As the curtains draw to a close, we long for what we had when we came to this Earth; family. Looking at a familiar loving face. The brain processing countless terabytes of information, photos and videos of years gone by. Happy days. That’s what we remember, happy days. We want to touch and hold our loved ones once more. We want to live that life again.
Can we hold a baby from the moment he/she is born until we leave this Earth? Holding and kissing, cherishing that moment. We cannot. The baby will grow, has to go to school, university, perhaps work abroad, get married, and have their own children. The time we get with our loved ones is not as much as we would like. We are busy in our lives and believe we will get round to spending time with family…sometimes that time does not come. We should spend as much time as we can with our children, spouses, parents and friends. We also have to work, travel, sleep. The want to hold your baby or child will never cease. But they grow. And that time never returns. Time travels in one direction.
Attachment is both important but also a punishment. We can never get enough of it, and not having what we love, we start to punish ourselves emotionally. We wish we had spent more time with parents, children, loved ones. Times travels in one direction.
Success can be measured in many many ways and perceived in many others. Most draw a link between success and wealth. I read somewhere “there are people so poor that all they have is money.” Success can quite simply be that you spent quality time with your family and were involved in raising your children.
Along the way, life provides us with many paths everyday. Some lead us down paths of no return, be it gambling, making quick money with pitfalls, robbing a bank, stealing, murder. Other paths offer us financial gains against the sacrifice of not being with family for an extended time. There is even one path that leads us just back home but perhaps we take that for granted and do not appreciate what we have in our lives until it’s too late.
In this modern and digital age, we take thousands of pictures with our mobile phones. So much so that we don’t even remember what photos we have taken last year; more storage on phones is akin to buying a new larger photo album. But when is the last time you sat and admired all those photos? As a child I recall a few photo albums which within 30 photos covered a couple of decades of my life. But as they were so few and far apart, i cherished them. Memories.
“If you realize that all things change, there is nothing you will try to hold on to.” ~ Lao Tzu
I’m equally guilty of this; having spent two decades working on international based business. Is this human folly? (Not in the biblical sense). My arguments with others emanated from attachment to my opinions. My anger was because of attachment to particular results that didn’t manifest the way I expected. The sadness I experienced when I lost objects was also a result of attachment. And most importantly, agonizing over the loss of people in my life was because of attachment. The true source of peace and happiness exists (may)outside of all this, beyond the reach of these many attachments, within the mind. And the only person that can discover this for you is yourself.
Does a palpable solution exist?
In order to let go of attachment to others, Buddhists advise us to start looking within, so we can love ourselves. The fact is, we always seek in others what is missing within ourselves. Avoid suffering. Avoid the suffering from the loss of ‘an attachment’. The cause of suffering is called samudaya or tanha. It is the desire to have and control things, such as craving of sensual pleasures. This craving is the result of Upādāna. This is a Vedic Sanskrit and Pali word that means “fuel, material cause, substrate that is the source and means for keeping an active process energized”.
Easier said than done. Impermanence is not something to be afraid of. It’s the evolution, a never-ending horizon.
We love beaches, the sea, trees, robins, blue tits, green pastures; humans love the simplicity of nature. It gives us a sense of gratitude and humility. But why then are not attached to the trees and plants in our garden? (apologies to those who live in apartments). If you grew up in the west, most of us were brought up to believe that these desires and attachments would actually make us happy. We believed that if we earned enough money, or got that new IPhone, that we would eventually solve all our problems. However, when we get them, we’re usually afraid to let go of them as well. And as you might have realized, the joy of these material objects generally don’t last very long and you’re back in the process of desiring again.
I am not for one second implying we become pseudo-robots with no emotion/feelings. True non-attachment and true letting go involves living amidst everything in life such as your emotions, your relationships and your material possessions where you realize the fundamental truths of those things, such as impermanence and interbeing. Therefore you’re able to exist in this world without grasping onto things with a sense of dependency.
The reason desiring causes suffering is because attachments are transient and loss is inevitable. Consider Buddhism and suffering. Buddhism says that the only constant in the universe is change, and by desiring you are trying to control and make something fixed. Suffering will follow because you are going against the forces of the universe, which is what causes anxiety, depression and negative emotions. And the truth is, instead of being an emotionless robot, you can actually embrace life fully and openly.
The true source of peace and happiness exists outside all this, beyond any attachments and desires. The only person that can realize this is yourself.
However, I’m skeptical of non-attachment. It may be easy for some people to not have attachment, but some cultures thrive on family, having children, being together. Otherwise, are we not leading to a scenario where relationships end, and we stay as single humans scared to have attachment because of the subsequent suffering that ensues? When a father loses a son or daughter, the pain and suffering is life-long. It’s a emotional scar that never heals. We live with that pain forever.
Perhaps the message is not as radical as that. Perhaps we need to enjoy the time we have in this world with no regrets. We cannot hold a baby all its life, because one day, we will have to let go. That doesn’t mean we don’t set foot on that path. Life is about emotional control. I read with interest many topics on Emotional intelligence (otherwise known as emotional quotient or EQ). This is the ability to understand, use, and manage your own emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathise with others, overcome challenges and defuse conflict.
I will continue to love nature, enjoy it and listen to birds singing on my walks. But keep in balance the attachment with family and friends. But controlling attachment to material possessions is something I have learned to master. I see them as temporary objects in my journey and don’t equate having a mobile phone as important as having a kidney (though many may disagree!).
Balance — whether diet, money, attachment — balance is the key. Too much of anything (excesses) leads to suffering. Too much food — suffering in the changing room when trousers don’t fit. Or severe cases of bullying. Or in simplistic terms, suffering from heart issues. The same for money; the constant need for more money to buy more material possessions — only stops when one realises that their true worth is short lived.
Spending time with family and being content with what we have, rather than pursuing riches and material gain, and the ensuing disappointment of a non-event is a life that may possibly have least suffering. And that is what I came to realise; the path of least suffering is one where we live being content with what we have and understanding and appreciating that we are only on Earth temporarily. Many more generations will enjoy those trees in my garden, and nature and beaches and the next generation of material goods.
But only I can enjoy the immediate family around me. They make me happy. Whatever time I have left, I want to enjoy this attachment. But I cannot hold on to these attachments. I can enjoy, have fond memories, but never keep anything. We come with nothing and we leave with nothing. We arrived with no suffering and we must try to leave with no suffering.
To live is to suffer; to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
