ManyHeart wrote: ↑Tue May 17, 2022 3:33 pm others also correctly downplayed the negativity of a rando saying "You don't love *Them* you just love a 'thing' about them" -- on the surface and I would say in the depth of it that is simply conflict-for-no-purpose, i,e., just a mistaken way of viewing; or at worst, nihilism.
This is an extremely subtle topic imo. A possible definition for the deepest love I can think of would be loving the sentience of the being. *Absolute* unconditional love, if you like.
But this is arguably foundational to all of what is called love in this context. You love a being with qualities, not just the qualities themselves. The love of a robot's qualities is not the same as the love of a person
along with their qualities.
Nonetheless, purely unconditional love within certain relationship roles would be disastrous. Even the love of parents for children is conditional on genetic connection - or at least on a positive decision to care for a child nor related by blood. Or with your dog example (Wu!/Meh...
), unconditional love is there for the owner of the pet
as master/pack leader [or member] - and may be withdrawn if the owner harms the dog as a result of a psychotic break or somesuch. Likewise, the love of a woman for a man is conditional on her having chosen him as a mate, and when you consider the role of females in the animal kingdom as
the genetic 'selectors', it becomes obvious that the health and happiness of future generations depends on women loving "things about" men, and withholding love from men who don't have enough 'things about' them.
In particular, being loved in that context often depends on a brain that sacrifices sentience for action, in other words a human-asura/psychopathic brain (as psychiatrically defined) that typically achieves the most sophisticated aims *because* its function is so streamlined (-to the point that brainwave studies suggest a state of consciousness that neurotypicals show only while waking up and falling asleep-).
On the other hand, tech-oriented autistic men, whose "things about" are simpler, messier, and less relatable (inasmuch as autistic brains process sensory information evenly rather than sculpting it into a relational world), are sometimes loved by women in spite of that, but financial resources are likely to have played a conscious or unconscious part in the choice.
ManyHeart wrote: ↑Tue May 17, 2022 3:33 pm we could ask, "What is love?" that is a very interesting but infinite question, as in, "What is light," or "What is energy,"
So all in all, the whys and wherefores of ordinary love are 'once removed' from its [underlying] nature - to one distance or another.
That's still before the question of attachment is brought into the picture - whether and how strongly the ego appropriates the object of love. {..And there's twists here that I can't fathom...}
ManyHeart wrote: ↑Tue May 17, 2022 3:33 pm and most perhaps Western Buddhists will shy away from this as it is a little bit reminiscent of other religious systems of thought (or perhaps without the 'other') which have become corrupt or have been used for ill.
I'm sure you weren't trying to imply this, but it seems doubtful either that other religions abused the concept of love directly (although doubtless the Christian teachings on 'turning the other cheek' were used to persuade a lot of people to roll over to rough treatment, etc. etc.), or that many Western Buddhists shy away from Buddhist teachings on universal love/compassion in particular. But it's fair to say that Buddhist teachings on love are presented with mindfulness of the dangers of attachment (needless to say!), and also of the lack of a potential overall focus, such as a God or any other kind of religious figure or universal "Mind", in the Dharma, all of which makes them fairly guarded and specific when addressing love as a [potential] spiritual principle, at least on the whole.
ManyHeart wrote: ↑Tue May 17, 2022 3:33 pmCan we love perfectly? Well of course
I'd still imagine this would be reserved for Buddhas and Bodhisattvas