Session 05: Worldviews, values and other contexts—Buddhism and some miscellaneous comments on analytic method for this class

Topics for this session

❖ Status of "[romantic] love" when framed by Buddhist principles (emphasis on dukkha, karma, transcience and illusion/dreams)
❖ Method & Analysis comments: some geometric ways to think about love (circles & triangles)

Thoughts*

Buddhism

Core thoughts on Buddhism are either here, as they occur to me or on the Course Basics page under Buddhism, when I conclude that they are permanent enough to move there. (The below are thoughts made just before or after this lecture, for any given semester.)

I argue that the type of love affirmed within classic Buddhist ideology of China (and Korea / Japan) is benevolence. Romantic love per se is not embraced as an extension of God's divine love as we see within the Christian tradition.

Generally speaking "being in love" is viewed as one of the many ignorant states of humans lost in an illusory world that is characterized by suffering as a result of, or response to, change (dukkha). This emphasis on ignorance manifests itself in stories of love as romantic caution, narratives of the unreliability of romance, states of despair, distinct lack of exuberance, and emphasis on tears.

Desire itself lacks the positive valence given by Greek philosophy where the desire for the beautiful leads eventually to the desire for truth. In this system, desire has karmic results that perpetuate states of suffering. Ironically, the concept of karma (cause and effect that links one state to the next, often explicitly stated) and the related assertion of the cosmic interpenetration of all things (rarely explicitly stated but seems to be atmospherically present in some depictions of intimacy) can serve to underpin/explain/suggest notions of fate, inexplicable attraction, sense of intimacy and bondedness to one;s love.

Thus, romantic love happens either outside the boundaries (non-cognizant) of Buddhist truths or in recognition that romantic love must be closely tied to suffering, and will be transient in nature. This makes it difficult to find soaring, transcendent romantic love within the shadow cast by Buddhist influences, unless it is either transgressive (which is not usually an exuberant state for premodern individuals who ultimately accept the normative value of their society) or grounded in, for example, a celebration of sexuality or such arising not out of Buddhist practices but rather other indigenous beliefs. I might, however, mention the important exception of tantric Buddhism although this has not provided the dominant ways of thinking about love in premodern, Buddhist, general, cultural environments.

Given that Buddhism posits this world we experience as a world of illusion,
...and given the visceral affective quality of disorientation and being transported into a "special" world that can accompany the experience of being infatuated or being in love,
... and given that Buddhism used the metaphor of dreams to depict this world (and this was true of early Daoism to some extent and very much true of the Daoist-Buddhist merged thinking that was common in China as the two traditions developed and interacted)
...it is not at all surprising that "dreams" in a multitude of ways appear in narratives of love.

Method & Analysis

We discuss basic triangles that can help clarify relationships within the narratives that you are analyzing:

• Oedipal triangle (Freud, reformulated by French psychoanalysts such as Jacques Lacan) where the third element is an intruder
• the mimetic desire triangle (Rene Girard) where one desires what others desire, and
• a triangle where the object of desire is coinage for the primary relationship between two (to have the object is not the goal, the object provides the field / space for the other two to experience a bond with each other).

We also look at a different sort of triangle (one that shows components of an object/concept not relationships between objects/lovers) that attempts to find three essential types of love and then describe the full range of love experience as a blend of these: the Sternberg Triangle. I used to provide a version of this on bSpace, but the Web continues to produce newer, more interesting versions, so I suggest you Web search the term.

I introduce the circle "Relationship Phases".

Required—to be completed for today's session

✓ Attendance is highly recommended. We return again and again, and again, to the concepts presented in this session.

Other

The "love circle" (phases of relationships) is on bSpace as Relationship Phases.

*UNDER CONSTRUCTION: If this has not been erased it means something on this page is incomplete. Perhaps I want to recheck information or perhaps I haven't converted the page from the version of the previous class. It is available but should be taken dubiously.

*THOUGHTS: My hope is that you look at this portion BEFORE a session. If there is content here it might help you focus on the main points of the day. However, I add various things here at various times. When I feel I haven't succeeded in class stating something clearly, I might restate it here. Of if it is a difficult concept in might be given in written form here. I will assume that you have read and rechecked for changes this session in preparation for any midterm or other quiz or test.