SUSAN RIVER lays out love’s second noble truth: expecting relationships to be stable is what makes them unstable.
If you shop for books about relationships in the self-help section, you will see that roughly 99 percent of them are about how to get love: how to find it, keep it, or make it come back. Very few are about how to give love or be loving. If there are ideas about such things, they are suggested as another way to get more love rather than as an end in themselves. The search for love is portrayed as an elliptical, self-serving endeavor.
In the Buddhist view, the emphasis is shifted. Happiness is not seen as a consequence of getting your needs met. It comes from placing attention on the needs of others, not because you are a goody-goody with no needs, but because the joy of connection, whether to a person, animal, flower, idea, or sensation, is the most profound of all the joys. As my teacher Sakyong Mipham said, “If you want to be happy, think of others. If you want to be unhappy, think of yourself.” It was not politeness that made him say so. Yet it is rarely the way we approach love.
To begin, it is helpful to consider that when we say we are looking for love, we may not mean exactly that. Rather, we are looking for safety, a way to get comfortable. “Relationship” is equated not with the crazy, boundary-busting, irritating, empowering, ordinary, extraordinary thing that it really is, but with a protective cocoon. This is understandable.
Loving is so vulnerable–maybe the most vulnerable thing you can do–and we want to put as many controls in place as possible to protect our hearts.
However, the moment you try to make love safe, it ceases to be love. There is nothing less safe than love. Love means opening again and again to your beloved, yourself, and your world, and seeing what happens next. You can’t know what it will be. Waves of connection are followed by waves of distance. Sunny conditions give way to more sun-or to storms. Storms give way to clear skies. Or not. One simply never knows, and a great deal of presence and bravery is required to face the shifting patterns. The ride cannot be fully evened out; it can only be experienced.
There is no way that you can know how your relationship is going to turn out, regardless of how carefully you prepare, how clear you are about your needs and expectations, and how intently you listen to your partner’s wishes. Yet somehow when we commit to another person, we make and require promises. I will always love you. I promise to cherish you. Nothing will ever come between us.
Sometimes you will love each other, and sometimes you will fume with rage. Sometimes you will cherish your partner, and sometimes you will wish they would, shall we say, disappear.
Something will come between you every single day: work, family, ambitions, depressions, confusions, and different ideas about everything from how much money is enough and which personal values you ought to share to the “right” way to fold laundry.
To enter a relationship for the long term is to enter the space of not knowing. While this is so brave and beautiful, exhilarating even, it is not particularly comfortable.
Romantic Materialism
Tibetan meditation master Chogyam Trungpa defined something called the Three Lords of Materialism. These three lords, known as the Lords of Form, Speech, and Mind, rule physical, psychological, and spiritual materialism. They direct us to acquire certain belongings or qualities with the promise that these will enable us to avoid sorrow and bring us lasting happiness.
The Lord of Form says that there are certain possessions, attainments, and lifestyles that will exempt you from sadness, whether for a moment or for all time. If only you had a house in the right neighborhood, a degree from a specific institute, a certain amount of money in savings, a new iPhone, automobile, job, or hairdo, you would be happy. It’s not that these things aren’t wonderful. They are! But they will not save you. (Well, maybe the hairdo.)
The Lord of Speech rules the realm of thoughts, beliefs, and philosophies. This lord assures you that when you can correctly assess your childhood wounds, subscribe to the right ideology, or adhere to the most accurate analysis, you will be safe. It’s not that these things aren’t wonderful. They are! But they will not save you.
The Lord of Mind is most insidious. He seeks to convince you that meditation or other spiritual practices will exempt you
from suffering and give you special status among your fellow humans. If only your meditation was perfect or you could think only “good” thoughts, you would be free from pain. It’s not that these things aren’t wonderful. They are! But they will not save you.
All three lords point you down the wrong path. Each seeks to affirm your small mind and conventional view by urging you to create a cocoon that will protect you from suffering. Each would like to obscure your highest wisdom and true nature, which are available only when the cocoon disappears.
I want to take the liberty of suggesting a fourth lord: the Lord of Romance. So that you may gain entry into a more heavenly realm, rather than directing you to acquire certain possessions, knowledge, or spiritual attainments, this lord says you can obtain access through falling in love, finding “the one.” He attempts to use our heart connection to another person as a means to escape suffering. He makes the case that relationships will protect us from sorrow, anger, frustration, disappointment, and all manner of physical, emotional, and spiritual loss.
He is in league with the Lord of Form when he tells us to find a wealthy partner so that we can have a nice house and escape financial worry. He has teamed with the Lord of Speech when we find ourselves caught up in beliefs: that the right one will appear when our childhood wounds are healed; that our partner owes it to us to meet our needs, give us space, eat dinner with us every night; or any other unchecked assumption about what love ought to be.
And when the Lords of Romantic and Spiritual Materialism get together, hijinks ensue. We might think that our relationship is supposed to provide shelter from every storm, heal our sorrows, fulfill our longings, and create a life of unending happiness. If you are hoping for a relationship that will drop into your lap from heaven, put an end to all of your self-doubt, and snuggle you permanently, you may be running on the fumes of romantic materialism rather than the desire for true love ( which is discovered on the spot rather than planned for in advance).
There is nothing wrong with wanting bunches of money, philosophical clar-ity, spiritual attainment, and the truest of true loves. I hope you will have all of that and more, and that your relationship will give you a life of beauty, heart-toheart connection, and deep healing on all levels. But if you are looking for safety rather than love, you may be under the sway of materialism rather than true kindheartedness toward self and other.
The Lord of Romantic Materialism takes the wheel every time you think that there is a person out there who was born looking for you just as you were born looking for them, and that, once you find each other, difficulties will crossdissolve into oblivion. He is present every time you imagine that if only you could visualize him or her clearly, that person would materialize to rescue you. When you subscribe to the belief that healing childhood wounds will remove unseen blockages that prevent your life partner from approaching, you are serving this lord. He runs on the fumes of magical thinking.
The more important something is to you, the more likely you are to apply magical thinking to it, and when it comes to love, there is no shortage of books and classes that purport to teach you vari-ous tricks of mind that will attract what you desire. Please don’t waste your time and money. Instead, examine your mind carefully. Analyze the lenses through which you observe the world, and seek to understand the illusions and projections that result. This is of utmost importance. Love will not come to you by imagining what love looks like. Instead of hoping against hope for true love to somehow just show up, hold your heart and mind open. Stop looking for it. Instead, offer it to everyone. In this way, you make a relationship with love itself. The focus is on expanding your heart’s capacity rather than on waiting for another to fill it up. By offering your heart in countless big and small ways, you will find that you no longer have to wait for love because you are actually living in it.
The Lord of Romantic Materialism feeds off of fear, distrust, and hopelessness. He enjoys your discomfort and seeks to convince you to focus on disposing of it at any cost by enlisting a fellow human as your foil. However, when you operate from openness and generosity of spirit, he can find no purchase. Much of our discomfort in relationships comes not from normal fights and disconnects, but from paying more attention to these lords and less to love itself.
— © Lion’s Roar, September 2018, by Susan River