Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye.

People often ask me how it's possible for Buddhism to be centered around love, yet simultaneously be all about non-attachment and letting go.

Western culture believes that love leads to attachment and vice versa,

but love and attachment are not the same thing. In fact, they are opposites.

Attachment is fear-based, not love-based. Attachment is selfish, not selfless.

True love is liberating, not confining.

And if love isn't unconditional in every sense of the word,

then it isn't love at all. If you only love someone because they love

you back or even with the expectation that they always will, then you're in love with being

loved, not with the other person.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that, it's quite common actually, but it isn't love.

It is a self-centered need to feel important, cared for, and admired.

True love has less to do with what you receive as what you have to give,

and it has nothing to do with possession, nor does it come with any contingencies. Keep in mind

however that while your love for someone can be unconditional, being in a

relationship with them can most certainly have conditions.

Whether it's blood relation or chemistry, it doesn't always imply compatibility.

I have personally said to numerous people in the past that I couldn't imagine my life without them, yet here I am.

After years of not having them in my life for one reason or another, and I'm okay.

This has taught me to be less melodramatic and more honest with myself and with others

that I love them dearly but without attachment. This makes my love stronger and more intense, not because it lasts forever, but because I realize nothing ever does.

It makes me appreciate each moment and each person that much more. So ask yourself about the people you

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