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Creating Bridges: Spirituality & Philosophy:
Spirituality in Daily Life:
Deserving Love? Who Invented That?
by Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron |
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As the readers of this column will learn, I do prison work-corresponding with inmates, visiting them individually, and talking to Buddhist groups in prisons. I receive much more from these people than I give; they teach me incredible things. To share some of their insights with you, I will quote them from time to time in the column.
Will, an inmate in his late twenties, is a muscular guy who works out and walks with a swagger. He told me that he wants to open to his loving feelings, but doesn't really know how. He feels that he doesn't deserve the love that others give him and that there is always something selfish in the love he has for others.
Many people tell me they feel that they don't deserve love,. Although they want to be loved, they feel unworthy. That leads them to doubt the other person and their love,: "Something must be wrong if you love me!"
To get another viewpoint on the issue, I wrote to Bo, an inmate in Mississippi, a man imprisoned at age 32 with a 20-year sentence for drug dealing. He's served 13 years so far. Those of us on the outside seldom consider that inmates go through the same stages in life and deal with the same issues at each stage as everyone else does - only they do it in a prison environment. For a moment, imagine going from being an adolescent to a young adult, dealing with all the physical and emotional changes that entails, while in prison. Imagine maturing from a twenties "I'm invincible" to a middle-aged "My life is half over," in a prison environment with its violence and power trips, and without the ability to make major decisions about your life.
For many the transitions through life's stages become twisted in prison, but for others the transitions bring more growth than for those on the outside. This is the situation for Bo; When I asked him to respond to Will's comments, he wrote the following:
About the man who doesn't feel he deserves others love for him, I think he probably does not have much "self-love." He might have a feeling of low self-worth that won't allow him to love anyone because he feels that he isn't worth being loved. He may be a younger guy that hasn't reached the age where you come to terms with loving others.
Since coming to prison, I have gone from being young to being middle-aged, and in the course of that aging, I have learned a lot about love-love coming to me and love that I give. I have been transformed from someone who could never even say, "I love you," much less know the meaning or recognize the true feelings of love, to someone who freely tells those whom I love how I truly feel. I have gotten past that silly pseudo-machismo of youth that prevents you from saying, feeling, recognizing, or expressing your love for others.
I've never really had a problem with feeling that I didn't deserve love. Before prison, if someone loved me (like a girlfriend or family member-friends didn't really "love" each other in my clique), I really didn't trip on it too much. I was too busy doing all the crazy crap that I used to do. If someone loved me, it was like, "Yeah, alright, that's cool."
Now that I am older and much more mature and know the true valued of someone's love, it's not a question of whether or not it is deserved. Love is not like a grade on a term paper-you deserve an "A" because it's an excellent paper-or your paycheck-you deserve $700 because you worked for it. When someone loves you, truly loves you, it is mostly given with no conditions, or very few. Mothers love their kids even when they don't love Mom back.
Deserve love…I wonder if any of us really deserve love? I don't know if I deserve love, but I openly accept it from those who love me. As I've gotten older I have come to the point in my life where I tell those people whom I love, including friends, that I love them. Yeah, I tell my buddies when I talk to them on the phone, "Yeah (Mike, Tom, Jon, or whoever), I'll see yaw later. Love yaw man!" I tell my family too. It's not hard when you really do love the people you love.
For me personally that youthful bravado has been replaced with a certain sensitivity and cognizance of my true feelings, and I have learned how to relate to those feelings. There is nothing weak in telling my friends what they mean to me, and for the most part they reciprocate the openness.
Maybe some day he will see that it's not a question of whether or not he deserves the love of others. Accept it and find comfort, solace, and strength in it. I do.
Bo's comments caused me to reflect that we are the ones who dream up the standard that we need to deserve the love given to us. This standard is not a law of nature; it is not the way things are. It is simply an idea that our minds made up. What would happen if we dropped that concept, and simply, as Bo suggested, accept the love offered to us with appreciation and enjoy it? What would happen if we stopped the judgment, "Am I deserving of love?" and its partner, "Do others love me enough?" These are simply concepts in our mind; they have no power besides the power our mind gives them.
We need to retrain the way we think because a lot of what we think, as illustrated above, is nonsense. One way to do that in the above situation is to focus on opening our hearts to loving self and others. Mother Teresa wrote a prayer that is an adaptation of the Prayer of St. Francis. She said:
When I am hungry, give me someone that I can feed.
And when I am thirsty, give me someone who needs a drink.
When I'm cold, give me someone to keep warm.
And when I grieve, give me someone to console.
I would like to add:
When I am wrapped up in unproductive psychologizing about myself, give me someone who needs a smile.
When I am lonely, give me someone who needs friendship.
When I feel undeserving of love, give me someone to love.
Loving involves self-confidence, for genuine love does not depend on what others do with our love. The joy comes from loving, not from the other person's acknowledgement, appreciation, or affection in return. Thus Bo can tell his buddies that he loves them without worrying about whether they think he's strange for doing so. He expresses his love in a culturally appropriate manner, in a way that his friends can hear without feeling that it is forced upon them. Bo is content with what is.
For more about the Buddhist view of love and the difference between love and attachment, see Open Heart, Clear Mind, by Thubten Chodron.
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Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron,
Buddhist Nun, Teacher, Author
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Thubten Chodron (Cherry Greene) graduated with a B.A. in History from UCLA in 1971. After traveling extensively in Europe, North Africa and Asia, she taught in the Los Angeles City School District did post-graduate work in Education at USC.
In l975, she attended a meditation course given by Ven. Lama Yeshe and Ven. Zopa Rinpoche, and subsequently went to their monastery in Nepal to explore Buddhism. In l977, she was ordained as a Buddhist nun.
Chodron studied and practiced Buddhism of the Tibetan tradition under the guidance of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan masters for many years in India and Nepal.
She was the spiritual program director at Lama Tzong Khapa Institute in Italy for nearly two years and studied three years at Dorje Pamo Monastery in France. For two years she was resident teacher at Amitabha Buddhist Centre in Singapore, and for ten years she was resident teacher and spiritual advisor at Dharma Friendship Foundation in Seattle.
She currently is co-founder of Sravasti Abbey at Liberation Park in USA. Ven. Chodron has taught Buddhist philosophy, psychology and meditation worldwide.
Her books include:
Open Heart, Clear Mind; Buddhism for Beginners; Working with Anger; Taming the Monkey Mind, and Blossoms of the Dharma: Living as a Buddhist Nun.
Active in interfaith dialogue, she also does prison work. Ven. Chodron emphasizes the practical application of Buddha's teachings in daily life and is especially skilled at explaining them in ways easily understood and practiced by Westerners.
www.thubtenchodron.
org
www.sravastiabbey.
org
www.dharmafriendship.
org
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