A friend of mine was left by his girlfriend recently. Hes in shock and in pain. Hes also studying Buddhist philosophy; and he asked me the following question: Am I supposed to love her even after she did this to me? Isnt that what this Buddhist stuff is telling me to do? The short answer is yes; but its more complicated than that. Because in order to love unconditionallythe thing that is called for hereone needs to undergo a shift in perception, and come to a new understanding about what love is, and what it can be.

Romantic love, the love of steamy novels and Valentine cards, is about having your needsor at least your desires and fantasiesmet by someone else. It is conditional, and suffers, from a Buddhist perspective, from what you would call attachment. Im seeing this played out right now by my sons thirteen-year-old friends, as they fall in and out of love with each other, depending on whether one is doing what the other wants at a given moment. They are, after all, merely acting out what surrounds them, in movies, in the news, in their parents lives, in the life of the culture.

Its easy to love someone when theyre doing what you want them to do. And its easy to love someone who is like you, who lives and acts in your comfort zone. But what happens when your partner or your friend or your parent does something that makes you uncomfortable, that you really dont like? If youre being honest, I think it would be fair to say that a part of you falls out of love, at least for a while. And in the midst of deep betrayal, all bets are off. Sometimes you find your way back to what feels like love, and sometimes you dont.

So what kind of love endures these storms of life? I call it radical love. Radical means two things: On the one hand it means on the fringe or extreme, and it also means coming from the root or fundamental, innate and essential. Unconditional love is all of these things. I believe it is where we come from; its who we are deep down. Our task is to find our way back to it through the turmoil of the culture that dominates our lives today.

Should we allow ourselves to be abused? No. Should we create healthy boundaries and maintain them? Absolutely! This is part of healthy loving. But we can also look for what is fundamental to ourselves and others, in those times when we might abandon love and see only separateness and conflict. In the midst of pain and disillusionment, we can also see what binds uswhat were all a part ofregardless of what one or another of us might say or do.

This position bears out the other half of the definition: Unconditional love is way out of the norm in our society, obsessed as we are by the differences between us, and believing as we do that we must protect our limited resources from one another.

Believing that we are one is, indeed, a most radical notion. I hope my friend will come to understand that his girlfriendand her objectionable behaviorare in some way a part of him, just as he is a part of her. How he chooses to act and react helps to define who she will be to him in the future. This is the Buddhist concept of seeing the potential in all things. It isnt so hard, once you get the hang of it, but boy can it be a bitch to get startedparticularly when youve just been dealt a mighty blow! But this is the best time, when your heart is cracked wide open.

So unconditional love isnt about rolling over and giving yourself up. And it isnt about pretending that everythings ok. Its about understanding that were all a part of each other. In the push and pull of life, were connected at our roots. Knowing this allows us to remain connected even when were in pain, and the source of the pain appears to be the one we love, and the one who loves us. Its not just what were supposed to do; its what were meant do, in order to be happy, and to be whole.