Inflib (Donna):
Now suppose for a minute that your craving were, not for cookies or for something that you enjoy by yourself, but for the well-being in the Ariya sense of the word, for someone who is dear to you, say a daughter. Of course, in that case, ‘craving’ would not be the word; I would say it could be described as a kind of ‘personalized’ Metta coupled with, as far as you are concerned, kama raga to a degree, because you yourself are deriving ‘pleasure'(albeit NOT A SENSE PLEASURE) from it,from trying to help her on, and from the attachment. For attachment it certainly is, no doubt about that. I do not know what the right word for it is in BuddhaDhamma. In English it would translate into something like: an irresistible loving/kindness compulsion.
In such a case, let us say you were at the Sotapanna stage, and your daughter is not ( of course, you have no way of knowing that for certain; but that being so, you cannot assume that she is ), and she does not reach that Stage despite all your efforts, would you be willing to sacrifice your own progress on the Path and return to the human realm just for the purpose of ‘having another go at it’ next time around, or as many times as would be necessary for her to reach the Sotapanna Stage(at least)? Even here, there is no way of telling whether the two of you would be reborn here at the same time for that to become even possible. But you know wwhat I mean.
Metta
y not