Love on the Path

Stephanie Swann
February 23, 2026

A friend asked me this morning, “How does love play into the Buddha’s teachings?”

And then she added, gently, “I don’t hear you use the word love very much.”

I was quiet for a while.

It surprised me. Not because she was accusing me of being unloving. She was not. She was asking a sincere question. But I sat with it. How does love live in this path? Why do I not speak that word more often?

Let me begin with a caveat. I am no Buddhist scholar. I am a practitioner. A spiritual friend among many. What I offer here comes from lived experience. From walking this path imperfectly and wholeheartedly. It is not doctrine. It is simply what I understand to be true in my own life.

For me, Buddha is love.

Everything about this path leads to love. Not attachment. Not romance. Not preference. But a genuine, openhearted love.

Not a love based on conditions.

Not even a love dependent on another being. But a love that emanates from an unguarded heart.

This love is not centered in the self. In fact, it seems to grow as selfing diminishes. As the stories about me and mine loosen, something wider opens. Something more inclusive. Less defended.

Love, for me, develops as I have the courage to turn toward the truth of any moment. The courage to turn toward life as it is. Sorrow, joy, anger, beauty, confusion. Without turning away.

When I turn toward experience instead of resisting it, the heart softens. And in that softening, love naturally appears.

Love gets covered up by papañca, by the proliferating stories of self and other. By the endless narrations of who is right, who is wrong, who deserves, who does not. Love falters under the illusion of duality, this separate self protecting itself from that separate world.

But when the illusion thins, even briefly, love is what remains.

Many of us have been shaped, even wounded, by cultural images of love. We are taught that love is possession. That love is longing. That love must be reciprocated. That love must feel a certain way. I have had to unlearn much of this as I have walked this path.

What I am discovering is that love in the Dharma is quieter. Less dramatic. Less performative.

It is the steady willingness to care.

To not harm.

To see clearly.

To include rather than exclude.

The tradition speaks of the Brahmavihāras, the four immeasurables. Mettā, lovingkindness. Karuṇā, compassion. Muditā, appreciative joy. Upekkhā, equanimity. These are sometimes described as sublime abodes, as qualities in which the heart can dwell.

I suspect this is the language the Buddha used instead of simply saying love.

Mettā is the simple wish for beings to be well.

Karuṇā is the trembling of the heart in response to suffering.

Muditā is delight in the goodness and happiness of others.

Upekkhā is the spacious balance that allows love to remain steady, not collapsing into grasping or aversion.

Together, they form a love that is vast. A love that does not cling. A love that does not burn out. A love that does not require control.

If love is what remains when the heart is less entangled in itself, then how does that love move? How does it express itself in action?

For me, it does not originate in the object. It is not created by what I encounter. It is revealed in the meeting. 

When I say that, I mean something very simple. Love is less about what I am looking at and more about how I am looking. It is a lens through which the world is received. When the heart is soft and open, it is as if I am wearing the right glasses. I see more clearly. I see without distortion. I see the shared vulnerability, the shared longing to be safe, to be known, to be free from suffering.

Without that lens, the world can feel uncertain, threatening, or flat. The mind fills in stories. It measures. It evaluates. It separates. But with the lens of love, life is met directly. Not as an object to use or defend against, but as something to participate in.

This is what the tradition points to when it speaks of right view. Seeing clearly changes the way we love.

When the heart is soft and open, it meets life. And life itself becomes the love object.

It can be a mountain ridge with bare trees in the winter, stark and honest against the sky.

It can be the look in our dog’s eyes, the way she rolls onto her back and seems to laugh at the same time.

It can be the ring of the door, knowing my wife is home from work.

It can be the cashier carefully helping me with my groceries.

It can be the quiet impulse to help my elder friend stand up from the booth after lunch.

It can be witnessing my mother’s last breath.

And it can be the deep gratitude for the life she lived after she has gone.

It can be a gorgeous sunset.

It can also be a rainy day.

When the heart is open, love does not select only the beautiful moments. It includes the ordinary. It includes the inconvenient. It includes what is pleasant and what is not.

Love also arises as the impulse to respond when injustice is seen.

Love is what met the dog with hollow eyes and a tired body who had been tied to a post in someone’s yard for the past two years. That dog was not one I simply passed by. I received her as a volunteer at the shelter. I welcomed her in. I placed my hands on her fragile body. I helped nurse her back to health.

And I am not going to lie. Love got stuck in my throat as I thought about the person inside the house. When I look at the horrors unfolding in our country right now, the harm being done to human beings, love inevitably gets stuck there also. On this path we are taught that hate will only end up burning the one who carries it. Through the practices of lovingkindness and compassion, we search for a way to let love be the power behind our care.

It is hard to love in the face of injustice. And yet this is the path. To love all beings does not mean to like all beings. It does not mean to approve of harm. It means to wish no one ill will.

Sometimes love is far from flowery or bursting with radiance. Sometimes it is not soft at all. Sometimes it is a quiet steadiness. A refusal to dehumanize. A deep wish for all beings to be at peace, even when they are lost in ignorance.

Love can be fierce in its protection. Clear in its boundaries. Unwilling to look away.

None of these expressions equate with attachment. Attachment grasps. It demands. It calculates what will be returned. It fears loss.

The loving heart is less concerned with what comes back and more concerned with what can be given.

It does not cling to the sunset.

It does not possess the dog or the spouse or the mountain.

It does not keep score with the cashier or the friend.

It participates.

Love in action, as I understand it, is participation in life without the need to control it.

It is generosity without bookkeeping.

Care without ownership.

Presence without demand.

Perhaps I do not use the word love often because the Dharma points so precisely. It speaks of nonclinging. Of wisdom. Of the ending of greed, hatred, and delusion. But when greed softens, when hatred dissolves, when delusion thins, what remains?

For me, what remains is love.

Not sentimental love. Not fragile love. Not love that depends on being mirrored back.

But the natural fragrance of a heart that has learned, little by little, to let go.

And to you, my dear friend who asked the question, perhaps one of the greatest loves in my life is this spiritual community of friends. The ones who sit beside me in silence, who question me honestly, who walk this path imperfectly and sincerely. If I do not always say the word love, please know that it is here, woven through everything I practice, everything I teach, and everything I cherish.