How can I explain love and non-attachment in simple terms?

Question

I have an intuitive understanding of love and non-attachment: that while non-attachment to some people might seem like not caring, it actually enables you to care to a greater degree, to love in a fuller, deeper way. But I'm struggling to explain this to others. Can you help with a simple way of explaining this, ideally with examples?

Answer 1

Simply stated: "Actions speak louder than words".

Answer 2

Non-Attachment
Kitano Gempo, abbot of Eihei temple, was ninety-two years old when he passed away in the year 1933. He endeavored his whole like not to be attached to anything. As a wandering mendicant when he was twenty he happened to meet a traveler who smoked tobacco. As they walked together down a mountain road, they stopped under a tree to rest. The traveler offered Kitano a smoke, which he accepted, as he was very hungry at the time.

"How pleasant this smoking is," he commented. The other gave him an extra pipe and tobacco and they parted.

Kitano felt: "Such pleasant things may disturb meditation. Before this goes too far, I will stop now." So he threw the smoking outfit away.

When he was twenty-three years old he studied I-King, the profoundest doctrine of the universe. It was winter at the time and he needed some heavy clothes. He wrote his teacher, who lived a hundred miles away, telling him of his need, and gave the letter to a traveler to deliver. Almost the whole winter passed and neither answer nor clothes arrived. So Kitano resorted to the prescience of I-King, which also teaches the art of divination, to determine whether or not his letter had miscarried. He found that this had been the case. A letter afterwards from his teacher made no mention of clothes.

"If I perform such accurate determinative work with I-King, I may neglect my meditation," felt Kitano. So he gave up this marvelous teaching and never resorted to its powers again.

When he was twenty-eight he studied Chinese calligraphy and poetry. He grew so skillful in these arts that his teacher praised him. Kitano mused: "If I don't stop now, I'll be a poet, not a Zen teacher." So he never wrote another poem.


Love is a basic dimension of human experience that is variously conveyed as a sense of tender affection, an intense attraction, the foundation of intimacy and good interpersonal chemistry, willing self-sacrifice on behalf of another, and as an ineffable sense of affinity or connection to nature, other living beings, or even that which is unseen. It manifests itself in feelings, emotion, behavior, thoughts, perception and attitude. It influences, underlies and defines major patterns in interpersonal relationships and self-identification.

Answer 3

"what does love look like once you attempt to coach the path of non-attachment?" How do you describe infinity? it relatively is relatively enormous and it form of covers each little thing? :S :D "are you able to truly love a chum, a husband, a parent, a sibling, a baby of yours and not be 'related' to them?" you may, yet you may no longer love them extra appropriate, or extra, than the persons you have by no potential met, or the rest that exists for that matter. There might nicely be no judgment, no determination. do no longer worry, i do no longer take it to those extremes as this point :) i'm too youthful, i think of it relatively is extra an previous (wo)mans game, or maybe for persons who're specifically referred to as to it at a youthful age. no longer me, no longer yet ;) ((Spiral)))

Answer 4

Non-attachment is not lack of caring...it's not being concerned with the outcome. Not being concerned with the outcome does not mean not caring about it...it means acceptance of it.