Addictive passion is thus a no-win situation-in Majnun's words, a "riddle without a solution, a code which none can decipher. " The only solution for Layla and Majnun is the classic denouement of countless tragic romances: death. Thus, paradoxically, passion, which starts out making us feel so intensely alive, brings us to a consideration of death. What is the death of the lovers pointing to? As a symbol, it contains important clues about how we can overcome addictive passion, while still enjoying the larger unconditional passion at the root of the male/female connection.  At one level, the lovers' death suggests that addiction to anything we use to make ourselves feel high must eventually lead to destruction. The tale of Axel and Sara-a gem of nineteenth-century melancholy romanticism by Villiers de l'Isle- Adam-clearly illustrates this Axel, a lonely, brooding young count, meets Sara in the treasury of his castle", where they instantly fall in love. After feasting on delicious fantasies about how they could run away together, using his riches to travel the world and taste its infinite delights, Axel decides that they should instead commit suicide at the height of their passion. He knows that everyday life could never measure up to the dreams that have set their hearts ablaze:  To consent, after this, to live would be but sacrilege against ourselves. Live? Our servants will do that for us.  In choosing the heavenly illusion of addictive passion, they must sacrifice earthly reality. In Axel's words, "The quality of our hope no longer allows us the earth."

In everyday life, addiction to passion may lead to death in different sorts of ways. The jilted lover who kills his beloved because he "loves her so much" is one example. More commonly, couples who try to hold on to their passion by keeping it in a fixed mold often do real damage to their relationship. As one woman described the death occurred in her marriage:  I was afraid of losing my passion. I wanted to feel it on demand, even in the middle of my pregnancy when I was not naturally feeling sexual. I needed it to let me know that I was alive, and to prove that our relationship was still okay. When I didn't feel it, I blamed our relationship. By trying to hold on so hard to my passion, I killed it and the marriage too. Yet the death that intervenes in the classic love tales also has a deeper significance. It points to the necessity of letting go, which, though it may seem like a death, can also take us beyond the snares and dead ends of romantic illusion. What must die, when we let the deeper current of our passion flow freely, is our small, impoverished view of ourselves and, along with that, our attempt to grasp on to another person to save us.  

Some years ago I had a powerful realisation about the connection between love and death. One day, during a meditation retreat, as my ideas about who I was began to fall away, I started to feel more vividly alive and present. Soon, however, this liberating feeling turned to fear. Out of this fear arose an elaborate fantasy about marrying the man in my life. But then, just as the marriage ceremony ended and we were enjoying our new union, the thought struck like lightning: "What if he dies? What if I die?" Once again, nothing to hold on to. Suddenly, with a jolt, I found myself back in my room.  The next morning, waking up before dawn in a dreamlike state, I imagined I was dying. (I had been having trouble breathing at that altitude and felt constricted in my chest.) I considered how to prepare myself for death, but nothing felt quite right.

Finally it became clear that all I could do was to let love flow freely through me, without trying to stay in control. As I felt what that was like, I found that I could give in to dying. The constriction in my chest began to ease, the sun was coming up, and I looked out of my window to find another day beginning.  Reflecting on this, I saw the connection between my experiences of these two days. On the first day, when my sense of identity fell away and I had a glimpse of pure passionate presence to life, I had become afraid of that free egoless energy because it gave me nothing to hold on to. So I had converted my unconditional passion into a specific longing, directed toward the man I imagined marrying. My fantasy had been an attempt to save myself from the little death I was experiencing as my identity dissolved. Yet it too led to the same place: "What if we die?" And so I had to face death, coming to terms with it only by letting my love for life run through my body without restraint. So, just as love makes death all the more poignant, death makes loving all the more essential. Dying requires us to love and let go; love requires us to die and let go.