The Power of Real Love: A Conversation with Sharon Salzberg and bell hooks

An important and deeply needed conversation. 

Powerful and profound. - Molly

 

Sharon Salzberg and bell hooks

If love is what we need more of—and we do—then Sharon Salzberg and bell hooks are two of the most important voices of our time. As a leading teacher of loving-kindness meditation, Sharon Salzberg answers the all-important question: how, precisely, do we bring more love into our lives? As one of America’s leading political and cultural critics, bell hooks advocates for the power of love to transform not only our lives, but our society, overturning the culture of domination. I was honored to join these two great women and champions of love to celebrate the publication of Salzberg’s new book, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection, in a discussion at the Jewish Community Centre in New York co-sponsored by Lion’s Roar, the Garrison Institute, and the JCC. —Melvin McLeod

 

Melvin McLeod: We all want to be loved. We all want to love. But many of us are baffled about how to actually bring more love into our lives. How can we start?

bell hooks: Something I deeply appreciate about Sharon’s teaching—particularly in her new book, which is a kind of love workbook—is that she explores what we need to do to carry on the work of love. It fascinates me that while we are so obsessed with romance, many of us are turned off by the practice of love.

When you tell someone that there’s really a practice—a way that many of us, especially those from dysfunctional backgrounds, can learn what it is to love—they are hesitant to fully accept that. Sharon, when you express your conviction in our innate capacity to love, I’m not sure many people really believe in that.

Sharon Salzberg: Well, why would we, really? [laughter]

There’s a line from an old Steve Carell movie, Dan in Real Life: “Love is not a feeling. It’s an ability.” I wanted to use that line in my book Real Love, but my editor pushed back, saying I couldn’t really say that because people think of love as a feeling. So I sort of fudged it and wrote, “While we might think of love as a feeling, we can also think of it as an ability.” That turned out to be the most important line in the book. It describes the essence of a transformative experience I had a long time ago.

In 1985, I was in Burma practicing intensive loving-kindness meditation. I had been there three months when I had a realization. I saw that up until then, I had considered love something that was in someone else’s hands. They were either going to deliver it to me or take it away. It was as if the UPS person arrived with a package of love, but if they got to my doorstep and decided they had the wrong address, I would have no love in my life.

In that retreat, I realized that was not true. Love is inside me. Other people might awaken it or threaten it, but as a capacity, it’s mine. That was incredibly liberating and also a little daunting. Because—and here’s the big question—if it’s an ability, does that mean it’s my responsibility to try to cultivate it, even in difficult circumstances?

bell hooks: Anytime we do the work of love, we are doing the work of ending domination. In a culture of domination, it’s extremely hard to cultivate love or to be love. At this moment in our nation, there’s so much disrespect afloat. Respect comes from a word meaning to look at. Right now, we are not looking at one another with loving-kindness, with compassion.

As Sharon teaches, you have to practice love not just for the people you like, those who are near you. You have to practice it for everyone. In Appalachia, where I live, I see an upsurge of white supremacy. Prior to this, I felt I was taking to heart the Buddhist emphasis on practicing love. I felt I could walk around Appalachia and beam love to white people. Maybe they wouldn’t respond or they would turn away, but I did not feel fear.

These days, I feel fear and uncertainty in my relationship to strangers. So I struggle every day now with how to love the stranger. How do I love people who are beaming a lot of hate in my direction? That’s a really crucial national question right now. How can we return ourselves to a place of loving-kindness?

Please continue this conversation here: https://www.lionsroar.com/the-power-of-real-love/