Being nobody, going nowhere : meditations on the Buddhist path

by Ayya Khema

Friendliness is a step toward loving-kindness, but it isn’t real loving-kindness yet. It is a quality that is endearing to the heart and endears other people to us. But it has the near-enemy of love embedded in it, namely affection. Although we think of affection as something positive, it has attachment in it. Attachment to our friends and associates, to those who help us, to those who live with us. That attachment creates hate, not toward the people we are attached to, but toward the idea that they might be lost. There is fear, and we can only fear what we hate. Therefore the purity of love is lost. The attachment makes it impure and thus less satisfying. No total fulfillment can be found. This is what happens within the family. That is why there is always unsatisfactoriness in that kind of love.