The Love of Kamala and Siddhartha and the Love of Hamlet and Ophelia

When the word love comes to mind what do you think of? What exactly is the definition of love, and is there a real definition for it? Everyone has an opinion on love, but few are brave enough to define it. This universal and apparently conflicting emotion seems almost incapable of definition.
<Tab/>Webster's Dictionary defines love as a strong affection for another arising out of kinship and personal ties or an attraction based on sexual desire: affection and tenderness felt by lovers. We all know that if it were this easy to figure out if we loved a particular person or if a person loved us our life would be much simpler. However love is not this easy to figure out. As William Shakespeare states "The course of true love never did run smooth".
In the initial reading of Siddhartha we see that Siddhartha loses sight of love during his quest for enlightment. At one point he admits to Kamala that he thinks he cannot love, and he says, "You cannot love either, otherwise how could you practice love as an art? Perhaps people like us cannot love. Ordinary people can- that is their
secret " ( 73). When reading in to this passage we get a sense that Kamala is a very high-class prostitute, in which she is incapable of being able to love, because that is what she is paid to do. …