"What Love Is Not" an Excerpt

This excerpt is from Chapter 4 of "Buddhism in a New Light."

“What Love Is Not”

Buddhism In A New Light

“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 loveable 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 be 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 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.”

The Truth of Love

It is easy to mistake control & dependency for love. The appearance of selfish love, like that of the devil king’s, is deceptive, for it’s selfishness does not show as long as the recipient of such a 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. 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.”

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, no 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.

This symbiotic relationship between the dominant and 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 kind’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?’” “When an ordinary person of the latter age is read to attain Buddhahood…this devil is great 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?’”

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” 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 unfulfilmment 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 & 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 live 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.” To shed light on this fundamental darkness through strengthening our confidence in Buddhahood, then, is an essential practice for the art of loving. (From the December 7, 2001, World Tribune).