Notes and articles tagged with “non-attachment”
Filed under Notes on 19. July 2007 » [7]
There is a Japanese video game I remember from a while back, called We Love Katamari, where the objective is, if I recall correctly, to roll an adhesive ball through a stage attempting to pick up everything that will stick to it. So at the end of a level you will want to have accumulated as many objects as possible onto the ball; basically, the bigger the ball of stuff the better.
Sounds familiar? It should, because this closely resembles the game of life. Not real life, of course, but the illusory game of gain and loss that one plays as the personal self. A game where accumulating more and more forms is the only objective, almost regardless of what those forms actually are. More is better.
The personal self, then, is like a ball of junk. It identifies with form, and the built-in survival mechanism cares about nothing other than accumulating more and more things. If I am the sum of the things in my ball of junk, then maintaining and preferably growing that ball is crucial to my survival. In this game, the ultimate objective is to accumulate enough things onto the ball of junk so that you can finally retire from the game. Arriving or making it in the game is to have gained a ball of junk large and substantial enough to sustain you for the rest of your life.
Now, let’s imagine that the core of this ball is illuminated. The light shining from the core is life, or God, or your true Self, whatever you want to call it. It is the essence of life itself, and it is you. When a human being is born, there is little or no junk stuck to the ball and so the light shines through very easily. Look into the eyes of a 1yr old baby and you see radiant light, but fast forward 40 years when that baby is a fast track corporate executive with a stock portfolio and twelve meetings before noon — the light may be there, but most likely it has dimmed considerably over years and years of covering it up with junk. There may be glimpses here and there, a glint or two during a game of golf or whatever, but not much.
The spiritual path is the shedding of this accumulation of junk. And it’s simple; letting go of things is technically easier than picking them up. But it is as difficult as it is simple, because our conditioning teaches us that gaining is good and losing is bad. And that our survival depends on having a sufficient inventory of objects. If you have an object in your hand, dropping it is technically easier than picking up another one, but the difficulty lies in having been told that “whatever you do, don’t drop that object. If you run out of objects, you die.” And so even if simply letting go of the object is the key to liberation, we decide to hold onto it just in case, and then maybe pick up another one just to be safe.
These objects are not necessarily material objects, like luxury items or property of some kind; ultimately it always comes down to the thought form associated with the material object, and so accumulating junk is not limited to what you see on the surface. Your ball of junk may not have sports cars and jewelry, but instead of those things you may have accumulated thought forms and images of how sophisticated and advanced you are for not having sports cars and jewelry. Instead of identifying with the car, you identify with being someone who has gone beyond needing to identify with cars. Which of course implies that you are a greater person because of it.
Seeing this distinction between a material object and the thought form associated with it is fundamental in learning how to let go of the junk. It is not an exercise in selling all your material belongings and renouncing your name — the surface manifestation is secondary, but the important thing is to let go of attachment and identification with the thought forms.
The ball of junk is not populated with material things, but with thoughts about material things. And so in this shedding of junk, what you are actually letting go of are conditioned thoughts and beliefs.
Letting go of the junk is simple, and the only thing keeping you from it is the conditioned habit of giving more value to the junk than that which it obscures, namely life itself.
Filed under Notes on 30. June 2007 » [3]
And indeed they do. A week ago, the hard drive in my laptop gave up the ghost. I had everything more or less backed up, so suffering was kept at a minimum, but it reminded me of how we always expect things that work to stay the same. If things are going well, in our judgment, we feel that they should continue going well. And if things are going badly, we want them to change.
Although it may sound overly dramatic in relation to the hard drive failure, and really it has nothing to do with that as such, but there is one thing we know for certain: things change. That is the law of the world of form and time. Things change; either for better or for worse, as we perceive it. Things go wrong, things get better. It is an endless cycle of growth and dissolution, same as the cycle of birth and death, the sea and the seasons.
And despite it being such a well established pattern, a fundamental law of nature pretty much, we are still surprised when things change. We try to control how they change: pushing things along when we're dissatisfied with the current state of something, and then resisting change when we finally get things to be as we want them to. Pushing and pulling, attempting to manhandle the universe according to our personal preferences.
This stubborn way of approaching things can go on for a long time, and even after a lifetime of having little or no control over things a person may still keep resisting the inevitability of change. Sometimes, and you can see it very clearly in old cats and dogs, after years and years of change from this polarity to that, there comes a point of surrender to what is. Not a defeatist shrinking back from life, but a recognition that what is simply is as it is. Pithy enough for a bumper sticker, and as simple as simple gets, but seemingly near-impossible for most people to realize.
Surrendering to what is — it is a way of being in alignment with life. You can still act and attempt to change things, but only when there is no attachment to the result of that action are you in alignment to what is. The default attitude of our conditioning is to argue with what is, hoping in some way that the world will feel guilty and change things back, but in order to be at peace with the law of continuous change, or birth and death, growth and dissolution, one must step back and allow things to do as they will. Taking action if needed, but in a humble way that more resembles a suggestion than an order.
And maybe that is a good way of looking at it. We can make a suggestion, but never issue an order to the universe. Knowing this, we are at peace with the world.
Filed under Articles on 19. June 2007 » [7]
Part of life in the world, and especially the western world, is that we have lots of interesting things around us. And part of what makes up one’s personality, the form identity, are particular worldly interests and personal preferences. John is into vintage medical illustrations and Lisa rides motorcycles. That sort of thing.
Now, because they make up such a large part of our form identity, of who we are on the surface and in comparison to others, our worldly interests are part of the ego and as such vulnerable to its foibles. We tend to identify with objects, for example, and so when the objects are linked with something like expertise, community, or a lifestyle, the identification can become very strong.
In seeking mode
There is a good chance you will have experienced how the ego goes hunting for something to identify with, even if you may not have been conscious of it at the time. Usually when there’s a lull of some kind in your external circumstances, when you’ve just recently finished something, lost something, quit something, or when you suddenly find yourself with more free time for some reason, the mind goes into seeking mode for the next thing. The ego has just lost something it had identified with, and so needs to find something new to fill in the gap.
These seeking episodes can be almost too subtle to notice, or all-out desperate attempts at reinventing your identity from scratch. The subtle ones can come in the form of suddenly becoming very interested in a particular television series, for example, where you find yourself identifying strongly with the characters, having daydreams in which you act out roles or somehow project yourself into the show, and even adapt behavioral traits from your favorite characters.
Fantasies where you imagine yourself to have a stronger identity, either through association with some object or person, or through approval and fame — basically where you are “special” in one way or the other — are also an indicator of this seeking pattern.
The lure of “reinventing yourself”
But while identifying with celebrities or fictional television characters is an easy way of finding something to identify with, in times of desperate need the ego will want something more concrete to work with. Personally I have experienced this in the form of becoming absolutely obsessed with different hobbies or specialty interests; mainly communities of enthusiasts that center around some sort of object or industry. It is an urge to become part of a scene, to become that kind of person, all in order to find security in an externally supported identity.
To find one of these “worlds” to enter and become part of is an easy way for the ego to reinvent its identity. Like dressing up in a new costume, it is also a way of finding somewhere to belong; something we do in more subtle ways when choosing how we present ourselves to the world externally through clothing and such. Seeking to become this kind of person or that kind of person, experimenting with different externally derived identities, is of course very noticeable during adolescence, as we know, but the same pattern of seeking goes on long after that.
This idea of reinventing yourself is a favorite one to the ego. Starting the year with a clean slate, turning things around, becoming the person you want to be, etc.; it’s seducing, and entertaining these ideas is almost the equivalent of comfort food for the ego-identified mind.
But even if you become someone else on the surface, take up golfing or buy a Harley, all that’s really changed is the content of your illusory identity. The same clunky old projector playing a new film.
Attachment to being a somebody
However, there is nothing inherently wrong with having preferences or particular worldly interests. You can live in joy and inner peace and still have hobbies and belong to the national association of something or other. Even the game of reinventing yourself on the surface can be fine — as with other aspects of the world of form, the crux of the matter lies in your level of attachment to it.
It is unavoidable that as long as you are in this world, you will have an external identity. Even if it weren’t for social conventions like names, roles and other labels, you would still be in a particular human body. This is not problematic in and of itself, and only becomes a problem when you identify yourself with this external identity. When you say “I am this body” or “I am a basketball player.” In effect, the world of form is not a problem until you become attached to it. Having a Harley Davidson is fine, but basing your entire identity on the concept of being somebody who has a Harley Davidson is problematic.
There is certainly a correlation between strongly emphasized form identities and the level of attachment to them, simply because if you are free of attachment to the world of form you will have little interest in projecting a particular image of yourself, and vice versa. But the outward manifestation of something like a personal preference is still just an effect, a symptom, and not the cause, and so there is no reason to avoid or resent your form identity. In fact, making an effort to deny your form identity is really an indication that you have an attachment to another kind of form identity, perhaps as “the spiritual person who has no worldly interests.”
When it comes to hobbies, preferences, or other things having to do with your form identity, it will only be counterproductive to try and deny or resist them. What you can do however is observe, and allow them to be as they are. Fully embrace whatever the worldly interest is, and investigate in what way you may be deriving an identity from it. If you’re identified with something, there is an attachment to it because the ego needs it for its survival. In mild cases it may be enough to just notice the identification, and then allow it to fade away on its own, but in some cases it may be best to simply drop whatever it is you are attached to, at least temporarily.
There are also some pointers you can experiment with, ways of looking at things that separate the element of identification so that you can see it more clearly. For example, you can approach the thing, whatever it might be, as if you weren’t there, removing yourself from the mental picture. Or, if the interest is heavily based on community, a group of like-minded people that share a particular interest, you can try contemplating questions like “if I were the only one interested in this,” or “if nobody could ever know that I own this/did this/am interested in this, what would change?” If you have expertise in something, ask yourself “what if nobody could ever know that I know this?”
In essence, it is about seeing the things in your form identity that make you feel special, feel like you are a somebody, because these will be your points of attachment. The attachment to being a somebody is probably the main aspect of our identification with form, and observing how this plays into our worldly interests and preferences can be enormously helpful in becoming free of attachment to the world.
Filed under Notes on 31. May 2007 »
Our primordial identification with form, and as such a very common obstacle in spiritual practice, is identification with the body. The idea that I am this body and you are that body, both completely separate from everything else. Then on top of that come the labels we attach to the body, a physical description, judgment in comparison with other bodies, and of course our name, which, lumped together along with an endlessly complicated string of more concepts and labels, makes up who we think of as ourselves.
Breaking this identification with the body is difficult — simple in and of itself, but difficult because of the momentum of the idea that “this body is who I am.” It is the very foundation of our conditioning, deep seated and stubborn, and most people would probably find it absurd to even question it. “Of course this is who you are, just look in a mirror,” they might say.
The illusion starts to fade away when your level of awareness rises, and the more you go into stillness the deeper the recognition that who you are is beyond the body. So it’s not really necessary to address the issue on this level, as simply becoming still quietly resolves all doubts and form-based conflict, but using inquiry and pointers can be helpful and speed up the process.
The other day I came across a quote by Nisargadatta Maharaj, from the book I Am That, which is a useful pointer towards realizing who you are beyond the body. He was talking about how you are not anything that takes form, whether it be a thought, an experience, the body, etc., and that who you are is the witness to all of these. Everything happens and you are simply there to witness it, “look[ing] at everything as from a distance.”
Looking at everything from a distance is a way of detaching from the body and the world of form. Stepping back, observing how everything happens, how the body moves, how thoughts come and go. The idea of distance brings a bit of space between you and the world, between you and form, and points to a way of experiencing the world of form without being bound to it. Wearing the world like a loose garment, as St. Francis put it.
The idea of looking at everything from a distance is a sort of mantra: an idea that you return to over and over again, every time causing a tiny little shift in perception. Eventually, all this nudging at the foundations of the conditioning will cause it to crumble. And when you create space between you and the world of form, between you and the body for example, you will find yourself increasingly able to simply relax into it, abiding in peace within and looking out at the world from a distance.
Filed under Notes on 2. April 2007 » [2]
When we say that something is ours, be it an object, an opinion, a social role, we are speaking as a person, a separate entity among other separate entities. My opinion is only mine if there is a me, and the me in this instance is the mind made sense of self.
Of course, this is all very useful and practical when participating in the world of form. If I purchase a car, it is registered in my name and I can refer to it as my car. The structures of the world require these distinctions, and it’s easy to see how things would get bent out of shape without the systems of ownership and individuality.
What we are addressing here, however, is not really the outer manifestation of these concepts, but rather the psychological attachment to them. And how the thought of my this and my that fuels and perpetuates the egoic sense of self. There’s nothing wrong with saying “my name is David and this is my house” — the issues arise when these concepts are identified with, and the house becomes part of a pile of thoughts in a form identity labeled ‘David.’ When you feel that ‘David the homeowner’ is who you are, the inherently harmless concepts of me and mine have become part of the illusion of ego.
A good indicator of when you are identifying with something you own, a car for example, is a feeling of either pride or shame. If you are extremely proud of your car and want to be seen in it, or if you are ashamed of it and don’t want to be seen in it, then the car has become part of your sense of self. It is no longer just ‘my car’ in the practical sense, on paper, but a part of what you see as yourself.
In a world where our relationship with objects is so heavily based on ownership, simply going about your daily life can provide the ego with plenty to keep it going. It’s built into our social conditioning to have this subtle sense of identification with the things we own, and just becoming aware of it can be a great opportunity for spiritual growth.
It can seem a little strange and esoteric at first, but try reminding yourself, when you are looking at or using something you own, that this thing is not yours. This computer isn’t mine, this bed isn’t mine, this tea cup isn’t mine, and not even this body is mine. Nothing is mine, because ‘me’ the owner is an illusion.
The next step is then to see that what you think of as ‘your life’ isn’t yours at all, after which all concepts of ownership are recognized as mere surface phenomena. Practical, but ultimately nothing more than a thought in the mind.
Filed under Articles on 12. March 2007 »
One common denominator for us human beings is that we are all looking for home in some way. We want to get to some place where we can finally come to a stop in our search, somewhere we can relax and feel at ease. We are looking for comfort and safety.
Filed under Articles on 26. January 2007 » [8]
In spiritual teachings, the word ‘attachment’ is widely used to describe our relationship with the world and is often talked about as being the root of human suffering. Basically, it is said that the more you are attached to the world of form the more you will suffer. And thus to become free of suffering, you must relinquish attachment
Filed under Notes on 21. January 2007 » [1]
In addition to the longer articles published once or twice a week here on Everyday Wonderland, I’m going to start writing smaller posts that will be filed under a new section called ‘Notes.’ I plan on doing a few of these a week, mostly focusing on discussion about quotations and passages from books I'm particularly fond of, or just something I happen to come across online.
In this first note, I want to discuss a verse from the second chapter of Tao Te Ching that talks about the polarity of judgment; a fundamental aspect of the ego that is very easy to overlook.
“When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.”
The power of these words from Lao-tzu, as in so many other cases when dealing with spiritual texts, can easily be missed when they are not allowed past the analysis of rational thinking. He’s not telling us that we shouldn’t appreciate beauty, or that we should renounce all our preferences, but rather that it is important to see the polarity of good and bad only as relatively important. To see that while we may feel that roses are more beautiful than weeds, the true beauty of both goes beyond our judgment of good and bad.
The key is to honor our preferences, while appreciating that true beauty and true goodness, otherwise referred to as ‘the absolute’, are much deeper than our mental judgment of good/bad, beautiful/ugly. And the amazing thing is that, when we see that our judgment is only ever relatively true, everything becomes more beautiful to us as a result.
Filed under Articles on 13. December 2006 » [2]
I was out walking the other night, Chopin playing in my headphones and a crisp sort of winter stillness in the air. And despite the peaceful ambiance I was experiencing a hangover after a bit of binge-thinking earlier that day. The sort of thought trajectory that starts out when something great happens and opens up a flood of positive thinking; a thought stream that then gathers momentum and ultimately turns negative, as all unattended thought does eventually when left to proliferate
Filed under Articles on 9. December 2006 » [18]
What would your life be like if you did not care what other people thought of you? If you were completely independent of people’s opinions, good or bad, and would go about your day without so much as a single self-conscious decision. It would be wonderful freedom, of course. You would feel free to do what you wanted, and have a clarity of mind that comes with not being constantly preoccupied with thinking about the judgment of those around you
Filed under Articles on 4. December 2006 »
In the normal state of consciousness, it can be said that our attention is almost continuously occupied with form. Thoughts, objects, situations, and externally derived sense experience, leave us almost no room at all for looking within and being aware of that which is beyond form. If we were to look at life in terms of balance between inner and outer, the formless and form, the habitual ratio between the two is almost always in favor of the outer; something like 95% things, thoughts, and noise, 5% stillness and peace
Filed under Articles on 2. December 2006 » [4]
When I read Jonathan Rauch's article Caring for Your Introvert in the Atlantic Monthly a few years back, I had an immediate recognition of what he described, about feeling drained by social interaction and about wanting to be alone whenever possible. I then went on to read books like Party of One by Anneli Rufus, Celebrating Time Alone by Lionel Fisher, and a nice little collection of quotations called The Wonders of Solitude
