Love, Itself Was Gone

Yesterday I was talking with a friend about the similarities between the first nation Americans and the Tibetans, both have a very strong sense of the inter-connectedness of all things. In Buddhist speak, ‘dependent origination’ or, less clunky, ‘inter-being’. A sensibility that is commonly found amongst groups of people who have not entirely lost their connection, their place within the ‘family of things’ to quote Mary Oliver.

It then occurred to me that there was also a profound difference between the first nation people and the early Buddhism that the Buddha taught and that we could use the notion of the two arrows to clarify this difference. So remember the two arrows? The first we can say is the hard fact of something (over which we have no choice), and the second is how we respond to this (which is both entirely our responsibility and our choice). So here the first arrow, the undeniable fact, is that the universe is interconnected, one huge net of infinite links, a process in perpetual flux. However, we do have choices how we respond to this and while the native Americans chose to feel held as a part within the whole, (please forgive the generalisation here), the early Buddhists, noticing that there was much suffering involved in being part of the family of things, said whoa, I want out of here and their exit plan was called nirvana. So a really big difference - intimate engagement or withdrawal.

Now, for some of us this early Buddhist response feels rather bleak if not entirely nihilistic. It really is a withdrawal from the world and all its richness - the early Buddhist monks may have wanted to cloister themselves away but for the rest of us we may think, yes, there is much suffering but in many cases this is the price of love and we are willing to pay it. I also suspect that several generations later the Buddhist community also began to feel this. Just at the time when there was no one alive any longer who had known someone who had known the Buddha, a movement began to find expression and popularity that became known as the ‘Greater Vehicle’, Mahayana Buddhism. What was its principal difference? It brought to the fore the ideal of the bodhisattva, that we should practice the Dharma not for ourselves alone, but everyone else as well. The goal of final liberation from the world of suffering still existed but effectively it was placed a very long way off in the future and in the meantime our relationship to each other and the world around us became of first importance. Kindness and compassion move to the centre. Now the second arrow of response for Mahayana Buddhists is love.

Then talking with Philippa a third step became apparent that is the choice made by the non-dual schools of Buddhism that include Dzogchen and Zen. Now the notion of a buddha-nature emerges which, when resting in it, reveals that everything is simply awareness expressing itself. Nothing more. This is nicely caught by Leonard Cohen’s song. “Love Itself”, which is about an enlightenment experience he had during his many years spent in a Zen Buddhist monastery in California. He sings:

I'll try to say a little more

Love went on and on

Until it reached an open door –

Then love itself

Love itself was gone.

So here we have it: the shift from the dualistic mind into the non-dualism of intrinsic awareness. In this shift love is no longer just something personal that we value and cultivate but, going through the open door, we discover it is an intrinsic element of the indivisibility of emptiness and clarity, the Dzogchen description of the ground of being. Or we could say more poetically, that our human love is an intimation, a hint, a shadow of the vast and almost impersonal or transpersonal love that is part of the buddha-nature. It’s just this immensity peeking through.

NW. 13 September 2024   With thanks to M. J. B.