A Quote by Norman O. Brown

Love without attachment is light.

Norman O. Brown

Quote Topics

Attachment Light Love Without

Quote Author

Norman O. Brown
American - Philosopher
September 25, 1913 - October 2, 2002

The near enemy of love is attachment. Attachment masquerades as love. It says, “I will love this person because I need them.” Or, “I’ll love you if you’ll love me back. I’ll love you, but only if you will be the way I want.” This isn’t love at all - it is attachment - and attachment is rigid, it is very different from love.

Jack Kornfield

Just seeing the fact that this is an attachment, that attachment is a bondage - a beautiful word for bondage - that attachment is not love... just seeing the ugliness of attachment - it drops; then arises love. The same energy that was becoming attachment, released from attachment becomes a totally different energy; it becomes love.

Rajneesh

Try not to confuse attachment with love. Attachment is about fear and dependency, and has more to do with love of self than love of another. Love without attachment is the purest love because it isn't about what others can give you because your empty. It is about what you can give others because you're already full.

Yasmin Mogahed

When the only bond between close friends is attachment, then even a minor issue may cause one's projections to change. As soon as our projections change, the attachment disappears, because that attachment was based solely on projection and expectation. It is possible to have compassion without attachment, and similarly, to have anger without hatred.

Dalai Lama

?Drop the idea that attachment and love are one thing. They are enemies. It is attachment that destroys all love. If you feed, if you nourish attachment, love will be destroyed; If you feed and nourish love, attachment will fall away by itself. They are not one; they are two separate entities, and antagonistic to each other.

Rajneesh

?"I have no fear of losing u, for you aren't an object of my property, or anyone else's. I love you as you are, without attachment, without fears, without conditions, without egoism, trying not to absorb you. I love you freely because I love your freedom, as well as mine.

Anthony de Mello

When attachment arises in the place of love, it sees the other as separate; it grasps and needs. Attachment is conditional; it seeks control and it fear loss. Ask your heart if attachment has replaced love. If we speak to our heart, it will always tell us the truth.

Jack Kornfield

Love allows your beloved the freedom to be unlike you. Attachment asks for conformity to your needs and desires. Love imposes no demands. Attachment expresses an overwhelming demand - "Make me feel whole." Love expands beyond the limits of two people. Attachment tries to exclude everything but two people.

Deepak Chopra

Be Good, Do Good.Do thou always without attachment perform action which should be done, for by performing action without attachment, man reaches the Supreme.

Sivananda

Drop the idea that attachment and love are one thing. They are enemies. It is attachment that destroys all love.

Rajneesh

Attachment to spiritual things is... just as much an attachment as inordinate love of anything else.

Thomas Merton

Most people suffer in love because of attachment. Attachment means we're interested in a net return on our investment.

Frederick Lenz

Attachment is not love. Where there is attachment there is exploitation.

Rajneesh

Light, Love, and Will - the one is as necessary as the other; the one is dangerous without the others. Light, Love, and Will are the three eternal, vital sources of the higher, truer, purer cosmic life.

Ameen Rihani

If a woman conceals her affection with the same skill from the object of it, she may lose the opportunity of fixing him; and it will then be but poor consolation to believe the world equally in the dark. There is so much of gratitude or vanity in almost any attachment, that it is not safe to leave any to itself. We can all begin ‘freely’- as light preference is natural enough; but there are very few of us who have a heart enough to be really in love without encouragement.