How can we love others without becoming attached?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
How can we love others when we aren’t meant to become attached to them? That attachment and affection are two very different things. Affect or we could say bondage and bondage, they’re two different things.
When we are attached to someone, that means we are concerned only about their pleasure. In every interaction, there is pleasure and there is welfare. Like a mother who is very attached to the child, and the child says, Mommy, I want chocolate.
Now the child’s tooth has become spoiled because of eating too much chocolate. And the mother says, No, I cannot, I cannot have chocolate. No, she starts crying.
And the child says, No, no, no, don’t cry, but I want chocolate. So what is happening? The tooth will get further spoiled. So when we say we are attached to someone, that means the pleasure that, their pleasure and thereby our pleasure from their pleasure, that is the only basis of the relationship.
We are not really concerned about their welfare in the long run. And we are also not, because for their pleasure, we’ll do anything. We ourselves end up doing wrong things.
The classic example of attachment is in the Mahabharata, Dhritarashtra and Duryodhana. Duryodhana was an evil villain. He was an active villain.
And Dhritarashtra was a passive villain. So he could not tolerate any displeasure of Duryodhana. And that’s why he did hideous things.
Hideously, he had his own nephew’s plan to be burned alive, to be killed, to be poisoned. So attachment means that we get so concerned other person’s pleasure and our pleasure to that person, that neither that person’s welfare nor our welfare remains the concern. When we are affectionate, then we are properly situated in the intersection between welfare and pleasure.
We have to choose. We choose welfare normally, even if it sometimes causes displeasure to them. And for this, we need a strong vertical relationship with Krishna.
And our ultimate welfare and other person’s ultimate welfare is to be connected with Krishna. All our relationships in the world, they are important, they can be fulfilling, but they cannot be forever enduring. The purpose of all relationships in the world is to help us develop an enduring relationship with Krishna.
So when we interact in a way that is not driven only by their pleasure or our pleasure, but we interact in a way that is for their welfare and our welfare, then we can be affectionate without becoming attached.