Love Is a Many-Faceted Thing

The perfection of loving-kindness is the wish to provide for the welfare and happiness of the world, accompanied by compassion and skillful means; literally, it means benevolence. —Insight Meditation Center

The magazine Cosmopolitan lists eight types of love by their Greek names:

1. Eros (sexual passion)

2. Philia (deep friendship)

3. Ludus (playful love)

4. Agape (love for everyone)

5. Pragma (longstanding love)

6. Philautia (love of the self)

7. Storge (family love)

8. Mania (obsessive love)

The online Psychiatrist.com website reports on research showing that Different Types of Love Activate the Brain Differently, taking the distinctions one step further.

Neither the Buddha nor the Greek philosophers had access to MRI technology, but they understood that love has an impact on the lover’s well-being. Here’s how Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield expresses that impact in his book The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace:

Love creates a communion with life. Love expands us, connects us, sweetens us, ennobles us.

Love springs up in tender concern, it blossoms into caring action. It makes beauty out of all we touch. In any moment we can step beyond our small self and embrace each other as beloved parts of a whole.

Love, of course, creates much more than what it does for the lover. Because we all live in an interconnected vibratory sea, love spreads infinitely.

In Buddhism, we talk about karuna, dana, and metta—compassion, generosity, and loving-kindness—as three types of love, but I think metta covers them all. The Metta Meditation is something we usually learn early in our exposure to Buddhism, so I thought I’d offer it here and now. If you’re new to meditation or Buddhism, it’s an easy first step. If you’re experienced, you know it’s an excellent meditation to return to periodically.

Go to the top of this post and click on the arrow for a 20-minute metta meditation I inexpertly lead. For a 47-minute more sophisticated version, here’s one from mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn.

May you all be well, be happy, be free from suffering, and know inner peace.

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Please forgive the masculine pronoun in our musical bonus.