Do you believe that such a thing as love exists (Read details)?

Question

In western countries like the US, what people call "love" seems awfully similar to "what have you done for me lately"

It's all about how much you expect to get from the person you "love"

*sigh*

Answer 1

i think love exists because you must love something, your family, your pet it has to be something but if you or another person is just loving just to see what you/they can get out of it then you are loving for the wrong reason and its not really love. but it does exist.

Answer 2

Human love is completely different from universal love.  Human love have attachments.  Depending on the person, there are agendas, and then there is the lust.  Lust is often mistaken for love.  Lust is pleasurable, but it's NOT love.  Pure love is present many times, but because of our mental dominance to "think", it is confused.

Universal (or pure love) is simply neutrality.  It's a state of nothing and everything at the same time.  There is no feeling, no thought.  Love just is.  We possess it, but the westerners were taught from the beginning to thrive on the mental way of life and in survival, giving way to the spiritual body.  If we were taught from the beginning to thrive on our spiritual body to guide us in our lives, we'd see more people really experiencing love on its purest level.  Love itself is not learned, but it's setting aside the mental mind (shoulds and shouldn'ts) to access this love...is learned.

Answer 3

Know what? I agree with you.

But still, I believe in love. I know what it is. I know love when I want someone to be happy as can be even if I'm never going to be part of their life. It isn't so difficult to achieve... you only need to let yourself love. Love is about giving and receiving, but you cannot expect people to be ready or to want to be part of it. Most of today's relationships are based on owning the other person. Like when you get into a relationship, you expect the person to belong to you, to be yours. That is not love. But I'm not saying anything new. Think about it, what is marriage about anyway? An exclusive contract. That is what society sees as a basis to love, getting married. A contract. How romantic!

Forget about what other people say love is, and find it for yourself.

One thing though... Love can never be destructive. That is not the nature of love. Passion and lust are many times confused with it. There is no pain in loving someone. Your (and mine, mind you) perception of it might ruin it though.

Complicated matter, huh?

Answer 4

My parents argue regularly, hidden behind their words is a ton of self-hatred.

Answer 5

Yes, I have been in love with my wife of 42 years, since I met her.

Nothing Higher to Live For

A Buddhist View of Romantic Love

Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano

(Leonard Price)

The love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man is often the floor to which people fall after the collapse of other dreams. It is held to be solid when nothing else is, and though it frequently gives way and dumps them into a basement of despair, it still enjoys a reputation of dependability. No matter that this reputation is illogical — it still flourishes and will continue to flourish regardless of what is said in any book. Love, or possibly the myth of love, is the first, last, and sometimes the only refuge of uncomprehending humanity. What else makes our hearts beat so fast? What else makes us swoon with feeling? What else renders us so intensely alive and aching? The search for love — the sublime, the nebulous, the consuming — remains sacred in a world that increasingly despises the sacred. When the heroic and the transcendental are but memories, when religious institutions fill up with bureaucrats and social scientists, when nobody believes there is a sky beyond the ceiling, then there seems no other escape from the prison of self than the abandon of love. With a gray age of spiritual deadness upon us, we love, or beg for love, or grieve for love. We have nothing higher to live for.

Indeed, many take it on faith that romantic love is the highest thing to live for. Popular literature, movies, art, and music tirelessly celebrate it as the one truth accessible to all. Such love obliterates reason, as poets have long sweetly lamented, and this is part of its charm and power, because we want to be swept up and spirited out of our calculating selves. "Want" is the key word, for in the spiritual void of modern life the wanting of love becomes increasingly indistinguishable from love itself. So powerful, so insistent is it that we seldom notice that the gratification is rare and the craving relentless. Love is mostly in anticipation; it is an agony of anticipation; it is an ache for a completion not found in the dreary round of mundane routine. That we never seem to possess it in its imagined fullness does not deter us. It hurts so bad that it must be good.

Answer 6

ME FIRST:

To think of 'love' as merely what you can get from others is not love at all because it is wrapped up in 'self' only. This kind of love leads to disappointment, frustration, and disillusionment because it revolves solely around the person's self-interests: what's in it for me?

YOU FIRST:

True love is when you have placed others before your own interests. It is when you care more for their happiness than your own. You are happy when they are happy because your joy is in them.

And yes, true love does exist although there are many kinds of love but that's going into another topic. Later.

Answer 7

i prefer to believe it does not exist, so when i use people or i get used by them i just call it a vicious cycle of life and not expect so much by calling it love.

Answer 8

You are right but that is Not love. to truly love someone is to put them above yourself. if someone said you die or your husband dies I would gladly die for him, same for my kids.(maybe even for you.)

Answer 9

It's true. It's like the song says... "The more you suffer, the more it shows you really care, right?"

Sad.  

Answer 10

While the US is probably one of the shallowest nations, I don't think its a western thing to love for money or convenience.  I think its just a habit that's learned through example by people who are raised in high-class, egotistical families.

Answer 11

yes it does.And it only exists if its built on a true (solid rock) foundation.

Yes, its true that most people seek love from others, of which is supposed to be the opposite.You are supposed to give it away and receive it in return.In other words, it is inside out and not the other way round.

When you expect someone else to know your self more than yourself, then you go wrong.meaning, you will not receive what you expect simply because we know our selves better than anyone else.

Thanks for asking dear.