Wow, what is Selfless Love? I'm not certain that I can define it; however, I believe that this is the thought being offered by Christ, Buddha, and many sages. Is it the highest of all experience? Is it possible?
It is otherwise known as altruism. It is impossible to achieve. Every voluntary action is for personal pleasure. The appearance of selfless love is deceptive because it gives pleasure to the person giving the love, and hence is not selfless. I.e. the person expects to feel good about loving others. In Christianity it is far from attractive since it is expected according to doctrine as opposed to voluntary, and the proponent expects to be eventually rewarded by eternal life in a heavenly paradise. Hardly selfless actions or intentions.
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I was married for 18 years and have 3 daughters now all at college and in their twenties. As for parenting - much is just superb and wonderful but many aspects can be unpleasant, but generally you don't have a choice with those issues, that isn't selfless love simply involuntary neccessity.
Selfless Love by any other definition I think Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It must come from within, eh.
When it comes to selflessness, we must be in the clear about what this "self" in "selflessness" is. As far as I understand Christianity and Buddhism, selfless love is very much possible. Yet it is only possible once we give up our attachment to our perceived self. And this is the part that is most hard to do, and many people refuse to do it. If I am convinced that if I love someone, I become diminished; if I am convinced that to love means to put up with a loss of self-respect -- then I certainly am not capable of selfless love. If my loving someone comes with the condition that they love me back, then my love is conditional and again, I am not capable of selfless love. Selfless love is when we give up the notion that our love for someone is any way defined by how the other person treats us.
Not sure why selflessness would be dependent on the actions of others. Surely it is the opposite. Selfless love is loving others without any consideration for ones own position. I don't beleive that is possible or perhaps extremly rare. Most who make selfless acts are quite proud of their actions even though they would be modest about it. Selfless acts are usually associated with an inward feeling of satisfaction even when the actual action might have been unpleasant and personally painful. My point here is that I believe everyone knows that doing something apparently selfless will be inwardly rewarding and hence they expect such a reward - that destroys the selfless portion of the activity. Or in other words the actual act of being selfless is not a selfless activity. I.e. the action is impossible to fullfil.
Do we ever do things because we must? Some people give their lives with death or pain being the only knowable reward for the act of sacrafice.
Bowser, Yup. Cleaning up puddles of vomit from a sick child comes to mind. Definitely not something I want to do but it has to be done. I admit this troubles me deeply. What personal reward is there for sacrificing one’s life? There can be none unless there is an afterlife. To the religionist who believes in such things then I can see that even here this supposed selfless act would be met with an expectation of heavenly reward, so I could not class it as selfless. To the atheist, who doesn’t expect any after life, then such a sacrifice must be one of the very few truly selfless acts imaginable. This troubles me because I am not sure I could do this. In the hypothetical scenario where the choice is my daughter’s life or my own could I willingly sacrifice myself to save her believing it would be the permanent end to my existence? This is a no win scenario and one I have yet to solve.
I read an article the other night on the topic, Chris. It is a deep question. I can see where we do many things that are not for ourselves but for others--often not knowing why. Small sacrifices, I think, come from the same source. But I could be wrong.
Everything that we do, we do for ourselves. In everything that we love, we love ourselves, because only we exist. But it depends on how you look at it. If you die to save someone else, it is still because of you, because of your feelings for that person. You do it for yourself. But it can be called a selfless act.
Cris, Never said it was. Do read again what I said. I think we always have consideration for ourselves, this is so per default. If we don't have consideration for ourselves, we eventually become unable to do anything, much less love. Like they say, one must first love oneself, only then will one be able to love others. But when it comes to loving others, we may or may not let our love be influenced by what they do. Our love for others is selfless when it is not influenced or defined by how they act or treat us.
Spot on. When the person realises that we love them independantly of how they are, then they may understand the true nature of grace. If we all loved unconditionally and respected the state of 'grace' then we still wouldn't be perfect but we would enjoy the fruits of forgiveness. 1 Peter 4:8 And above all things be earnest in your love among yourselves, for love covers a multitude of sins. (WEB) peace c20
