Buddhism has much to teach on the topic relationships, even though it may not seem that way at first. I mean what do the four noble truths (life is suffering; suffering is caused by attachment; it’s possible to stop suffering; there is an 8-fold path for doing so) have to do with figuring out how to love someone—or how to survive when someone stops loving you? Well, as a student of Buddhism and one who writes about relationships, I can tell you that every time I’ve tried to contextualize a Buddhist teaching as a way of understanding love, it works.
So not too long ago, I thought about the four noble truths and the three yanas in connection with that which we long for and fear the most: love. I don’t mean to be facile with these precious teachings. It’s just that I’ve been helped by them so much in matters of the heart and wanted to share them.
The four noble truths are as described above. The three yanas (or vehicles) are the Hinayana (foundational vehicle), Mahayana (great vehicle), and Vajrayana (indestructible vehicle.)
Hinayana teachings focus on personal conduct; getting your own life together.
Mahayana teachings are about what naturally happens next: your heart opens to others. You can’t help it. So the Mahayana is about compassion and recognizing the profound interconnectedness of all phenomena.
The Vajrayana is about working with every circumstance as an opportunity for complete enlightenment. Here one finds teachings on ordinary magic, crazy wisdom, and auspicious coincidence—the ways the world conspires to introduce you to your true nature.
With these ridiculously superficial explanations, let’s look at the four noble truths and the three yanas in light of relationships.
I made all this up, so please don’t take it too seriously.
Four Noble Truths of Relationships
1. Relationships are deeply uncomfortable.
Whether it’s your first date or tenth anniversary, there is simply an enormous amount of discomfort involved in relationships. We’re afraid of being hurt, disappointed, overtaxed, ignored. The interesting part is that all these things happen. This is just the way it is, even in happy relationships.
The thing no one tells you is that it’s impossible to stabilize a relationship. Yes, I really mean those italics. Impossible. The emotional exchange between two people shifts like grains of sand in the desert: some days you can see forever and some days you just have to take cover because something kicked up out of nowhere and now shit is flying all over the place. You can’t see two feet in front of you and it stings. On still other occasions, imperceptible winds cause little piles to slowly accumulate until, one day, a familiar path is altogether blocked. You just can’t tell what’s going to happen. And just like hiking in the desert, you have to be as absorbed in the present moment as you are attuned to atmospheric indicators. Woe to she whose attention to either lapses.
The bad news is you never get to where you thought you were going. You get somewhere else instead. The good news is that there’s basically no way to have a boring relationship.
2. Discomfort comes from trying to make the relationship comfortable.
At the root of the discomfort is the wish that it wouldn’t be uncomfortable, that we could eventually find the “right” person and relax. But the truth is that when you do find the (or a) right person, it’s anything but relaxing: your neuroses, their neuroses, and all the hopes and fears you’ve ever had about love flood your situation. Whether you bargained for it or not, you get introduced to your deepest self while someone else is trying to introduce you to their deepest self. It can get very confusing. But instead of wasting time trying to make it not confusing, better to dive right in and be really nice to each other as you consider the root of your own and his/her confusion. (Acting nice to each other in the midst of confusion is love. Shhh.) (PS Acting nice doesn’t always mean being all sweet and demure. But I digress.)
3. It’s the inability to create safety that plots the path to love.
True love seems to exist on some mysterious edge of its own. It can’t be controlled and when you try, it calcifies. To keep it alive, at some point you just have to let go and see what happens.
When you work with all this nuttiness, love becomes more than mere romance. It turns into something way better: intimacy. Romance has got to end, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. But intimacy? It has no end. You can’t be, “oh, intimacy, we’ve done that. What comes next?” Nothing comes next. That’s it. Discuss.
4. It is possible to work with the uncertainty skillfully.
Instead of flinging yourself kamikaze-like into the flame of love, you can train in working with the heat. As with anything you consider important (or life-threatening, for that matter), you don’t want to just show up and hope for the best. You want to play the odds.
Applying the view of the three yanas could help.
Three Yanas
1. Hinayana
As mentioned, Hinayana teachings are about personal conduct: right speech, right action, and so on. You get your own life in order through discipline, honor, and effort. You know how to make your bed, pick up your clothes, and make it to work on time. Basic stuff, but without which everything simply falls apart. Very important.
When applied to relationships, Hinayana view could mean things like calling someone when you say you will. Being on time. Having good manners. Listening when they talk and other such radical propositions.
2. Mahayana
When you are a stand-up human being, you can extend yourself to another in a more profound way. In fact, you want to. It just happens. You could find love and actually enjoy it.
Once you get into a relationship however, you find out something pretty disturbing: you have to love them back.
For whatever reason, all the relationship books and TV shows in the world seem to be about how to get love, not how to give it–which is quite a complicated proposition. Here’s the problem: most of us aren’t looking for someone to love. We’re looking for someone to cast in the role of boyfriend or girlfriend. Central casting, send me someone who has a job, a car, and speaks English! (My stringent requirements for potential boyfriends, back in the day.) You can get as specific as you want when you send in your requisition (I need someone with brown hair who likes dogs but not cats, enjoys rowing, and has never eaten at Hooters), but eventually that person is going to break character. Then what? Alarmingly, you have to dispense with all your requirements and have a look at the actual person in front of you. You see that this person is as important as yourself. This is the very teensy-tiny beginning of compassion: when you agree not to be the most important person on earth. But that’s okay. Now you can start to figure out what it really means to love.
3. Vajrayana
If the Vajrayana teachings are about meeting the circumstances of everyday life as a potential moment of transformation, then applied to relationships it could mean something like this: Every single thing that happens between you and your beloved is an opportunity to love more. Everything. Even crappy stuff.
Just as no one can tell you how to make giving birth or spilling your coffee into an opportunity to attain enlightenment, no one can tell you how to do so when your beloved leaves you for someone else or fails to empty the dishwasher. (Although he promised he would.) Big or small, heart crushing or annoying, delightful or irritating, no matter what happens, in the Vajrayana view it is fodder for wakefulness, for love. And just as with Vajrayana meditation practices, you can read books about how to do them and even have a great person teach them to you, but at some point you’re on your own. You have to figure it out for yourself.
The willingness to try is love itself. Isn’t it?
10 responses so far ↓
1 refugeseeker // Mar 10, 2008 at 2:47 pm
nothing here about “how to survive when someone stops loving you?”
how does buddhism help to deal with that?
2 lisa // Mar 19, 2008 at 10:23 pm
this was great. i think i’m going to send it to someone. thanks & keep writing.
(- from a random person who just bought your book.)
3 Ethan // Mar 24, 2008 at 1:07 pm
If you all want to hear Susan’s guest lecture on this subject at the Interdependence Project last month, you can find it on iTunes. It was a wonderful night!
4 susan // Mar 24, 2008 at 1:17 pm
refugeseeker, thanks for the incredibly important, not to mention difficult, question. I’m actually writing my next book on this very question. It’s called “The Wisdom of a Broken Heart” and will be out next year. Not very helpful, I know but I’m thinking so much about this very question and will post in the near future about it. In the meantime, a place to start is to note that in the suffering that comes with lost love is true wisdom. When your heart is broken, you are broken open. It doesn’t feel good, but as Leonard Cohen said in his song “Anthem,” “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
Is this what happened to you–someone stopped loving you? If so, I (and everyone who reads this blog, I’m sure) sends a lot of support your way!
Feel free to tell your story if you’d like.
All best, Susan
5 Celia // Mar 25, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Susan, I think the application of the 4 noble truths to relationships is wonderful. However, I struggle with many Buddhist discussions about love because I feel as though they take “being in love” at least initially, as a given. So often I read being ‘awake’ compared to the first feelings of being ‘in love’ in its newness and excitement etc.
My problem is that I’m NOT in love with the man I’m dating. I like him very much, he’s the kindest person in the universe, he’s intelligent, he’s devoted and our sex life is pretty good. But I don’t feel the excitement or thrill of being in love. I’ve never felt it. I feel nice and mushy in bed with him, but I feel as though that’s circumstantial. I’m struggling to reconcile whether my desire for that feeling of excitement is emerging from the romantic comedy narrative structure I’ve been bred on (and that make me weep hysterically) or if I would be better off alone than with someone with whom I do not have strong feelings.
As a short historical context, before I became involved with this man I was briefly dating another man for whom I was head over heels for. I got burned with a capital B by him, and fell into a deep depression. “There is no point for wanting or desiring anything in this world,” was the refrain that belabored my mind, kind of a nihilist vision of Buddhism.
This other man came along. He was sweet and kind and helpful. I wasn’t particularly into him but I did not believe in love, and I believed I was Buddhist enough to simply accept the circumstances. Maybe MY fulfillment wasn’t so important. If this man loved me, maybe it was enough to attempt to make one person other than myself happy. Maybe he would be a good partner on the path of my life. Perhaps, together, we might benefit the world. How important is love, really? Other than in the sale of movie tickets.
I still wonder if I don’t believe that. I’m terrified of the prospect of truly wanting another person to return my affection. But I look out onto the romantic horizon of my life with this man and I want to take a nap.
I’m confused. What would you say?
6 Rich // Apr 9, 2008 at 7:04 am
Celia, wow….we are both going thru the same situation! Your letter expresses everything I am feeling right now.
I’m on my way to work and don’t have a lot of time to write, but in 2005, I became head over heels in love with an amazing man. We connected intellectually, spiritually, and the sex was the best ever for both of us. It was easy and comfortable to spend time with each other.
I grew to love him over the course of 3 months. It all felt so good and right. Natural. 2 months later, he tells me that he’s not in love with me, and my world falls apart. We continued to see each other as “friends w/benefits,” based on his suggestion. I had never done that before, but didn’t want to lose him, so I consented.
For awhile, it was enough, to see him 3 or 4 times (or more) a month for dinner, conversation, and great sex. In retrospect, we WERE dating, but without the committment or exclusivity we had previously. However,every time he’s leave my apt., I’d fall apart.
So…last Feb. 9th (2007), we had dinner to talk. The short of it was that we both decided that the “friends w/benefits” scenario was holding us back from pursuring other relationships. My respsonse was that, yes, I was not interested in dating anyone else, as I had found what I needed in him….AND…that I felt we really could have a chance at something special if only we could try. We parted friends, and my soul grieves for him EVERY day!
We’ve seen each other socially 3 times since then, and it’s still apparent that we still have that special something that brought us together 3 years ago. Chemistry. Kindred spirits. Kismet. I don’t know what to call it, but I truly feel that our meeting 3 years ago was not random, and that we are missing out on something special by not being together.
Currently, as you, I am dating a wonderful, caring, intelligent,devoted, hugely successful man. I don’t feel the excitement or thrill of being in love that I had with Ron. I am not in love with this new guy, but I do like him quite a bit. He too is comfortable and easy to be with.
To quote from your beautiful letter: “Maybe MY fulfillment wasn’t so important. If this man loved me, maybe it was enough to attempt to make one person other than myself happy. Maybe he would be a good partner on the path of my life. Perhaps, together, we might benefit the world. How important is love, really? Other than in the sale of movie tickets.”
I do believe that love is important. Even a year later, I find it hard not to pick up the phone or send an email to Ron wanting to talk. Moving on has never been this hard for me!
I think of myself as a reasonably intelligent, sensitive, compassionate, spirit-filled man. Heretofore, I have been successful and have lead a wonderful life. Now, without that special connection Ron and I shared, I feel as if I’m just going thru the motions of life…no real sense of direction or fulfillment. Am I depressed? Yes, but this is beyond depression. My soul has been cut in half, and I have no idea how to stitch it back together.
Yesterday, I stayed in bed and cried for most of the day. Surfing the web in my grief, I discovered Susan Piver. I think this is Spirit’s way of letting me know that I will be OK. I understand that intellectually, but emotionally I feel blizted…in constant pain…and, sometimes, I want to just curl up and die.
Thank you for sharing, and I hope that Susan will respond to both of our situations.
I hope that we can both find peace, answers, and healing soon.
Rich
Alexandria, VA
7 susan // Apr 10, 2008 at 10:33 am
Celia, many apologies for the delay in responding to your incredibly intense and heartfelt post. The questions you raise are so incredibly important and also very confusing. Actually, now that I’ve started this response, I think I should blog my answer to you, and also to Rich. I hope this is okay. But comments are just not going to cut it with questions and feelings this deep… So stay tuned… In the meantime: I can’t say this loud enough: CELIA AND RICH: YOU WILL GET OVER THIS AND IN TIME WHAT YOU ARE GOING THROUGH NOW WILL MAKE SENSE. OK, off to write a response to the two of you.
8 Ann // Apr 16, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Rich,
I am sending metta (lovingkindness) to you from right here in Alexandria, VA where we live, too. One thing I can share that has helped me in the years after my separation and divorce was the idea that my feelings/emotions are not me - not the real me, at least. What we all are, at our core, is light and love. I have, over time, tried to bring awareness to the moment when I have an emotion and then to recognize that the emotion is just like a passing cloud. I say to myself “I am aware that there is great sadness” rather than “I am sad”. It helps to put a bit of distance between the emotion and my true self - not that I am suppressing it, but rather acknowledging it without identifying with it. Eckhart Tolle’s book The New Earth explains this really well. And, healing does occur over time……be gentle with yourself
I recently got married again and I am very happy. I grew alot as a person because of the experience I went through.
Ann
9 Rich // Apr 30, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Dear Susan & Ann: Thank you both for your kind words, and for sending loving kindness my way. Every day is still a struggle in trying to make sense of this situation, and to move forward with my life, but I have taken Susan’s advice just to be still… and realize those “There is nothing going on here” moments. They are few…and far between…but the profound peace I have discovered–albeit a nanosecond here and there–gives me hope that my soul and heart ARE healing.
I also heard the wife of the professor who is dying of pancreatic cancer, Randy Pausch, say something on TV recently that gets her thru the tough moments.
When Jai Pausch is about to be overwhelmed by the thoughts of losing her beloved husband, and her mind races with fear, anxiety, and dread, this brave lady asks herself: “Is this helpful?”
I tell myself this EVERY day when I become anxious, lonely, depressed, or fearful, and I have to say that these three words have great power to induce a sense of peace in my heart. I then ask my spirit to provide me with helpful, healing words and feelings to replace the negative. It works!
Just thought I’d pass this along to the blog.
May we all continue to help each other find understanding, peace and healing. I look forward to your next book on this topic, Susan!
Rich
Alexandria, VA
10 susan // May 1, 2008 at 11:18 am
Hi Rich. So great to hear how you’re doing. Those nanoseconds add up imperceptibly. And it sounds like you are really learning to work with your own mind–to notice your thoughts and try to remind yourself at every turn that there are choices in where to place your attention.
The question “is this helpful” is a wonderful one. I really appreciate you sharing it with everyone.
And Ann’s suggestion of saying “I am aware of sadness” instead of “I am sad” is a huge, huge leap. It gives a sense of fresh air between you and the emotion. You can look at it, understand it, and even feel it more precisely than when you’re awash in it. And this ability to feel is key–otherwise you run the risk of shutting down, which is understandably tempting. But the road to emotional shut-down is the road to despair…
In the Buddhist view, the very first step when confronting difficulty is to make friends with it–meaning get to know it. Let it in. Invite it, even. Then there is the chance of working with it which is always better than fighting or ignoring.
“I am aware that there is great ____.”
“Is this helpful?”
Two wonderful suggestions for working with your mind. Thanks to you both.
Love, Susan
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