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2. Buddhism in New Light Chapter
4: What Love Is Not |
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Shin Yatomi
SGI-USA Study department leader
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1)
One of the greatest obstacles to the joy of loving
is our desire for control. To master the art of
loving is to overcome this selfish desire.
2) It is easy to mistake control and dependency
for love. The truth of love, however, is found in
our sincerity to act for the happiness and freedom
of others.
3) To love truly, we must free ourselves from the
fundamental darkness within—in other words,
our denial of our own enlightenment. Authentic love
begins with our innate sense of selfworth. |
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“Love is not love” (Sonnet
116). As Shakespeare writes, what seems to be love may
not be love at all.
As much as the subject of love occupies many people’s
minds (and perhaps much of their time and money), their
greatest concern appears to be confined to finding love
or becoming lovable in the eyes of others, rather than
the meaning of love or the capacity for loving.
The underlying assumption of this attitude may be that
love is a feeling of pleasure and comfort stimulated only
by an external object. The usual remedy for life without
love, therefore, is to find someone new and better.
Erich Fromm, a noted psychologist and social philosopher,
considers love an art that “requires knowledge and
effort”; he defines love as “the active concern
for the life and the growth of that which we love”
(The Art of Loving, pp.1, 25). If love is one’s
capacity to wish and act for the happiness and freedom
of another person, a fundamental solution
to the suffering of love must be sought not outward but
in the development of the character and inner strength
that make us capable of loving more genuinely and powerfully.“
Mastering the Art of Loving
One of the greatest obstacles to the joy of loving is
our desire for control. People sometimes mistake their
wish to control others for loving concern.
They may think of themselves as affectionate, yet their
“love” may be a disguised desire to manipulate
others for personal gain. In his writings, Nichiren Daishonin
often uses a mythic Buddhist creature called the devil
king of the sixth heaven as a metaphor for the deep-seated
human desire to control others.
Indeed, another name for this devil king (Jpn takejizaiten)
literally means the “heavenly being who makes free
use of others.” Through his lively descriptions
of this devil, Nichiren indicates the importance of becoming
aware and vigilant of our desire to use others as a means
to our selfish ends.
Since dependency is essential to control, the devil king
uses various schemes to make people dependent on him.
One of his main tools to encourage dependency is manipulation
through feigned affection. Despite the general perception
of the devil king as a fierce monster, he is adept at
appearing affectionate. To lure people and keep them under
his control, the devil king is said to make himself look
like a Buddha or parent.
For example, Nichiren writes, “The devil king of
the sixth heaven is endowed with the Buddha’s thirty-two
features and manifests the Buddha’s body”
(gz, 114). He also quotes from a Buddhist commentary,
which states, “So long as a person does not try
to depart from the sufferings of birth and death and aspire
to the Buddha vehicle, the devil will watch over him like
a parent” (wnd, 770). In fact, there is even a type
of devil in the Buddhist tradition called “the devil
of compassion” (gz, 526).
Those who are eager to control others often appear affectionate
with the aim of keeping others dependent materially or
emotionally. In Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House,
the seemingly affectionate yet controlling husband Torvald
Helmer reminds his wife, Nora, of his “love”
expressed in the form of financial support: “My
pretty little pet is very sweet, but it runs away with
an awful lot of money. It’s incredible how expensive
it is for a man to keep such a pet” (Henrik Ibsen:
Four Major Plays, trans., James McFarlane and Jens Arup,
p. 4).
The Truth of Love
It is easy to mistake control and dependency for love.
The appearance of selfish love, like that of the devil
king’s, is deceptive, for its selfishness does not
show as long as the recipient of such feigned affection
remains submissive. As Nichiren points out, the devil
king is affectionate “so long as a person does not
try to depart from” his control (wnd, 770). Some
people may give anything to their “loved ones”
only to keep them dependent.
Those obsessed with control, however, usually find it
difficult to wish for the genuine happiness and independence
of others. Instead, they hope to see others deprived in
one way or another in order to maintain their sense of
superiority and control. As Nichiren writes, “The
nature of this devil king is to rejoice at those who create
the karma of the three evil paths and to grieve at those
who form the karma of the three good paths” (wnd,
42).
The test of our love, in this sense, lies in our sincerity
to encourage and work for the self-reliance and freedom
of our loved ones. Those who thrive on domination may
easily show pity for others in suffering, while inwardly
delighting at the sight. The misery of others affords
those in control yet another opportunity to show their
superiority and thereby remind those suffering of their
need for dependency.
At the core of a relationship built on domination and
submission lies a profound sense of insecurity and powerlessness
on both sides. Those who like to dominate cannot accept
their existence on their own, so they must derive a sense
of power by subjugating others. Similarly, those who easily
submit to an external authority cannot see their self-worth,
so they feel compelled to become part of someone “better”
and “stronger” by abandoning their identity
and integrity.
To such submissive people, control means protection against
their own insecurity. Those submissive to an external
authority do not see their lives as worthwhile, nor can
they endure the emptiness of having no one for whom to
live. Instead, they must seek an external object with
which to merge their identity to avoid facing the weakness
and emptiness of their lives.
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Why do you think some people
are more concerned about becoming lovable or finding
love rather than developing the capacity to love
more profoundly and authentically? |
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In what ways has your Nichiren
Buddhist practice enabled you to love more profoundly
and authentically? |
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Nichiren Daishonin saw the
workings of the devil king of the sixth heaven in
his own life (see wnd, 310). What did you learn
about yourself from the story of the devil king?
How do you relate to his selfishness and insecurity? |
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This symbiotic relationship between the dominant and the
submissive is disturbed when the submissive party uncovers
his or her self-worth and develops the inner strength
to become independent. Then the dominant party’s
insecurity will surface as frustration and anger.
Nichiren’s following descriptions illustrate the
devil king’s intense fear and anxiety in this regard:
“When we thus draw near to achieving Buddhahood...the
devil king of the sixth heaven, lord of the threefold
world, reasons: ‘If these persons should become
Buddhas, I will suffer loss on two counts. First of all,
if they free themselves from the threefold world, they
will escape my control. Second, if they become Buddhas,
their parents and siblings will also depart from the saha
world. How can I stop this from happening?’”
(wnd, 1094). “When an ordinary person of the
latter age is ready to attain Buddhahood...this devil
is greatly surprised. He says to himself, ‘This
is most vexing. If I allow this person to remain in my
domain, he not only will free himself from the sufferings
of birth and death, but will lead others to enlightenment
as well. Moreover, he will take over my realm and change
it into a pure land. What shall I do?’” (wnd,
894).
To Love Truly
The devil king does not want anyone to attain enlightenment
and become free since that would be a painful reminder
of his own powerlessness and dependency. The paradox of
this devil king, who “dwells at the summit of the
world of desire and rules over the threefold world”
(wnd, 508), is that he is controlled by his own desire
to control.
The devil king is a ruler who cannot rule himself. The
more control he has, the more of it he needs. He is perpetually
driven by his inner weakness and insecurity, never feeling
satisfied. He is a prisoner of the prison he himself creates.
Although he is said to make “free use of others,”
he is never free in the innermost reality of his life.
The devil king, therefore, is incapable of loving.
The devil king is said to dwell in the sixth and highest
heaven of the world of desire, but his “love”
results only in profound unfulfillment and suffering beneath
its heavenly pleasure. As William Blake knew, such selfish
“Love seeketh only Self to please, / To bind another
to Its delight: / Joys in anothers loss of ease, / And
builds a Hell in Heavens despite” (“The Clod
& the Pebble,” The Complete Poetry and Prose
of William Blake, David V. Erdman, ed., p. 19).
To love truly, we must be free. To be free, then, we must
discover our innate self-worth. In Shakespeare’s
sonnet quoted earlier, he also wrote, “Let me not
to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.”
One of the greatest impediments to our ability to love
is delusion about the
truth of our inner life—Buddhahood. Such delusion
leads to powerlessness and dependency. The mythic devil
king is symbolic of this delusion. As Nichiren writes,
“The fundamental darkness manifests itself as the
devil king of the sixth heaven” (wnd, 1113). To
shed light on this fundamental darkness through strengthening
our confidence in Buddhahood, then, is an essential practice
for the art of loving.
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(from World Tribune, December
7, 2001)
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