Love vs. Attachment

Is it love, or is it just attachment? Love vs. attachmenthas been thoroughly confused and debated by many. Attachment at times can masquerade as love. How do you know the difference between love vs. attachment? When there is attachment, clinging and fear naturally creeps in. The sense of feeling incomplete without that person breeds insecurity, desperation, and can stunt the growth of the any relationship. Sadhguru provides a very unique perspective on love vs. attachment and how one can experience love without attachment.

Sadhguru: There is something called “love,” and there is something called “attachment.” What people call “love” is just a way of binding themselves to somebody, getting identified with somebody, but this is not love — this is attachment. We always mistake attachment for love, but attachment has nothing to do with love. In fact, hate has something to do with love. Look at whom you hate. Do you hate the person who is just walking by on the street? No... you loved someone and one day the coin fell the other way and suddenly became hate. So, if the coin falls one way, it is love; if it turns around and falls the other way, it becomes hate.

Love is not a suffering. If you have love for someone or something, when they are with you, you can enjoy their presence, and when they are not with you, you can enjoy their absence. What you are doing in the name of love is just longing to become one with somebody. This longing is not just to become one with one person; you want to become one with the whole existence. You want to become unbounded. Can you become physically one with someone? It looks like oneness for a moment, but the next moment you fall apart. So if you want oneness you must seek something beyond the physical.

That is the idea of meditation: to break the boundaries of the physical. When you break the bondages and the boundaries of the physical, the body may vibrate, tears may come. The ecstasy of union is transforming and fulfilling beyond anything one may know.