In this talk, we’ll look at two types of love, saving loving-kindness for the next talk.

One core aspect of the heart is love. Love is experienced on several different levels. There is the personal love that we feel for our relatives and friends. There is the romantic love we experience in our sexually intimate relationships. Lastly, and most important to our heart’s freedom, is universal love (or unconditional loving-kindness).

Personal love.

As I practiced forgiving myself and others, I began to experience a change in my relationships. I stopped seeking the unavailable and started to feel that I actually deserved a love that was present, available, and open to real intimacy. Slowly progressing in my relationship choices. The Buddhist practices of mindfulness, forgiveness, compassion, and loving-kindness do a tremendous amount of good for personal love relationships. Unless we train the mind and heart through meditative discipline, our love will stay limited and conditional forever. But with some effort, and with the wisdom that arises through meditation, the heart’s capacity for love will grow and grow, eventually expanding to the ability to stay loving in the midst of painful situations.

Romantic love.

For those of us who are spiritually minded, our sexual relationships become a key aspect of our dharma practice. The practice and goal is one of nonattachment. But remember that nonattachment does not mean detachment. De-tachment means “separation from”; to detach is to pull away, to disengage. Nonattachment, on the other hand, is a fully engaged and connected experience of being in the middle of whatever is going on, without clinging to or trying to control it. In romantic relationships we do the dance of clinging / detaching / reconnecting / being lovingly connected (nonattached) / clinging / detaching . . . over and over. But the Buddhist practices of the heart help us to gain more and more ability to sustain the ideal of nonattached loving connectedness. And when we fail, as we surely will, we have the practice of forgiveness to help us let go more easily and to begin the dance again.