Many of the sages of history have claimed that a man’s attachment to ideas, people, places and especially romantic partners destroys the spirit and makes it weak, and allows the ego to flourish. Our identity seems deeply connected to our tendency to cling onto things that we perhaps shouldn’t.
Going through break ups with girlfriends, I have seen what the consequences of attachment are, and it causes a lot of damage and pathology within the brain.
My question is this: were the sages right? is emotional attachment one of the primary sources of evil in the world? and is emotional attachment the mechanism that allows the ego to flourish? why or why not?
it seems to me that for male thinkers to be strong they need to feel the cold of solitude, it makes their spirit rugged, and when they truly experience having nothing, then loss is no big deal when they have gained something, it is as if solitude prevents the mind from clinging too strongly to things, so that one can easily adapt to change without being devastated by tragedy. Any thoughts?
What the sages suggest is a life without conflicts. It is conflicts that build character and self-worth through (interpersonal) experience. I don’t see any evil in that.
Truly living with no attachments would be to attain the Buddhist ideal in practice, but which is I am sure tremendously difficult - I think we can be comfortable in judiciously using attachment more consciously, rather than arbitrarily. We can choose who or what we become attached to, based on what is good and natural for us or for our personal growth. Relationships can be harmful and energy-saping, but they can also be healing and energy-giving too, it just depends on the specifics of the people and situations involved.
I dont think we ought to always strive to rid ourselves of all attachment - to be alive is to be attached to things. It is a part of our psychology as thinking and feeling beings, part of the human identity and ego, which we should not shun but rather should guide and nurture into higher and wiser development, freeing our inner nature and instincts from debasement or intertia or pathologies.
Focus on your awareness, your intentions, you consciousness and personal integrity, and I think this can go a long way to ridding ourselves of shallow, useless or harmful attachments. But overall, attachment can be just as good as it can be bad - it all depends on how we use it.
Buddhism (since many people will associate these ideas with Buddhism) distinguishes between positive and negative emotions. Overcoming “emotional attachment” then is not necessarily about what we think it’s about at first glance. Even if we are unable to make certain kinds of distinctions regarding our emotional life, that is not to say those kinds of distinctions can’t be made. What Gib says is true. We are social and emotional beings. Buddhism isn’t about becoming unemotional, or abandoning human connections. It’s also not about achieving a “life without conflicts”. It’s about not being conflicted or confused about how to deal with conflicts as they naturally arise.
A few: I wouldn’t deny that we are able to dettach ourselves from things like material possessions or personal values - I try to practice this myself - but I think there is a limt to this. The man who lives in solitude and gives up everything is still averse to pain and suffering - he still wants to maintain his safety and wellbeing, his health and his life. I’ll even grant that some may have the will to surrender even these, but I don’t believe it will be done without some hesitation or angst. We can’t be completely indifferent to absolutely anything.
Attachment causes suffering, no doubt. Spiritual exercises seem to free some practitioners from some attachments some of the time. But, it’s doubtful that total freedom from attachment is achievable for any sentient corporeal being. Death apparently solves that problem.
I think it is important to take into context the times of our “sages”. In my experience the attachments they referred to were more those that were obsessive or exaggerated particularly towards death of loved ones. Now in our time it is less often we see people die, we know they do but it evokes different emotions based on physical and emotional distance. However these attachments could also be to animals, possessions, etc.
Now for the common person in pain it is far easier to say it as short as “Do not be attached” while knowing they can never be completely unattached. But by realizing the finality of everything while pursuing the purist idea they may come to find this peace. I say this because some of the same people also said people are made strong by adversity in whatever way you care to phrase the words.
Can one live without attachment? Perhaps if you are nearly brain dead I would say yes. Whether or not that is living is a debate in and of itself. But I think the point is learning temperance in emotions.
This is what I was trying to clarify in my earlier post. “Attachment” (at least as understood by Buddhists) isn’t something that makes you more alive, it is what deadens the emotions and intellect.
I think my main point here is that there is a severe danger in attachment because it severs our connection from our “rational center”
For instance: if I strongly identify with my house, my wife, my car, my career, then I begin to believe that that is all I am, and when any of those things are lost, I am totally devastated. Tragedy of loss seems like an indicator that the ego had allowed itself to become defined by outside things, and become addicted or habitualized to those things to the extent that their disappearance causes severe conflict.
To me, that sort of conflict is not unacceptance. However, we are animals with desires, but the very desires we have ensure our future misery.
For instance: the loss of a beautiful girlfriend that one was attached to could cause suicidal thoughts, deep pain and anguish for months, and mental trauma that lasts years. It doesn’t seem worth it to me.
And I suspect that most spiritual teachers of the past and present were not able to rid themselves of All attachments, perhaps many, but not all. However, from my experience, the more attachments you are able to do without, the stronger your psyche becomes.
Moreover, Many spiritual teachers have preached the importance of riding the desire to accumulate attachments for purposes of inflated self-esteem and self-image, as that entire movement seems to be evil, a movement in the wrong direction.
An enlightened person probably has no sources of self-esteem from the outside, as he doesn’t need a constant supply of attachments to give his ego meaning and purpose. However, to actually live that life wholeheartedly is incredibly rare, probably only a few teachers have ever done it. Too much animal conditioning I suppose.
And I’m not saying that I am there totally because I’m not, but it is a goal that is intriguing to me.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it is very rare for two main reasons: first of all: intellectuals seem rare in the population. probably less than 20% as a rough guess. And I define intellectual as any individual capable of reflecting on complicated or simple ideas. Now of that 20% of intellectuals out there, maybe only half of those are interested in enlightenment, logic, reason, true spirituality and so on. So we are talking about 10% of the population. Now, only a fraction of those 10% take their philosophy all the way, and abandon all attachments that give strength to the ego. And I suspect that this happens because there is a lot of evolutionary conditioning that even intellectuals have a difficult time overcoming.
The best analogy I can think of is its like trying to quickly turn around a steamship on a dime when it is pre-programmed to blindly crash into reef that borders the shoreline.
You can but life would be pointless would not it? I guess it can be done, but um for me… no matter what, is extremely difficult to be anti-socialize. O well…I am attached to society.
I’m sorry what I meant in saying that was a functioning brain will form attachments if for no other reason than memory storage. They may not be strong ones but they are still attachments fundamentally. But I see you mean from the philosophical standpoint an “attachment” would be the stronger ones. The ones that a disturbance could provoke irrational thoughts and actions.
It’s not just a matter of stronger attachments versus weaker attachments. It’s that the Buddhist definition of attachment does not include value-neutral phenomena such as memory formation. In fact “mindfulness”, which is so highly valued in Buddhism, is essentially a form of remembering - i.e. remembering the meditation instructions during meditation. The valuing of commitments and relationships is not in itself “attachment”.
I’m not sure if we can effect evolution or not, which sounds somewhat Lamarckian to me, but at least regarding many of our ingrained habits, I agree with you completely. I’ve used the same ship analogy myself.