Small Compassion and Small Love Can Only Obstruct the Path

Beings who emerge from the three evil paths do so because of being born from craving and desire. As for the future retributive results of craving and attachment, most go to the ghost realm to repay their karmic results; those with slight craving can become human or ascend to the heavens. Craving and attachment belong to the nature of water, and water flows downward — downward means the three evil paths. The Buddha said this in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra; it can be verified in the Buddhist scriptures. Some people vigorously encourage Buddhist practitioners to indulge in craving and attachment between men and women, claiming that this is to form affinities. The affinity is indeed formed, but as for whether it is wholesome or unwholesome, according to the Buddha's intention, there is no good outcome — only the cycle of the six realms of rebirth and the suffering of birth and death.

There was a person who, not long after leaving home to become a monastic, was entangled by his girlfriend into returning to lay life. Then he left home again, only to be entangled back once more. This repeated seven times, and he was extremely distressed. You want liberation, but she insists on entangling you and not letting you be liberated — a true karmic enemy of birth and death.

When a person wants tranquility but is relentlessly entangled by others, that feeling is agonizing and hard to endure.

Some will say that bodhisattvas should have compassion for sentient beings, and since wives and children are also sentient beings, they should all the more be treated with compassion. But compassion must be appropriate and kept within proper limits. If one shows compassion only to one's own family members and those with whom one has affinities, expending all one's time and energy on just a few individuals — and these few do not even have good spiritual faculties (indriya) — thereby delaying one's own progress on the Path, then it is not worthwhile.

A bodhisattva's compassion should be primarily directed toward the majority of sentient beings. By concentrating one's energy on cultivation and realization, one will benefit countless family members and those with affinities, and will benefit one's parents, wives, and children across infinite kalpas of successive lives. One should not place one's main energy on one's current single wife, single child, single father, and single mother. Compared with great love, small love is insignificant; being held captive by small love hinders one's progress on the Path. A bodhisattva's vision should be far-reaching and vast, and one should vow to use the light of one's own wisdom to illuminate all beings throughout the world. A mind of great loving-kindness and great compassion is the true bodhisattva mind; small kindness and small love can only obstruct the Path and should be abandoned as quickly as possible.