What exactly is the "great love" that worldly people speak of?

Bai Xuexiang expressed her view, saying: Worldly people love having a direction; no matter how great the love, it still has a direction. The love of a small person, in an expanded version, becomes "great love"—for example, the love of political greats is just the expanded version of a small person's love; otherwise, wars would not occur. "This is my homeland, you cannot invade it"—and so wars break out between nations; "this is my religion"—and so there is slaughter between religions; "this is my faith"—and so there is persecution between faiths, and so on. All of these are the result of so-called "great love."

True compassion involves no conflict whatsoever; it admits no distinction between great and small. All problems arise because true compassion has not been brought forth. Even humanistic love, though free of conflict among human beings, inevitably involves slaughtering animals and harming living creatures, because it is based on "humans." As long as something is based on "humans," no matter how loving it is, even if it advocates the idea of protecting animals, when others kill animals, one will fly into a rage—and then the love is gone.

What Bai Xuexiang said is very good! Only one who has genuinely experienced that emptiness could say such a thing; without real experience, one could not even fabricate it. Worldly people love love and love emotion; without feeling and love, they seem unable to go on living. Emotional love is the spiritual food of ordinary beings (pṛthagjana), and they will not easily allow it to be taken away. All of this is psychological emotion produced on the premise that there is a self, others, and sentient beings. Some people have a bit of awakening and feel that their small self and small love are rather insignificant, so they advocate a great self and great love, as if it were some kind of sublimation. But it is all still the self. Without a small self, how could a great self emerge?

For example, take the group one belongs to, including one's nation and the Earth. One takes the group as the great self, and everything is for the sake of this great self; apart from it, one cares about nothing, even attacking other groups for the sake of one's own group. It seems selfless, but it is actually selfish, because one's own interests lie within that group; without interests at stake, one probably would not go to such lengths to defend that group. And what kind of behavior is attacking other groups? It is, of course, the committing of evil—and this is precisely the manifestation of great self and great love.

In the twelve links of dependent origination—craving, grasping, becoming, birth, aging, and death—the cause of all birth-and-death is precisely this craving. Because of craving there is grasping, and birth-and-death follows. The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas do not speak of love; they speak of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity, and of the four means of attraction, using the four means of attraction to gather in and guide sentient beings—without being moved by emotion, for being moved by emotion is itself the cause of birth-and-death. The great love spoken of by worldly people all involves birth-and-death; it is not empty. Only by acting with an empty mind, with compassion and mercy for others, is there no fault or peril; otherwise, even great love is a fault and peril. Wherever there is the nature of grasping (upādāna), it must inevitably be so.

Take, for example, a doctor and a patient: it is enough to do one's utmost to treat and save the patient. If the doctor invests emotion and grieves as bitterly as the patient or the patient's family, then the doctor's body and mind will be affected by the patient at every moment; before long, the doctor will fall ill too, and over time will die of illness as well—how then could one continue to save patients? Attend to matters as matters, without love and without emotion, keeping body and mind detached, and both body and mind remain healthy. The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are just the same. If they invested love in sentient beings, their body-mind-world would become the same as that of sentient beings—how then could they speak of saving sentient beings? In that case, it would be as if the love of sentient beings had infected the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, dragging them back down into the mundane realm. Then there would be no more Buddhas and Bodhisattvas—only ordinary men and women full of love.

The essence of love is greed; it is called greedy craving (tṛṣṇā). Whatever kind of love it is, and whatever it is loved, it is an afflictive emotion within the desire realm (kāmadhātu) and cannot rise to the form realm (rūpadhātu); even the dharmas of the form realm and the formless realm are still within the birth-and-death of the three realms. Eliminating craving is the duty of a practitioner, to be followed by replacing it with loving-kindness and compassion—then the mind's capacity expands, and there is no longer the fault and peril of birth-and-death.