Tessa Madsen Loewen: Within the Buddhist religion, how does love play a part in human life?

Lama Surya Das: The historical teacher named Gautama  Buddha 2500 years ago talked a great deal about love and caring, cherishing others even more than oneself, and loving-kindness (metta) or warmth friendliness. This is one of the major tenets or practices to cultivate and positive qualities to develop on the path of enlightenment. He also advocated and taught about the need for and benefits of  parental love, filial love, sibling love, Samaritan-like love, compassionate love, impartial equanimous love, unconditional love, and love for all beings and forms of life. In fact this metta or loving-kindness meditation-cultivation is one of the most popular and meaningful Buddhist practices in the modern world. Buddha’s love can be said to have four or five main aspects: loving-kindness, compassionate, sympathetic joy (rejoicing in the good fortune of others), and impartial equanimity.

Submitted by Tessa Madsen Loewen via Facebook on September 7th, 2010.