In the last post I showed how too many choices can cause misery. But suppose, you ask, that I made a great choice. Suppose I know for sure that there is, never was, and never could be any better choice. I’m certain I have what I want and need. Shouldn’t everything be hunky-dory now? In a word, no.
Buddhism teaches that life can be really difficult at times and that the root cause of this difficulty is attachment. Attachment is the reason your perfect choice can still cause suffering. This doesn’t mean you should avoid all emails with the little paper clip icon. We’re talking about a different type of attachment.
To find out what I mean by attachment we’ll consult my favorite spiritual authority, Webster. Webster defines attachment as the state of being personally attached, and attached as permanently fixed. So an attachment is something to which we are personally and permanently fixed.
It’s the “permanently” part that causes all the trouble, because nothing is permanent. Change is the only thing you can count on. You perfect car eventually ends up in the junk yard, or gets resurrected as chicken coop if you live in Kentucky. That perfect diamond stylus for your perfect turntable becomes pointless. Your perfect fitness club body ages and sags. Your friends move away. Your family joins the Jim Jones Flavor Aid club. And then to top it all off, no matter what you do, you die. Oops!
The point is that you will eventually lose everything you hold dear. If you pin your happiness and peace of mind to anyone or anything , you will end up miserable. Happiness must come from inside you. It cannot come from any external influence, but from a simple decision you make to live that way. As Abraham Lincoln said, "People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
It’s even worse is when you become attached to your thoughts, values, and beliefs, because you are what you think. You create your world with your thoughts, and even they tend to get demolished by time and changing circumstances. You can replace your car, audio system, friends, and to some extent your family; but what do you do when your core beliefs and values no longer exist? What is left when the thoughts you are attached to are destroyed? Suffering.
I speak with some authority on this subject because I have personal experience with it. One fine evening in 1969 I was told that unless I had surgery I would only live 6 months to 2 years, most of that time in a hospital on life support. With the surgery I might live 5 to 10 years until creeping respiratory paralysis finally caused the pneumonia that would end my life. I had a 10% chance of dying during the surgery and a 50% chance I'd come out of it totally paralyzed. I had 15 minutes to make a decision. Great choices. What were the lyrics to that Rolling Stones song?
Whatever world I knew or dreamed of was destroyed. Nothing was familiar. I didn't even know how to think about the world. All the things that had been important to me stop mattering. I quickly realized that material possessions, degrees, careers, awards, accomplishments, adoration, or recognition could not help me. They were no longer relevant. To paraphrase Paul Simon, I stood alone without beliefs.
Just like everyone else in that type of situation I suffered for quite a while. I was really good at it. Then I learned to move beyond those two manifestations of attachment, hope and fear. I gave up any hope that I would get my former life and beliefs back, hope that I could control what would happen to me, hope that I could ever get out of this world alive. I gave up the fear of losing my dreams, fear of losing control, fear of losing my life.
I didn’t exactly like the idea, but once I considered myself already dead life got much easier. I was able to build a brave new world free of the attachments that had held me captive and kept me unhappy even before I received my death sentence. As a result I have enjoyed every minute of my life, even the bad ones. Janis Joplin was right, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. Once you begin to get free of attachments you realize you can remain permanently fixed to absolutely nothing. If you have nothing, then you have nothing to lose. Freedom.
You can become free too. Quite often it takes some kind of terrible trauma to shock a person into really looking at the nature of his life and attachments. But I don’t believe you have to wait for your life to be destroyed to start building a better one for yourself, and wouldn’t recommend it. There is no reason you cannot begin today to develop the kind of inner peace it takes to honestly face your attachments and begin to loosen their grip over you. There are many techniques for doing so.
In my next post I’ll describe a simple Ch'i Kung method you can use to calm your mind, heal your body, and let your attachments begin slip slidin’ away. In the meantime I’d suggest you learn a bit more about attachment from a more authoritative source than I by going here. And every time you find yourself using a long held belief to keep yourself imprisoned in old, bad habits ask yourself this question:
Are you sure?
Buddhism teaches that life can be really difficult at times and that the root cause of this difficulty is attachment. Attachment is the reason your perfect choice can still cause suffering. This doesn’t mean you should avoid all emails with the little paper clip icon. We’re talking about a different type of attachment.
To find out what I mean by attachment we’ll consult my favorite spiritual authority, Webster. Webster defines attachment as the state of being personally attached, and attached as permanently fixed. So an attachment is something to which we are personally and permanently fixed.
It’s the “permanently” part that causes all the trouble, because nothing is permanent. Change is the only thing you can count on. You perfect car eventually ends up in the junk yard, or gets resurrected as chicken coop if you live in Kentucky. That perfect diamond stylus for your perfect turntable becomes pointless. Your perfect fitness club body ages and sags. Your friends move away. Your family joins the Jim Jones Flavor Aid club. And then to top it all off, no matter what you do, you die. Oops!
The point is that you will eventually lose everything you hold dear. If you pin your happiness and peace of mind to anyone or anything , you will end up miserable. Happiness must come from inside you. It cannot come from any external influence, but from a simple decision you make to live that way. As Abraham Lincoln said, "People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."
It’s even worse is when you become attached to your thoughts, values, and beliefs, because you are what you think. You create your world with your thoughts, and even they tend to get demolished by time and changing circumstances. You can replace your car, audio system, friends, and to some extent your family; but what do you do when your core beliefs and values no longer exist? What is left when the thoughts you are attached to are destroyed? Suffering.
I speak with some authority on this subject because I have personal experience with it. One fine evening in 1969 I was told that unless I had surgery I would only live 6 months to 2 years, most of that time in a hospital on life support. With the surgery I might live 5 to 10 years until creeping respiratory paralysis finally caused the pneumonia that would end my life. I had a 10% chance of dying during the surgery and a 50% chance I'd come out of it totally paralyzed. I had 15 minutes to make a decision. Great choices. What were the lyrics to that Rolling Stones song?
Whatever world I knew or dreamed of was destroyed. Nothing was familiar. I didn't even know how to think about the world. All the things that had been important to me stop mattering. I quickly realized that material possessions, degrees, careers, awards, accomplishments, adoration, or recognition could not help me. They were no longer relevant. To paraphrase Paul Simon, I stood alone without beliefs.
Just like everyone else in that type of situation I suffered for quite a while. I was really good at it. Then I learned to move beyond those two manifestations of attachment, hope and fear. I gave up any hope that I would get my former life and beliefs back, hope that I could control what would happen to me, hope that I could ever get out of this world alive. I gave up the fear of losing my dreams, fear of losing control, fear of losing my life.
I didn’t exactly like the idea, but once I considered myself already dead life got much easier. I was able to build a brave new world free of the attachments that had held me captive and kept me unhappy even before I received my death sentence. As a result I have enjoyed every minute of my life, even the bad ones. Janis Joplin was right, freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose. Once you begin to get free of attachments you realize you can remain permanently fixed to absolutely nothing. If you have nothing, then you have nothing to lose. Freedom.
You can become free too. Quite often it takes some kind of terrible trauma to shock a person into really looking at the nature of his life and attachments. But I don’t believe you have to wait for your life to be destroyed to start building a better one for yourself, and wouldn’t recommend it. There is no reason you cannot begin today to develop the kind of inner peace it takes to honestly face your attachments and begin to loosen their grip over you. There are many techniques for doing so.
In my next post I’ll describe a simple Ch'i Kung method you can use to calm your mind, heal your body, and let your attachments begin slip slidin’ away. In the meantime I’d suggest you learn a bit more about attachment from a more authoritative source than I by going here. And every time you find yourself using a long held belief to keep yourself imprisoned in old, bad habits ask yourself this question:
Are you sure?
If you're sure, then you're attached. If you're attached, you're looking for trouble. Maybe you need to permanently fix your attitude.
"Grasping at things can only yield one of two results:
Either the thing you are grasping at disappears, or you yourself disappear.
It is only a matter of which occurs first."
Goenka
Recommended reading:
The Places that Scare You, Pema Chodron
An Open Heart, The Dalai Lama
1 comment:
Miss you, Jim.
I keep wanting to share stuff with you, and you keep being dead.
That "attachments" thing is for real...
wish you were here.
DJ
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