Growing up, the power ballad “I Want to Know What Love Is” by Foreigner was inescapable. For many, including myself, the song evokes memories of awkward school dances and the confusing emotions surrounding early crushes. Like many at that age, the idea of love was a tangled mix of yearning and fear, focused more on personal desires and anxieties than genuine care for another. The song, in its dramatic eighties fashion, captured this intense personal quest for love.
But what is love, really? If you were searching for answers in the 1980s, Foreigner might have been your soundtrack. However, exploring different perspectives, particularly through the lens of Buddhist philosophy, reveals a much richer and more profound understanding of love, one that extends far beyond teenage romance or even committed partnerships.
Just as languages in colder climates often have a diverse vocabulary for “snow,” Buddhist traditions in Tibet, Sanskrit, and Pali offer a spectrum of words for “love,” suggesting a deeper exploration of the heart. Among these, metta, or loving-kindness, stands out as a revered form of selfless love within the elaborate Buddhist framework of human emotions.
Geshe Tenzin Namdak, in an interview, defined loving-kindness as:
“The definition of loving-kindness as we define it is that all beings always abide in happiness, never be separated from happiness.”
—Geshe Tenzin Namdak
This definition shifts the focus from personal longing, as expressed in the song “I Want to Know What Love Is,” to a universal aspiration for the well-being of all beings.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, another esteemed Buddhist teacher, introduced the Tibetan term tsewa, a unique form of love he describes as akin to parental love. Rinpoche, a lama, husband, and father, explained tsewa as:
“In Tibetan, the word tsewa is what parents have for us. There’s deeply from one’s own heart, the care that is there, which actually is an open hearted experience of a warmth.
Regardless of whether one can do something or not, whatever they could do to enhance your life and welfare. That is the definition of love. And when you have that, there’s naturally some invisible bond that develops.”
—Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
This resonates deeply with the parental experience. The selfless love a parent feels for a child, wanting only their well-being and happiness, even to the point of taking on their suffering, embodies tsewa. This expansive, selfless quality contrasts sharply with the often self-centered notions of love prevalent in popular culture, and even hinted at in the yearning of the song “I Want to Know What Love Is.”
While parental love might seem intuitive, extending this selfless approach to romantic partnerships can be challenging. Often, relationships are navigated with unspoken checklists of desired qualities and expectations. We assess partners based on how well they fulfill our needs, mirroring the initial teenage focus on “what I want” from love, rather than “what I can offer.”
Rinpoche offers a transformative perspective, suggesting we shift our focus outward:
“I think one thing that, I can say with all of the relations with parents or spouse or anyone; children or friends, the focus not being, what can you do for them? In that way, focus externally. If you could actually be there in support of their welfare and their growth, and their life in general, without reservations. You know, I think that really helps a lot to improve the kind of a quality of a relation.
And then at times, of course you could help and you could enhance their lives, and then at other times they have to do it themselves. It’s not like you have it all in control to help everyone you want to, or you have the means. But in the mind and heart being there for their welfare and for their growth and for their happiness.”
—Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
This advice emphasizes prioritizing a partner’s well-being above our own desires, a cornerstone of healthy relationships often echoed in couples therapy. However, Rinpoche’s concept of tsewa encourages expanding this selfless love beyond immediate family, moving past the limitations of attachment that can cloud our understanding of love, much like the self-absorbed emotions of a teenager at a Valentine’s dance.
The idea of expanding love can feel daunting. The possessiveness and attachment often associated with romantic love, the very feelings perhaps fueling the longing in “I Want to Know What Love Is,” can make selfless love seem almost threatening. Rinpoche’s wisdom lies in suggesting we begin this expansion with our partners, practicing selfless love within the closest relationship first.
This path to selflessness isn’t always easy. Attachment and ego often get in the way. It’s easier to dwell on unmet needs and perceived shortcomings in a partner than to genuinely focus on their welfare. Many enter relationships with idealized fantasies of a perfect partner fulfilling personal desires, a stark contrast to the selfless love Rinpoche advocates.
To bridge this gap between ideal and practice, Buddhist teachings offer meditation and mind-training techniques. Geshe Namdak explains the logical methods to cultivate expansive loving-kindness:
“We try to have this kind of mind of feeling close to all sentient beings. Why? Because all beings want happiness and don’t want suffering. That innate wish we understand. And thanks to the kindness of others, we are able to have our lives, right?
We are so interconnected and interdependent with so many beings on this planet. And because of that feeling of interconnectedness, we also see for them, their need to always abide in happiness; by understanding the view, if you yourself always abiding happiness, how wonderful would that be?
So, if you can have the same wish for all the sentient beings, how wonderful would that be if everybody abides and happiness without making distinctions between background culture or religion whatsoever. So that brings a very constructive emotion, what we call loving-kindness.”
—Geshe Tenzin Namdak
Using logic to cultivate love might seem unusual, perhaps even reminiscent of Mr. Spock’s approach to human emotion. However, Buddhist mind training utilizes logical reasoning to shift perspectives. Emotions are seen as thoughts, and by logically considering others’ perspectives – their universal desire for happiness and aversion to suffering – we can cultivate empathy and loving-kindness. This logical approach to expanding love moves beyond the purely emotional yearning in “I Want to Know What Love Is,” offering a structured path to cultivate genuine compassion.
Dr. Jay Garfield, a renowned Buddhist scholar, further emphasizes the universality of friendliness, care, and impartiality as the foundation of a meaningful moral life:
“From most Buddhist frameworks, when we think about the overarching principles that structure healthy moral experience, they are principles of friendliness, of care, of a kind of impartiality and an ability to rejoice in the success and the wellbeing of others.”
—Dr. Jay Garfield
The aspiration to become such a loving person begins with a simple wish, as Geshe Namdak suggests: “Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone was happy?” This aspiration evolves through stages, from wishing for universal happiness to actively committing to contributing to it. Geshe Namdak outlines these stages:
“…has this capacity to understand the need and the wish for that to come about. And that’s the first level of how wonderful it would be if all sentient beings always abide in happiness. And then the next line is, May they abide in happiness.
Right. So there’s a kind of a prayer or a wish. And then the third line is taking a kind of commitment to yourself to act in that direction: I will cause that to happen, or I will cause them to abide in happiness.
So, it’s a kind of a mind training that helps us to bring us closer to the beings around us, on this planet and helps us to generate more loving-kindness to all instead of only thinking about yourself.”
—Geshe Tenzin Namdak
These stages are known as the Four Immeasurables: equanimity, loving-kindness, compassion, and joy. Equanimity, the first step, involves equalizing our feelings towards all beings, recognizing their shared desire for happiness and freedom from suffering. This foundation of impartiality allows for the subsequent cultivation of loving-kindness – wishing happiness for all, compassion – wishing freedom from suffering, and joy – rejoicing in the well-being of others without jealousy. This structured approach moves far beyond the vague longing for love expressed in the song title “I Want to Know What Love Is,” providing concrete steps to cultivate expansive love.
The benefits of cultivating these loving states of mind extend beyond spiritual growth, supported by modern psychology and neuroscience. These positive mental states benefit both ourselves and others, improving mental well-being and counteracting negativity.
Dr. Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain, highlights the neurological advantages of loving-kindness:
“Neurologically there’s tremendous evidence that emotionally positive experiences of various kinds pull us out of stressful episodes. So they reduce the bad. And also emotionally positive experiences motivate us toward the good, that’s useful right there.”
—Dr. Rick Hanson
Neuroscience suggests that love isn’t just a beneficial emotion, but potentially our inherent natural state. Dr. Hanson explains:
“And if you think of that wellbeing in three elements related to the meeting of those three needs: safety, a sense of peacefulness satisfaction, a sense of contentment and connection in the creature’s way, that is a sense of love. That is our biological resting state. When animals have an enoughness in the meeting of their fundamental needs, as they experience it, when they experience that enoughness, they return to that resting state because, due to very hardcore biological evolutionary processes, this helps animals pass on genes that pass on genes.
So in a purely biological sense, our resting state is indeed characterized by peacefulness contentment and love.”
—Dr. Rick Hanson
This is a profound idea: love as our resting state. When stress and overwhelm subside, we naturally return to open-heartedness and contentment. This contrasts with the often-stressed and yearning tone of “I Want to Know What Love Is,” suggesting that perhaps we already possess the love we seek.
The path back to this natural state of love involves moving away from ego-driven, attached forms of love and directing warmth and affection outwards, wishing happiness for all. This expansive love, starting with a quiet internal wish, is the beginning of a path to sustainable happiness.
Geshe Namdak emphasizes the transformative impact of this mindset:
“If you have that state of mind, it’s a very constructive mind. Right? That wish is very precious. So if you wish that, also then automatically we will act in a much better way in relation to others. That’s because whatever we do physically or verbally is always a mental intention proceeding that activity.
So if you think in that way, then automatically our physical and verbal behaviors will be motivated in a similar way. And that brings a very constructive way forward in our relationships in family life, as well as social and global levels.”
—Geshe Tenzin Namdak
While love for family and strangers is crucial, Buddhism also highlights the selfless love between teacher and student, particularly in the spiritual context. Great teachers offer not only knowledge but also kindness, patience, and generosity, a gift of attention and wisdom beyond familial obligations.
Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche reflects on this teacher-student love:
“That was always what I felt from my own teacher. He’s always there, you know, for my, growth. Always I felt. And I was able to trust that.”
—Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche
Dr. Jan Willis emphasizes the transformative power of teacher’s love, especially in overcoming deep-seated wounds. She describes how the love from her teacher, Lama Yeshe, helped her realize her own innate capacity for love:
“I know the great fortune I had. I gained confidence that we all have it. We each have this goodness, we have these capabilities.
So I think it takes love to bring it out. But it doesn’t necessarily take love from someone else. I think what a lot of us need is to put down guilt and insecurity and love ourselves, but just allowing ourselves, I think, space to tend to our own wounds.”
—Dr. Jan Willis
Buddhism views love and wisdom as intertwined, like two wings of a bird, both essential for thriving. Love is grounded in both neuroscience and the fundamental reality of interdependence, extending even to quantum physics.
Dr. Jay Garfield connects love to a deeper understanding of reality:
“Here’s a way to put it: thinking about emptiness and interdependence is an antidote to thinking about yourself as a self-subsistent object, an independent object that stands over and against the world, to think of yourself as subject, everything else and everybody else as your object of knowledge.”
—Dr. Jay Garfield
Interdependence, or emptiness, reveals the illogical nature of separateness and selfishness. When we understand our interconnectedness at all levels – physical, mental, cultural, and social – selfless love becomes a natural outcome.
Dr. Garfield further explains how meditation and the understanding of interdependence cultivate healthy morality:
“What’s common to those states is the de-centering of the self; that I don’t think of myself as special. I’ve got a sense of interdependence with others. That enables a healthy moral experience. That’s blocked by seeing ourselves as selves. And it’s enabled by understanding that we’re empty of self.
And so to me, the reason for thinking hard about emptiness, thinking hard about our own emptiness, to thinking that emptiness is interdependence. It’s not like interdependent. It’s not a cause of interdependence. It is interdependence. That when we think that our very nature is interdependence, if we can get rid of the fetish of independence and replace it with the realistic view of interdependence, we get a much saner understanding of the moral landscape.
And with any luck we can become more effective moral agents by seeing the world that way.”
—Dr. Jay Garfield
Recognizing our inherent interdependence makes care and concern for others inevitable. Emptiness and morality become inseparable in meditative contemplation.
Meditation, therefore, offers a dual benefit: calming the mind and cultivating wisdom and compassion. Calming meditations reduce stress and anxiety, while analytical meditations on loving-kindness and wisdom expand our hearts and moral sphere.
Venerable Kathleen McDonald emphasizes the importance of motivation in meditation:
“Having the motivation to be more relaxed, more peaceful, healthier, take care of health problems; I mean, that’s not a bad motivation. But a motivation that’s involved with the ego and material gain, fame, and that kind of thing, that’s not the right motivation. Ideally, the motivation for meditation in Buddhism is wanting to change our mind, improve our mind, and be helpful to others, benefit others, benefit the world as much as we can.”
—Ven. Kathleen McDonald (Sangye Khadro)
Meditation, or gom in Tibetan, meaning “to familiarize the mind,” is a daily practice to reinforce positive states and diminish negativity. This concept aligns with neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to change and learn.
Dr. Rick Hanson explains neuroplasticity in relation to meditation:
“All learning involves a physical change in the hardware. Otherwise, there’s no learning by definition, right? We have to change the brain in the process. And you can help your brain change for the better by staying with an experience for a breath or longer, feeling it in your body, and focusing on what feels rewarding about it.
And so we turn to the good, and then we take in the good. This is where positive neuroplasticity comes in. This is where learning comes in. We want to learn in the broadest sense, especially social, emotional somatic, motivational, spiritual learning. We want to learn from our beneficial experiences.”
—Dr. Rick Hanson
Meditation, however, is not solely for personal improvement. Its effectiveness lies in extending kindness and compassion to everyone, including strangers and even enemies.
Dr. Jan Willis shares her experience of extending love even to those who have caused harm:
“You can’t say, I want to take everyone to enlightenment except this one and this one and this one.
All of this has to happen with love. You know, I marched with King. The best way to transform an enemy is to make them a friend with compassion, with non-harm.
I still think that under no circumstances should hatred be leading the revolution. Besides, it’ll fizzle out. Hatred is not the greatest fuel, not for the long haul. Better to love these folk you’re with and let love fuel the struggle.”
—Dr. Jan Willis
Dr. Willis’s words highlight the transformative power of love, even in the face of adversity, echoing the need to move beyond the limited scope of love expressed in “I Want to Know What Love Is.”
His Holiness the Dalai Lama further emphasizes this expansive view of love, stating that true, unbiased loving-kindness extends even to enemies:
“…that meaning of love is very much mixed with attachment, such as sexual love. The best love is loving-kindness towards your enemy. The enemy is considered the best teacher of your practice of loving-kindness. This is true unbiased loving-kindness.”
—His Holiness The Dalai Lama
He explains that developing loving-kindness towards those we find difficult is a path to genuine altruism:
“Usually, people have some anger or discomfort toward some people. Now, toward that person you especially try to develop loving-kindness. Then gradually you develop genuine altruism without attachment. That is genuine kindness, genuine altruism.
So, therefore the enemy that creates trouble for you is the best teacher.”
—His Holiness The Dalai Lama
This profound teaching suggests that true love, far from being a romantic ideal sought after in songs, is a practice of extending kindness and compassion to all, even those we consider enemies.
Reflecting on this, perhaps every day should be Valentine’s Day, and everyone our valentine. Extending love beyond romantic partners to encompass all beings is the essence of this expansive Buddhist understanding. For those feeling lonely or disconnected, the message is one of hope: boundless love resides within each of us, capable of encompassing partners, family, friends, strangers, and even enemies. This is a love far deeper and more meaningful than the yearning expressed in the song “I Want to Know What Love Is,” a love that offers true and lasting fulfillment.
Thank you for exploring this path to enlightenment with us. We encourage you to share your thoughts and continue this journey of understanding love.
Thanks, as always, to Stephen Butler, my partner and producer. We wish you a day filled with loving-kindness.
Credits
Hosted by Scott SnibbeProduction by Stephen ButlerTheme music by Bradley Parsons of Train Sound Studio
