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attachment

 
July 8, 2010
 

Letting Go Part 4: Letting Go of Attachment

Welcome to Part 4 of my series on "Letting Go". I have added this additional post, as I think it's very important - Letting Go of Attachment.

Letting Go of Attachment is something that I feel is very important and at the same time very hard to put into words. Anyone familiar with Buddhism will know this as "The Path Of Non-Attachment". A quote from the The Dalai Lama can sum up how Buddhist feel regarding how we attach ourselves (mostly our egos) to things that we feel will make us happy or feel good:

"Attachment is the origin, the root of suffering; hence it is the cause of suffering."
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Another Buddhist quote that might help us understand this theory of Non-Attachment is the following:

"Suffering is caused by craving or attachments to worldly pleasures of all kinds. This is often expressed as a deluded clinging to a certain sense of existence, to selfhood, or to the things or phenomena that we consider the cause of happiness or unhappiness."


I will be the first to say I don't totally understand the entire Buddhist religion or beliefs and that I'm not writing to preach Buddhism, but I do believe in a lot of the principles and I'm realising the more I can detach myself from things, the more things seem to just "be" and aren't as heavy and in turn they aren't as big a deal (good and bad). It takes a lot of work and we have to keep at it everyday if we want to detach from certain things like our phone when we leave it somewhere, our sports team when they lose at the end of a game, our favorite shirt that rips, or even at a deeper level the things we love very much. Letting go of attachment doesn't mean less caring or not loving things we care for. To me, it basically means not making them dependant for our happiness. "Things" in life are always changing and never stable so it is very unwise to create this sort of dependence.

We've heard it 1000 times, if we get that raise we'll be happy, when we go on vacation we'll be happy, when we meet the right person it'll be great, when we get rid of that lemon of a car we'll be better... when "this" happens we'll be happy! We'll guess what? Things in life are never stable (it's a fact) and we really don't know what is going to happen from moment to moment so there is no reason to attach yourself to anything because most times you'll just be let down which will then cause suffering (and who wants that!). I also find letting go of this attachment can really help you when things are stressful and hard. I really try to remind myself to let go of attachment (and also control, which is the next post in this series). I hope these posts are helping people in some sort of way because I really enjoy writing them and reflecting on these ideas. Let me know if you have any other suggestions and questions. Thanks! Take care.

Filed under  //   attachment   buddism   dalai lama   letting go  

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