Attachment and detachment are equally good

I'm not big on the whole detachment thing. Strikes me as horribly unnatural. Why should we give up attachments, desires, cravings, longings?

Than again, why shouldn't we?

If someone feels like being attached to someone or something, great. Go for it, dude or dudette. If someone feels like detaching from someone or something, also great. Let loose, let go.

There's no problem in wanting and not-wanting, clinging and releasing. Each of us does this countless times a day. 

I just had a desire for a sip of coffee. I attached my fingers to the handle of my cup. I lifted the cup to my lips. Then set it down, loosened my grip, and went back to typing on my laptop.

Yet in many spiritual circles there's an attitude of attachment bad, detachment good.

Of course, people who think that way are attached to that notion. So I guess what they really mean is, some attachments are bad, and some attachments are good.

Can't argue with that. It all depends. Not on some Holy Cosmic Truth. On common sense and what works for us. 

I hold onto a t-shirt until I feel like banishing it to the rag drawer, adding it to our Goodwill donation box, or giving it to a friend who often adopts t-shirts that I've grown tired of. But when I like a t-shirt, I'm bothered if something happens to it -- stain, rip, whatever.

Now, I realize that Buddhism and other attachment-phobic ways of looking at the world view clinging as the big problem. 

There is nothing wrong with desires and relationships as long as one does not cling. I can truly enjoy a movie or a restaurant as long as I do not cling to them. I can have a meaningful and happy relationship with my wife as long as I work with her to mediate the tendency to either pursue (i.e. criticizing, complaining, endless questioning, etc.) or withdraw (getting defensive, checking out, shutting down, avoiding, etc.) during conflict. Both pursuing and withdrawing are clinging. Both are suffering.

Huh? Pursuing and withdrawing are suffering? When I see a new Crazy Shirts t-shirt design and pursue it with my VISA card, then eventually withdraw it from my t-shirt collection, where is the suffering in this? 

What I feel is satisfaction. I get something enjoyable; then I let it go and pursue something else. 

Methinks Buddhism and like-minded philosophies are too extreme, too ascetic, too (dare I say it?) attached to a view of human nature that is decidedly unnatural. Also, unscientific.

Most of what goes on in my brain, as in yours, is unconscious. We aren't nearly as much in control of seemingly conscious decisions as we think we are.

Thus while it is possible to engage in disciplines like meditation that seemingly have some effect on our ability to be detached from objects of desire/clinging, I doubt that much is happening other than, so to speak, exchanging one metaphorical t-shirt for another.

Yay, me! Ooh, I'm so enlightened! 

Before I was attached to women, wine, and websurfing; now I'm attached to meditation, mysticism, and masters (Zen or otherwise). I'm still clinging, just to different stuff. The only way to be genuinely detached from desires is to be dead.

From my unlofty 65 year-old viewpoint, I can look down, or up, or sideways upon my life and observe...

Much of the time I've taken myself way too seriously. I've agonized over whether this-or-that was right or wrong, good or bad, desirable or undesirable. I've examined my shortcomings and tallcomings as if (1) I could identify which was which, and (2) I actually could do something about them.

When I've felt happiest and most productive, I wasn't trying to be anything other that what I was: simply me, doing whatever seemed worth doing at the moment. Detachment and attachment? Irrelevant. 

Comments

[Sandra]

"When I've felt happiest and most productive, I wasn't trying to be anything other that what I was: simply me, doing whatever seemed worth doing at the moment. Detachment and attachment? Irrelevant."

Swinging post, Brian. Very congenial. I like it much. That's also my style of looking at life. That's why the Sant Mat-path was not for me (although I have to admit that it fascinated me in the beginning --- maybe because it takes away the fear of death). As I said before, I sticked with that group only for one year or so. I ever felt that there were too many regulations and restrictions there - an anathema to me. There are enough rules and laws to abide by in secular life (... and counting).

[gene]

Buddhism, and all religions, start with the belief/contention that there is something wrong: with me, you, everyone, this world. Advertising does the same thing: you have a PROBLEM and this pill, car, purse, hair plug, enema, etc., will cure the PROBLEM. Many parts of the scientific community, such as the medical field, are on this guilt inducing and money making band wagon also.

"When I've felt happiest and most productive, I wasn't trying to be anything other that what I was: simply me, doing whatever seemed worth doing at the moment. Detachment and attachment? Irrelevant."

Yes. I use the phrase, "I am perfectly imperfect." I can and do, on occasion, choose to change and improve things about myself and my life. But oh, what a wonderful sense of freedom, peace, and ease I find in knowing that I am starting from a place of acceptance, and place of OKness, and I am making a choice, not following a dictate; that I am a volunteer to the task at hand, not a victim.

gene

[cc]

If free will is illusion, considering whether it is better to be or not to be attached is only an academic exercise because we are bound and determined by genetics and conditioning to do what we do, in spite of what we think we can or should do.

We think we are free because we can think about doing things differently, but such thoughts may only be the tip of the unconscious iceberg that is drifting with currents and conditions it can do nothing about.

[Skeptic]

There is no one attached to detachment like an RS satsangee.

[Avi]

Skeptic,

There is no one attached to detachment like an RS satsangee.

Very well said. Please correct me if I am wrong but I believe by "attached" you mean "love to talk about or preach but not practice".

Probably, it's because their guru (GSD) has led them by example at least on this front.

[some_guy]

I think the big idea with detachment was that any attachment to the physical realm would prevent one making inward and upward spiritual progress, which is why devotees often try (and fail) to lessen their attachments. Ironically enough, even Baba Sawan Singh Ji said detachment was impossible without attachment to something higher, although his consolation was that once a person is attached to the Inner Shabd then all worldly attachments will naturally fall away as the soul will have found something far more enjoyable than anything it has ever known before.

[Mike Williams]

Kirpal Singh left millions to Darshan
Singh. Kirpal, an accountant, whom had nothing when he started.

Sawan left millions to Jagat, whom
passed them on to Charan. Now Gurinder
is a billionaire.

Summa Ching Hai, a successor
to Kirpal, via Thakar Singh,, made
a billion dollars from her own
shoe strings up, with his exact
philosophy, from orientals.

It takes no inventory to become a
Guru, no initial public stock offering.

The Guru begins with bullcrap and
ends up getting money thrown at him.

It all depends on how convincing you
are.

If you can convince anyone you can save
their souls, they will give you everything
they own.

L. Ron Hubbard was a fiction novelest.
He decided the fastest way to make
money was via non profit religious status.

He literally created his own religion out
of thin air and made millions.

Only sociopaths have the nerve to do this.

Religion is a world full of sociopaths
and mentally ill ... whom confort humanity
from its fear of death.

Religion is death.

Compassion is life.