Let us examine love and friendship from a bodhisattva's perspective, which accepts souls rather than a Buddhist philosopher's perspective which does not. Philosophers can never answer the central question: "If souls do not exist, why be compassionate towards them?"
Friendship is the sharing of awareness by souls. It can be through shared action, shared opinion, or shared goals. Friends can share past and future, or hopes and dreams. Sharing may exist for large groups or tiny ones. But in friendship, the barriers of ego must fall, and a sense of shared identity and awareness emerges. I encourage all beings to share awareness, which is the bodhisattva's viewpoint. From the perspective of emotion, it can be caring and compassion but from the perspective of knowledge, it is shared awareness and deeper identity.
Love brings down the ego barriers of narcissism and pride. Ego barriers are made of pain, but vanity chooses pain over humility. Superiority with pain is preferred to inferiority or equality without pain. Greatness is based on separation. He or she who does not care is superior to he or she that does. This is the perspective of egotism.
But the bodhisattva does not accept this view. Greatness comes from a willingness to serve and help others. The tyrant, the gigolo, the millionaire are not great. They are using up their good karma, and turning it into evil. They harm others and do not care. They call them weak, ugly, and lazy. People are attracted to superiority over others. It makes the ego stronger, and the heart harder. It makes mystical awareness a distant dream.
In human love, people find a soul to admire, and a body to be near. In divine love, it is not the single soul that is admired. It is the soul of the universe. In this form of love, all things become transparent to the endless awareness of the Buddha's smile.
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