker than us, but how do we generate compassion for those who are stronger than us? It is easier to generate compassion for a poor man, than to generate compassion for a billionaire who is very hollow and unhappy inside. If we have this inconsistency in our compassion and it is selective, how can it be true compassion and how do we overcome this sort of thing?

And yeah, this thread is more applicable to general Buddhism.

[samayakeeper]

Thank you, Icy, for this post but I agree with Michaela and Kris that this is more apt for General Buddhism.

[diablo1974]

Is there any different between love and compassion? if no,why do these two different words exist. Eversince i became a vajraayana practitioner, i am educated that motivation is the key to anything we do. It is like the root of all good and evil....but motivation with love and compassion brings our mind to appreciate more and do more for others. As we have been selfish at large since beginningless time, it is a challenge to instantaneously switch our mindset, but when we do it witht much effort...the mind will gradually inclines towards the positive  attitude and eventually eradicates the negative ones.

NOt only buddhism needs love and compassion.....All if us needs it.

[Barzin]

The words Love and Compassion are vaguely use these days.  If i haven't studied Buddhism I would be just as confused as the people who do not understand the true meaning of love and compassion.   It is more than an act, it is more than a gesture and manner.  In Buddhism, we know it stem from motivation and how sincere one act and feelings can be.

These words comprises of kindness, acceptance, tolerance, integrity, selfless, sincerity.. all the terms we studied in Buddhism if not the good qualities that we should have.  In today's world, people speak such words so easily, and yet no ingredients of tolerance, acceptance; this shows the true meaning of motivation behind the act.  Therefore, this is how Buddhism comes in handy for me to understand the whole picture better.  It is not just the act of helping an elderly across the street or get a bouquet of flowers and say I love you to my girlfriend.  It all come from our motivation without wanting anything in return, without thinking about ourselves and conduct the right action to benefit the other being.

It is hard in our daily life to even put much thoughts in our actions whether our actions are virtue or not let alone our motivations.  Therefore, if more and more people just based on generalist, just do the "right act".  Things would have been better in this world.

[Ensapa]

The words Love and Compassion are vaguely use these days.  If i haven't studied Buddhism I would be just as confused as the people who do not understand the true meaning of love and compassion.   It is more than an act, it is more than a gesture and manner.  In Buddhism, we know it stem from motivation and how sincere one act and feelings can be.

These words are now very lightly used these days and they have lost their true meaning. And like you, I would not have realize the real meaning of Love and Compassion, and to describe them these days you need to add the word altruistic to it, which means you dont expect anything back from the love that you give to the other and it has to be unconditionally.

These words comprises of kindness, acceptance, tolerance, integrity, selfless, sincerity.. all the terms we studied in Buddhism if not the good qualities that we should have.  In today's world, people speak such words so easily, and yet no ingredients of tolerance, acceptance; this shows the true meaning of motivation behind the act.  Therefore, this is how Buddhism comes in handy for me to understand the whole picture better.  It is not just the act of helping an elderly across the street or get a bouquet of flowers and say I love you to my girlfriend.  It all come from our motivation without wanting anything in return, without thinking about ourselves and conduct the right action to benefit the other being.

Lets just say that most people of our generation or rather on samsara, only have love on a conditional level, meaning that they will only love someone on a certain condition and when the condition changes or ends, the love or compassion stops too. For example, a person may not have any compassion for a healthy animal but only to an injured one, and once the animal heals, the person's compassion stops and  he/she leaves the animal to fend for themselves.

It is hard in our daily life to even put much thoughts in our actions whether our actions are virtue or not let alone our motivations.  Therefore, if more and more people just based on generalist, just do the "right act".  Things would have been better in this world.

Developing genuine love and compassion is not as easy as it looks, we will need to have equanimity towards all beings as real love and compassion is unconditional and does not have any limitations and nor will we hope for any returns to our love and compassion towards them. It's a process that we have to slowly develop.

[DS Star]

Is there any different between love and compassion? if no,why do these two different words exist.

Diablo1974, actually in Buddhism, these words have different meanings.

In the Four Immeasurables (widely use by Mahayana Buddhists) or the Four Brahma Viharas (widely use by Theravada Buddhists), the meaning of these words are very much related to our 'motivation'.

1. Love (Loving-kindness, not the lustful love), in Tibetan is Jampa (P?li: mett?, Sanskrit: maitri), which is the wish that living beings may have happiness and its causes.

2. Compassion, in Tibetan is Nyingjé or Ninje (P?li: and Sanskrit: karu??), which is" the wish that living beings may be free from suffering and its causes."


The other 2 Immeasurables are:

3. Joy, in Tibetan is Gawa (P?li and Sanskrit: mudita), which is the wish that living beings may remain happy and their happiness may increase further.

4. Equanimity, in Tibetan is Tangnyom (P?li: upekkh?, Sanskrit: upek??) , which is the wish that beings may be free from the attitude of attachment to some and aversion to others.

[DS Star]

Repost the Immeasurables because my earlier post have missing words. Here is it.

The Four Immeasurables

1. Love (Loving-kindness, not the lustful love), in Tibetan is Jampa (Pali: metta, Sanskrit: maitri),

2. Compassion, in Tibetan is Nyingjé or Ninje (Pali and Sanskrit: karuna)

3. Joy, in Tibetan is Gawa (Pali and Sanskrit: mudita),

4. Equanimity, in Tibetan is Tangnyom (Pali: upekkha, Sanskrit: upeksa)

[Ensapa]

being someone who have gone through the theravarda teachings before, I can say very clearly that there is a very clear cut difference between loving kindness and compassion. In loving kindness, one trains the mind to be altruistic by wishing all beings to be free of suffering but not actually engaging in actions to actually liberate all beings with compassion, one not just make the wish but actually engages in actions that liberate sentient beings in any way possible including engaging in Buddhist practices to transform the mind so that they will be of benefit to sentient beings to actually helping beings with their money or physical body. This is the main difference between the two terms.

[Dondrup Shugden]

being someone who have gone through the theravarda teachings before, I can say very clearly that there is a very clear cut difference between loving kindness and compassion. In loving kindness, one trains the mind to be altruistic by wishing all beings to be free of suffering but not actually engaging in actions to actually liberate all beings with compassion, one not just make the wish but actually engages in actions that liberate sentient beings in any way possible including engaging in Buddhist practices to transform the mind so that they will be of benefit to sentient beings to actually helping beings with their money or physical body. This is the main difference between the two terms.

In samsaric terms we also attach love to some form or method of possessiveness, lust, cravings and attachments.  The above is such a powerful understanding on love and compassion the Buddhist way. 

[kelly]

I personally like Ice comment good life does not means good food, good clothes, good shelter but it means love for others not just human being it also include all living being because they are like us want happiness do not want pain, with good motivation will eventually train us to be selfless and develope the ultimate compassion.