What exactly is the great love that people in the world speak of?

Bai Xuexiang expressed her view: worldly people love having a direction; no matter how great the love, it still has a direction. The love of ordinary people, in an expanded version, becomes "great love"—for example, the love of political greats is just the expanded version of ordinary people's love; otherwise wars would never occur. "This is my country, you cannot invade it"—and so wars break out between nations; "This is my religion"—and so slaughter occurs between religions; "This is my faith"—and so persecution arises between faiths, and so on—all because of this "great love."

True compassion has no conflict whatsoever; there is no distinction of great or small. All problems arise because true compassion has not been generated. Even humanistic love, though free of conflict among humans, inevitably slaughters animals and harms living beings because it is based on "humanity." As long as it is based on "humanity," no matter how loving one is, even advocating the ideal of protecting animals, when others kill animals one will fly into a rage—and then there is no love anymore.

What Bai Xuexiang said is very good! Only one who has genuinely experienced that emptiness could say such things; without real experience, one could not even make it up. Worldly people love love and love affection; it seems they cannot live without feeling and love. Emotional love is the spiritual nourishment 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 a sublimation—but it is all still 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: treating the group as the great self, doing everything for this great self, caring nothing beyond it, even attacking other groups for the sake of one's own group—it seems one is 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? Of course it is evil conduct—this is precisely the manifestation of the 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 follow. The Buddhas and Bodhisattvas do not speak of love; they speak of loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity, and of the four means of embracing (catvāri-saṃgraha-vastūni), using the four means of embracing to gather in sentient beings without stirring up emotion—stirring up 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—with the nature of grasping, it must inevitably be so.

Take, for example, a doctor treating patients: it is enough to do one's utmost to save them. If one invests emotion and grieves as bitterly as the patients or their families, then the doctor's body and mind will be affected by the patients at every moment; before long, the doctor will fall ill too, and over time may even die of illness—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 sentient beings'—how then could they speak of rescuing 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 craving-love (tṛṣṇā). No matter what kind of love it is, or what it loves, it is a defiled 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 (ārūpyadhātu) are still within birth and death in the three realms. Eradicating craving is the duty of a practitioner; then replacing it with loving-kindness and compassion, the mind's capacity expands, and there is no longer the fault and peril of birth and death.