Thoughts on Attachment - a theoretical post

Since yesterday, I know that I will leave this country in three weeks and go to live in Germany. There are many things there to look forward to, but I did distinctly feel the attachment that I have with this place, my environment, the people around me, and my life as it is right now. And so I felt a bit of a pang inside. This is quite natural, and in some way if I didn't feel that way would seem very cold.

Today I want to talk about attachment as an obstacle to happiness. I got this idea from the Buddhist literature. I am not sure where I hit on this idea, and I am certainly not an expert on Buddhist teachings. But I have stuck my nose into a number of books through the years and so I cannot put my finger on the instance when this entered my consciousness. Actually, I have probably read about it in several places as it seems a pretty central tenet of Buddhist thought (correct me if I'm wrong). As I mentioned, this subject is very relevant to my personal situation right now, and that's why I would like to explore it a little further here.

The basic idea is as follows: we emotionally invest in many things, becoming attached. In the case of negative things that we attach to, it is quite easy to see that we'd probably do better without this attachment. But what about the good things? Well, the joy that they provide eventually turns to a feeling of loss and deprivation when that thing is no longer there. The individual is then unhappy (I'd like to note that this way of looking at life seems to stress the emotional dimension of things).

At this point I would raise a first objection at the concept of detached being: the good things that we attached to did give us pleasurable emotions while they were there, and so if we decide to attach ourselves emotionally to good things, then life will contain a lot of highs. Lows will come with this, but there is a chance that our emotional state will be at least oscillating stably, and actually the lows remind us to appreciate the highs.

And in fact a lot of people's lives do just this: They oscillate from highs to lows. Differences exists in the distribution of the peaks and troughs. A smooth wave like shape would be good to follow, but I think for many reality is more like the curve of a heart rate monitor, with the highs being sharp and accentuated. Another difference could be in the trend that emotional cycles oscillate around. Is it up- or downward sloping, or stable? Perhaps this feature is influenced by the amount of negative attachments?

The idea that it is possible to leave this rollercoaster of emotions and perpetuate a stable high is very enticing. but there is a apparent problem: how to feel disattached from objects and at the same time retain the compassion and joy that is in living. Wouldn't it result in a kind of zombie-like state?

There is indeed a kind of zombieness that can be part of detachment. That would happen when detachment literally means that you lose the connection with the outside world. Although you are an inseparable part of this world, there would be twoness. That means taking apart what is intended to be together. You would be out of sync. You would be dead inside. Perhaps then, attachment has two opposites: zombielike detachment on the one hand, and simply non-attachment on the other.

The conclusion is then that you need to find a state of being where you are detached from the world, but compassionate. Compassion implies connectedness. But connectedness need not be attachment. Attachment implies connection, but not vice versa.

How then, do you achieve connected detachment? I think an important part of this is keeping the ego at bay. A large part of what one could call the ego is actually manifested attachment. My normal definition of Ego is that it is the mind taking over. Interestingly, attachment seems to be the heart taking over. But according to my understanding , it really IS the mind! This becomes clear when you accept that psychological time is created in the mind (see Eckart Tolle "The Power of Now" for an explanation of this). And doesn't attachment by necessity have its roots in the past? As our heart experiences pleasure, the mind tries to hold on to it, and creates attachment. But this hinders us from enjoying the present as it is.

The problem of attachment can thus be solved by completely surrendering to the heart, which drives compassion. At the same time the mind needs to be aware of the present state, relaxed and not in control. This mindstate seems to me to be a good understanding of detachment. Together, they combine to yield connected detachment. Both these premises are not at all easy to attain.

The heart, as I speak of it here, is routinely obstructed by fear of opening up. And the Ego needs to be befriended and tamed to let the mind loose. I have no good recipe against fear at present, although I do feel that it can be useful to decompose that emotion, become aware of it, and to see where it originates and what the mind does with it. My theory is that fear is natural and legitimate in some situations, but that the mind greatly expands it, usually to our detriment. This in turn exposes the heart and mind distinction as an imperfect one: the problem is the mind and its grip on us. It holds on to irrational fears, it lures us away from present awareness, and it creates attachment, leading to oscillations on the emotional spiral. All of these are addressed in the practice of meditation.

I only recently discovered what meditation truly is. I hadn't had a very good introduction to it. It is one of those things of which people seem to expect to know what it is, without really knowing what it is. Fact is, it is not constant bliss at all. To the contrary, it can be a pretty cumbersome endeavour. But the benefits are plentiful, and it is the vehicle for reaching the solution of the attachment problem. I am not a Buddhist, but I am sure, plenty of Buddhists would agree :)

-Link to the second post on attachment and being-