What Exactly Is the "Great Love" Spoken of in the World?

Bai Xuexiang expressed the view: People's love has direction. No matter how great the love is, it has direction. The magnified version of an ordinary person's love is great love. For instance, the love of a political leader is an amplified version of an ordinary person's love; otherwise, wars would not occur. "This is my homeland, you cannot invade it" — thus wars break out between nations. "This is my religion" — thus there is slaughter between religions. "This is my faith" — thus persecution arises between faiths. All these stem from great love.

True compassion is entirely free from conflict and knows no scale. All problems arise precisely because true compassion has not been generated. Even humanistic love, while conflict-free among humans, inevitably involves killing animals and harming living beings because it is based on "humanity." As long as it is based on "humanity," no matter how loving one may be or how strongly one advocates for animal protection, when others kill animals, one will become furious — this is not love.

Bai Xuexiang spoke very well! Only those who have genuinely experienced emptiness can speak like this; without real experience, one could not fabricate such insights. Worldly people crave love and affection — without emotions and love, life seems unbearable. Emotions and love are the spiritual sustenance of ordinary people, not easily relinquished. All these psychological emotions arise from the premise of "self, others, and sentient beings." Some individuals gain a degree of awakening, feeling that their small self and petty love are insignificant, so they advocate for a greater self and great love, as if elevated. Yet it is still the self — without a small self, how could a greater self emerge?

For example, one’s own group — including one’s nation or the entire planet — is treated as the greater self. Everything is done for this greater self, with disregard for anything else. One may even attack other groups for the sake of one’s own, appearing selfless yet still acting selfishly, because one’s own interests lie within this group. Without personal benefit, one might not go to great lengths to defend the group. And what is attacking other groups? Naturally, it is an act of creating evil — this is the manifestation of the greater self and great love.

Within the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination — love, grasping, becoming, birth, aging, and death — the root cause of all birth and death is this very love. Because of love, grasping arises, and thus birth and death follow. Buddhas and bodhisattvas do not speak of love; they speak of compassion, joy, equanimity, and the Four Means of Embrace (Four All-Embracing Virtues). They embrace sentient beings through the Four Means without emotional attachment, for emotional attachment itself is the cause of birth and death. The great love spoken of by worldly people involves birth and death; it is not empty. Acting with an empty mind, compassionate and sympathetic, brings no harm. Otherwise, even great love becomes harmful — wherever there is grasping, this is inevitable.

For instance, a doctor treating a patient need only do their utmost to heal. If they invest emotions, sharing the same grief as the patient or their family, then the doctor’s body and mind will constantly be affected by the patient. Before long, the doctor will fall ill and, over time, may even die. How then can they continue to heal others? Handle matters as they arise — without love or emotional involvement, separating the mind from the body — then both body and mind remain healthy. Buddhas and bodhisattvas act the same way. If they were to invest love in sentient beings, their body, mind, and world would become identical to those of sentient beings — how then could they speak of saving sentient beings? In that case, it would mean the love of sentient beings infected the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, pulling them back to the mundane realm. Then there would be no Buddhas or bodhisattvas — only loving ordinary beings.

The essence of love is attachment — known as "attachment and love." Regardless of the type of love or what is loved, it is all afflictive emotion within the realm of desire, unable to ascend even to the form realm. Even the dharmas of the form and formless realms remain within the cycle of birth and death in the three realms. Eliminating love is the fundamental duty of practitioners. Replacing it with compassion and sympathy expands the mind’s capacity, freeing it from the afflictions of birth and death.