Love and Conditions

  While reading Anders Nygren's book Agape and Eros (I am tempted to say a classic in its own right), the thought occurred to me that Christian concepts of love are often based on something that is fundamentally 'eternal'. Whether that eternity consists in the absolute love of a divinity for all creation (Agape) or the love that climbs upward toward an ideal beloved (Eros), there is always a sense that love has an enduring quality of permanence. And I do wonder whether this 'permanence' is also not a source of suffering for so many people, especially lovers or married people. Is there any state of being, state of doing, or state of feeling that we can say is 'permanent'?
    I think that the Buddhist theory of cause and conditions can say something quite new about love, even though it seems to be a very disheartening concept from a distance. According to causes and conditions, there would be many factors that go into the making of a relationship. I remember reading Peter Berger's Invitation to Sociology, where he talks about the many social factors that go into a relationship happening or not happening. It was humorous to reflect that love doesn't work if any one of these conditions is happening. For example, would the couple feel comfortable to go through with the relationship if their statuses were different, or one family disapproved of the match? Would they still keep going if one of them had to move far away?
        Many purists of the Western love motif are going to argue that 'true' love is unconditional, and should not suffer the pangs of conditions around. While I agree with that view, I also think that there can be many factors preventing a relationship from unfolding as planned. Simply willing something to happen or having a strong vow is not going to necessarily control or influence things in this way. Sometimes doing so also creates disappointed expectations. It seems that vows are directions or intentions that people can take for the benefit of others, but that vow does not prescribe or control an outcome.
     The motif of Eros, as Nygren rightly points out, could be (problematically) egocentric. That is, striving to obtain some desired state of being or relationship is often self-serving of some personal state of completion. What is often not stated in the literature on Eros (in Plato, for example) is how painful and tenuous the state of striving for an ideal can be, even if one is convinced that the ideal is absolute and worthy of one's 'all'. It also defies the principal of cause and conditions, by suggesting that what we find beautiful is the shadow of an ideal form that is meant to be pursued and appreciated. Cause and conditions aren't considered relevant to the discussion. I wonder to what extent people can go crazy chasing after this pristine ideal that never quite gets realized in the daily life of present moment to moment awareness.
    I also wonder if another way of loving might be one which fully and clearly sees conditions as integral to the life of both lover and beloved. If one person moves away from a relationship, of course it will change the way the other interacts with the person. To ignore or not acknowledge that would be to disregard what truly happens in the moment. Rather than seeing these conditions as obstacles, would it not be interesting to perhaps reflect on them as equally important elements in a total experience? Thinking in this way, I don't discriminate between the 'essence' and the 'unimportant' aspects of an experience, much less the 'desired' from the 'undesired'. Even the sadness of losing someone I care about is an element of the experience that I can cherish and appreciate as much as the 'gaining' of something. Both are temporary yet integral elements in a changing landscape.
    What I am proposing is that the view of love as 'unconditional' does not need to exclude or rule out the role that conditions play in how a person experiences love. Just as there are clouds in the blue sky, so there are bound to be conditions that will prevent a desired situation from being fully realized. But to ignore the clouds is also detrimental, because conditions are just as much a part of experience as the unconditioned. The role of the lover is to embrace all of it, to the point where there is not a lover seeking the loved at all, but just conditions coming together at a given moment to create a total picture. What is 'unconditioned' is not any particular object but the totality of the experience itself.

Berger, Peter (1963)  Invitation to Sociology. Toronto: Doubleday
Nygren, Anders (1982), Agape and Eros. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.