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11. What Love is Not |
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“Love is not love...”
As Shakespeare once wrote (Sonnet 116), what seems to
be love sometimes 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 seems usually 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 such an attitude may be that love is a feeling of pleasure
and comfort only to be stimulated by an external object.
The usual remedy for life without love, therefore, is
to find that object—someone new and better. Erich
Fromm, a noted psychologist and social philosopher, considers
love as 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.
To master the art of loving
is to overcome the desire for control and dependency
One of the greatest obstacles to the joy of loving is
our desire for control. We sometimes mistake our wish
to control others for our loving concern. We may think
of ourselves as affectionate, yet our “love”
may be a disguised desire to manipulate others for our
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 literally means the “heavenly
being who makes free use of others” (Jpn takejizaiten).
Through his lively descriptions of this “devil,”
the Daishonin seems to indicate 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,
the Daishonin states, “The devil king of the sixth
heaven is endowed with the Buddha’s thirty-two features
and manifests the Buddha’s body” (Gosho Zenshu,
p. 114). The Daishonin 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” (The Writings of Nichiren Daishonin, p.
770). In fact, there is even a type of devil in the Buddhist
tradition called “the devil of compassion”
(Gosho Zenshu, p. 526). Those who are eager to control
others often appear affectionate—“taking care
of them” or “being nice to them”—with
the aim of keeping them 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” (Act 1, trans. by James
McFarlane and Jens Arup).
The truth of love is found
in our sincerity to act for the happiness and freedom
of others
It is easy to mistake control and dependency for love.
The appearance of selfish love, however, like that of
the devil king’s, is only deceptive, for it is conditional
to submission. As the Daishonin 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 would
hope to see others deprived in one way or another in order
to maintain their sense of superiority. 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. As the Daishonin states, “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). Those
who thrive on domination may easily show pity for others
in suffering, while inwardly delighting at the sight.
For 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 verify
the meaning of their existence on their own, so they must
derive a sense of power from the subjugation of others.
Similarly, those who easily submit to an external authority
cannot see their self-worth. So they feel impelled 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 to live for, but they cannot endure
the emptiness of having nobody to live for either. So
they must seek an external object with which to merge
their identity so that they may not face the weakness
and emptiness of their own lives. 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. The Daishonin’s following
descriptions of the devil king illustrate his 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, we must free
ourselves from the fundamental darkness within
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,”
if it could be so called at all, 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 another’s loss of ease, / And builds a
Hell in Heavens despite” (“The Clod &
the Pebble,” ed. David V. Erdman). To love truly,
we must be free. To be free, then, we must discover our
innate self-worth. In the same sonnet quoted earlier,
Shakespeare also wrote, “Let me not to the marriage
of true minds / Admit impediments.” One of the greatest
impediments to our ability to love is a 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 the Daishonin says,
“The fundamental darkness manifests itself as the
devil king of the sixth heaven” (WND, 1113). To
shed light on this inner “fundamental darkness”
through strengthening our confidence in Buddhahood within
our lives, then, is an essential practice for the art
of loving.
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(Originally published in the World
Tribune, Dec. 7, 2001)
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