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Is unconditional love a myth?

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tsarstepan
 
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 07:59 am
Is unconditional love a myth?

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Type: Discussion • Score: 11 • Views: 6,969 • Replies: 114
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maxdancona
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 08:02 am
@tsarstepan,
Of course not.

Conditional love is a myth.
0 Replies
 
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 08:03 am
@tsarstepan,
...not just love but any other thing requires a set of conditions to operate...starting with space and time and on the far end with local/personal requirements, so it is not the case that anything can work on unconditional frames... (that is just another pretentious anthropic utopia adding to the list of nonsense we produce on a daily basis)
maxdancona
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 08:15 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
That's not what unconditional love means Fil.

If I tell my daughter "I love you as long as you don't become a Republican", that would be a condition to love except in my opinion once there is a condition it would no longer be love.

Since I love my daughter with unconditional love, it would break my heart, but I would still love her.
tsarstepan
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 08:26 am
@maxdancona,
Quote:
that would be a condition to love except in my opinion once there is a condition it would no longer be love.

Interesting premise. Then what would it be classified as?

chai2
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 08:35 am
@tsarstepan,
tsarstepan wrote:

Quote:
that would be a condition to love except in my opinion once there is a condition it would no longer be love.

Interesting premise. Then what would it be classified as?




being held hostage.
0 Replies
 
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 08:57 am
@maxdancona,
...still wrong...you are not taking "condition" to its last consequences in there...the analytic mind should always go beyond what is convenient to believe in order to get close to the truth...
...anything needs conditions in general and even on particular terms, the difference being (in the hypothesis/potential of love) the less attached we are the more conditions we demand for something to conform to our needs...when we truly love the starting point of analysis already presupposes the presence of most needed conditions and thus invalid in assuming saying/imagining that whatever the outcome no requirements are needed...such reasoning comes out of a linear and poor frame of analysis and jumps into conclusions all to soon...
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 09:11 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
....what is meant with unconditional love from father to son is that I don´t need to question the nature of the person once that nature ultimately points to me...the condition is there...if adopted the condition is in the interaction...fail both and no love will exist...well maybe the idela the utopia...human beings are good at that...
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 09:23 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
...The possibilitty of unconditional love would imply stuff as a victim of 9/11 to love Osama Bin Laden without his repentence...thankfully love above all requires very fine tunned conditions!
0 Replies
 
JLNobody
 
  2  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 09:50 am
I agree that "true" love is unconditional. It is IN A SENSE absolute. On the other hand, there are reasons I love one person (even my--believe it or not-- republican friends) and not another (e.g., the democrats whom I abhor). Life is complex; the drive for consistency denies that complexity.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 09:59 am
@JLNobody,
...I often wonder why do you "love" inconsistency so much ?
So for you it is the case that there are several roots for the essence of love...I amaze myself with your natural ability and predisposition for fantasia...not that I don´t like you as an amicable person but we are complete opposites...your "hate" of logic is all to self evident J !
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 10:02 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
...I am the "Spock" and you are the "Bones" on Star Trek roles here in the forum...(what a mix eh !)
JLNobody
 
  2  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 10:14 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
I don't hate logic. It can protect us from stupid contradictions, contradictions in which we blatantly deny in one statement what we said in another. On the other hand I detest a crippling drive to logical consistency when it turns us away from the complexities of life describable only by paradox.
Insights come mainly in spurts, not explicitly deduced from a foundation of presuppositions any one of which can deny the value of its system of errors, each resulting from its debt to obsessive consistency. We are not so different; only variations on a (human) theme.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 10:15 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
...you know what is my biggest contradiction in life ? my biggest mistake ?
...the faith that I still put in pedagogy...on the possibility of communication with almost everybody...Joe, Kennethamy, Farmerman, or Setanta like people just drop off when they notice people are not at all willing to listen to reason or to openly and consistently debate with fair rules of engagement...
0 Replies
 
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 10:17 am
@JLNobody,
...paradoxes point to transcendent conditions...a non communicable non interchangeable set of rules by definition...contraries yes, paradoxes no ! (paradoxes are errors in judgement)

(oh, and up there you just contradicted yourself again...paradoxes=contradictions)
igm
 
  2  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 10:23 am
@tsarstepan,
tsarstepan wrote:

Is unconditional love a myth?

My understanding is that in Mahayana Buddhism ‘Unconditioned Love’ is defined as wishing all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. You start usually by generating love for your mother (often the easiest) then you spread that love out to include your father, other relatives, friends etc… then enemies (who you see as an enemy or dislike for some reason or they see you as an enemy etc... or both), then all sentient beings who are emotionally invisible to you. If you succeed this is called ‘Unconditional Love’ from a relative truth perspective. We also see that since mind has no start then we’ve been reborn so many times that everyone we meet has in a past life been our mother so this helps to see even our enemies with love because they have been our mother in some previous life as we have been theirs.

Ultimate truth simply acts with the prior (pre-ultimate truth) motivation of showing all without exception how to remove the root cause of suffering. However long that takes – hence the need for reincarnation i.e. Buddhists don’t choose reincarnation but since mind cannot be destroyed then it is a part of reality to be reincarnated until Buddhahood. So plenty of time to generate unconditioned love for all sentient beings without exception and to show them how (when they choose to) put and end to the root cause of suffering. That’s my understanding of this subject and the context found in Mahayana Buddhism.

Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 10:32 am
@igm,
igm wrote:

tsarstepan wrote:

Is unconditional love a myth?

My understanding is that in Mahayana Buddhism ‘Unconditioned Love’ is defined as wishing all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. You start usually by generating love for your mother (often the easiest) then you spread that love out to include your father, other relatives, friends etc… then enemies (who you see as an enemy or dislike for some reason or they see you as an enemy etc... or both), then all sentient beings who are emotionally invisible to you. If you succeed this is called ‘Unconditional Love’ from a relative truth perspective. We also see that since mind has no start then we’ve been reborn so many times that everyone we meet has in a past life been our mother so this helps to see even our enemies with love because they have been our mother in some previous life as we have been theirs.

Ultimate truth simply acts with the prior (pre-ultimate truth) motivation of showing all without exception how to remove the root cause of suffering. However long that takes – hence the need for reincarnation i.e. Buddhist don’t choose reincarnation but since mind cannot be destroyed then it is a part of reality to be reincarnated until Buddhahood. So plenty of time to generate unconditioned love for all sentient beings without exception and to show them how (when they choose to) put and end to the root cause of suffering. That’s my understanding of this subject and the context found in Mahayana Buddhism.




...wrong !
...again the confusion when departing from a temporal explanation into an atemporal explanation...conditions as a term, require a temporal frame referent to make sense...what you are speaking is precisely the love in its atemporal ultimate meaning...Ultimate love is the love of Order...no less LOGIC precisely...the intuition that everything fits and has a place even if temporally in conflict, that is, while the algorithm of the world is not complete, or simply put, still under way...

BUDDHISM precisely explains, that contradictions in the end, (NIRVANA), are dissolved...that there are no paradoxes !!!
Pemerson
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 10:37 am
It's possible, should a person choose, always, to forgive. A mighty big order.
igm
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 10:38 am
@Fil Albuquerque,
Fil Albuquerque wrote:

igm wrote:

tsarstepan wrote:

Is unconditional love a myth?

My understanding is that in Mahayana Buddhism ‘Unconditioned Love’ is defined as wishing all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. You start usually by generating love for your mother (often the easiest) then you spread that love out to include your father, other relatives, friends etc… then enemies (who you see as an enemy or dislike for some reason or they see you as an enemy etc... or both), then all sentient beings who are emotionally invisible to you. If you succeed this is called ‘Unconditional Love’ from a relative truth perspective. We also see that since mind has no start then we’ve been reborn so many times that everyone we meet has in a past life been our mother so this helps to see even our enemies with love because they have been our mother in some previous life as we have been theirs.

Ultimate truth simply acts with the prior (pre-ultimate truth) motivation of showing all without exception how to remove the root cause of suffering. However long that takes – hence the need for reincarnation i.e. Buddhist don’t choose reincarnation but since mind cannot be destroyed then it is a part of reality to be reincarnated until Buddhahood. So plenty of time to generate unconditioned love for all sentient beings without exception and to show them how (when they choose to) put and end to the root cause of suffering. That’s my understanding of this subject and the context found in Mahayana Buddhism.




...wrong !
...again the confusion when departing from a temporal explanation into an atemporal explanation...conditions as a term, require a temporal frame referent to make sense...what you are speaking is precisely the love in its atemporal ultimate meaning...Ultimate love is the love of Order...no less LOGIC precisely...the intuition that everything fits and has a place even if temporally in conflict, that is, while the algorithm of the world is not complete, or simply put, still under way...

BUDDHISM precisely explains, that contradictions in the end, (NIRVANA), are dissolved...that there are no paradoxes !!!

I'm explaining my understanding of Mahayana Buddhism, not trying to defend it against your rebuttal. So I've no comment.
Fil Albuquerque
 
  1  
Reply Mon 12 Sep, 2011 10:40 am
@Pemerson,
..."forgive" is in itself a condition..it means to comprehend, to compute a reason that at first was not understood...the far link !
0 Replies
 
 

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