LOVE CAN BE A KIND OF SICKNESS.

Thich Nhat Hanh, For A Future To Be Possible: Commentaries on the Five Wonderful Precepts, with Robert Aitken, Richard Baker, Stephen Batchelor, Patricia Marx Ellsberg, Joan Halifax, Chan Kbong, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jack Kornfield, Annabel Laity, Christopher Reed, Sulak Sivaraksa, Gary Snyder, David Steindl-Rast & Arthur Waskow (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1993) ("Love can be a kind of sickness. In the West and in Asia we have the word 'lovesick.' What makes us sick is attachment. Although it is a sweet internal formation, this kind of love with attachment is like a drug. It makes us feel wonderful, but once we are addicted, we cannot have peace. We cannot study, do our daily work, or sleep. We only think of the object of our love. We are sick with love. This kind of love is linked to our willingness to possess and monopolize. We want the object of our love to be entirely ours and only for us. It is totalitarian. We do not want anyone to prevent us from being with him or her. This kind of love can be described as a prison, where we lock up our beloved and create only suffering for him or her. The one who is loved is deprived of freedom--of the right to be him or herself and enjoy life. This kind of love cannot be described as maitri or karuna. It is only the willingness to make use of the other person in order to satisfy our own needs." "When you have sexual energy that makes you feel unhappy, as though you are losing your inner peace, you should know how to practice so that you do not do things that will bring suffering to other people or yourself. We have to learn about this. In Asia, we say there are three sources of energy--sexual, breath, and spirit. Tinh, sexual energy, is the first. When you have more sexual energy than you need, there will be an imbalance in your body and in your being. You need to know how to reestablish the balance, or you may act irresponsibly. According to Taoism and Buddhism, there are practices to help reestablish that balance, such as meditation or martial arts [or yoga?]. You can learn the ways to channel your sexual energy into deep realization in the domains of art and meditation." Id. at 34-35.).