Opinion: Finding True Love
Opinion: Finding True Love
Joshua Goh Jin Seng
Joshua Goh Jin Seng
Love songs make up more than half of the top Billboard singles for the past twenty years. But what is “love”? And should a Buddhist love?
At first glance, of course the Buddhist should engage in love. We sing about love, we talk about love, and we seek it out in our lives. We need love for our happily-ever-afters in our songs and dreams. We talk about having the freedom to love whom we choose, we describe it as showing affectionate care to those close to us. Love is on our minds all the time. To ask anyone to not love is like asking them to stop breathing. We just can’t help falling in love.
Yet, look at the songs we sing:
For all the times that you made me feel small
I fell in love, now I feel nothing at all
I never felt so low and I was vulnerable
Was I a fool to let you break down my walls?
— Love Yourself, Justin Bieber, 2015
Tonight the music seems so loud
I wish we could lose this crowd
Maybe it’s better this way
We’d hurt each other with the things we’d want to say
We could have been so good together
We could have lived this dance forever
But now, who’s gonna dance with me? Please stay
— Careless Whisper, George Michael, 1985
Love hurts (in a bad way). There’s no getting around that. These love songs describe the anguish in each of singers’ personal situations – loneliness, weakness, vulnerability, despair, guilt, bitterness, and so on. And all of them are Billboard top singles – we buy them, listen to them on repeat. We resonate with these experiences and feelings, whether we are wrestling with our own romances or awaiting our turn. When we miss our chance at love, we feel hurt. When we try to love, we hurt others and ourselves. When we stop loving, we hurt others. We want to find our own happily-ever-afters, but it seems perpetually out of reach.
Perhaps it’s better, then, to reject love. A whole genre of “anti-love songs” has spawned:
I never miss a beat, I’m lightning on my feet
And that’s what they don’t see, mm-mm
That’s what they don’t see, mm-mm
I’m dancing on my own, I make the moves up as I go
And that’s what they don’t know, mm-mm
That’s what they don’t know, mm-mm
— Shake it Off, Taylor Swift, 2014
Spend more time with my friends, I ain’t worried ‘bout nothin’
Plus, I met someone else, we’re havin’ better discussions
I know they say I move on too fast, but this one gon’ last
‘Cause her name is Ari, and I’m so good with that
— Thank U, Next, Ariana Grande, 2019
To these singers, it’s not about finding love in hopeless places, but learning to love ourselves. If anything, love shows us that it isn’t worth it. Having endured the pains of heartbreak and the judgemental stares of others, and being in and out of marriages, they sing about giving up love. Even if everyone else rejects you, what truly matters is who you are. And even if everyone else gives up on you and lets you down, what truly matters is moving forward with the one who won’t run around and desert you: yourself.
But what about the Buddhist? Most Buddhists believe “no-self”: there is nothing about us that remains constant over time. Everyone gets older, and parts of us constantly die. Memories fade, scars heal, and identities changes. It would be weirder to think there is something constant about us, some sense of self or soul. For the Buddhist, there is nothing special that connects present-you to future-you. Everyone is interconnected and affects everyone else, so future-you would be as much a stranger to you as anyone else. Why, then, should we believe that future-you won’t be disappointed about present-you, or even be grateful for the efforts that present-you is making? It seems the Buddhist can’t accept what anti-love songs teach, to love themselves and trust that future-you will figure it out.
But trying to love and getting ourselves hurt just seems wrong. Above and beyond what has already been said, most Buddhists also believe the goal of life is to reduce suffering. All of life is suffering, and suffering comes from our craving of things. Having seen all the hurt and pain that comes from love, we see that choosing to love is like choosing to sprint into the wall. Love is suffering, plain and simple. Even if it doesn't hurt now, it will hurt. Why get us into that?
Boys only want love if it’s torture, don’t say I didn’t, say I didn’t warn ya
So it’s gonna be forever, or it’s gonna go down in flames
You can tell me when it’s over, if the high was worth the pain
Got a long list of ex-lovers, they’ll tell you I’m insane
‘Cause you know I love the players, and you love the game
— Blank Space, Taylor Swift, 2014
Well, for the Buddhist, this sort of romantic love isn’t true love. It’s self-centred love. If we try to hold onto it, hold onto people, Buddhism teaches that this is essentially an act of craving. It’s a craving for affection and attention, an addiction to making ourselves feel good. We’re addicted to the affection in romantic love, and also the idea of being in love. We do all manner of ill-advised things to chase the highs of love. And just like a drug, when we get cut off from love, we feel the lowest of lows. We aren’t ourselves, falling into depressive slumps, withdrawing from others, and lamenting about heartbreak (which, ironically, make for great hits).
If this were the whole story about love, then sure. Reject love. But it’s not. There’s so much more to love than simply romantic love. The warm and nurturing care of a parent. The ties of friendship through the struggles of life. Genuine trust and honesty with confidants in the face of crises. These are all examples of true love: others-centred, non-transactional, self-sacrificial. Love is kind, compassionate, brings joy, and non-discriminatory. True love isn’t about fulfilling our desires, it’s about seeking the happiness of others. It’s not about us; it's about seeking the happiness of others and reducing suffering.
And for this sort of true love, well, the world would be much better if it were more than just the Buddhists who think this way.
For this piece, I sought to make the Buddhist views on love more relevant and accessible for a wider audience. Using pop songs seemed to make for a helpful touch point and starting position to talk about love and our pre-conceptions on it. Pop songs generally portray romantic love as the most important love for us to pursue, and the love that occupies most of our attention. According to the Buddhist worldview, this sort of love is a form of attachment, a craving that generates more suffering. This piece sought to remind us that there is more to love than simply romantic love, and we have good reason to pursue love more broadly.
I chose to write this unessay as an opinion piece – short, pointed, and grounded in evidence. Writing this way was meant to help in engaging a wider audience. Philosophical essays tend to be long, technical, and precise. But in bringing this to a more general audience, attention spans tend to be shorter, and there is more of a need for “click-bait” titles and content to entice readers to engage. In this vein, the title was chosen to provoke and lead into the main argument in the final paragraphs. The shorter length is meant to help keep the reader’s attention, while also keeping the writing concise and precise (if somewhat over-generalising? But that is a common feature in opinion pieces too). It also helps provoke readers to consider their preconceptions and alternate worldviews.
Regarding class material, most of the arguments and claims come from the class readings and discussions on Love, and especially the thoughts of Tenzin Palmo. There is also reference to more basic worldviews of Buddhism, drawn from the introductory class. I recognise that there are different strands of Buddhism which emphasise different suttas or lifestyles, the goal was to accommodate as many of these strands while being able to present a substantive view to evaluate the world with. These worldviews are presented to readers in the final paragraphs, and readers are invited to consider accepting this views as their own. In other words, it presents a solution to the problem of love raised by pop songs of this generation
Of course, there is always more that the piece could have done, additional concepts to explore and make explicit. This piece didn’t look to redeem romantic love, nor did it investigate the reasons for these portrayals. These were done in the interest of being short and succinct. This form of content, as I see it, is as a step towards being more intentional in making philosophy more accessible to the public. In the same way that the field of science has researchers and explainers, so too could philosophy benefit from such communicators – both in providing basic philosophical backgrounds to the listeners, and feeding back potential thoughts and concerns from the masses that could hold the keys to big problems in philosophy.