Ud 8.8: Visākhā Sutta

[chargingbull]

It would seem to me that the Buddha is simply using the example of human relationship to provide another teaching on attachment. What we hold dear has great potential to cause attachment and, eventually, suffering through impermanence.

The very idea of 'dear ones' implies something that is seperate to us, as it cannot be held by something that is the same as it. The more we fragment our understanding of totality, it would seem to me that we have more opportunities to be hurt by it.

But at the same time, in my short time reading on Buddhism, it would seem the Buddha often speaks in hyperbole, to allow the truth to be registered by our frequently dull minds. Like the ego/self, just because we realise that we have it, and that it causes suffering, it doesn't them imply that all beings at all times should aim to cut it off. One takes the principle, and uses it as a foundation for organic growth. Extremes to me seem to merely be another form of resistance, another form of grasping.