"As human beings we all want to be happy and free from misery… we have learned that the key to happiness is inner peace. The greatest obstacles to inner peace are disturbing emotions such as anger, attachment, fear and suspicion, while love and compassion and a sense of universal responsibility are the sources of peace and happiness.”
---Dalai Lama
"Let go of your attachment to being right, and suddenly your mind is more open. You're able to benefit from the unique viewpoints of others, without being crippled by your own judgment.”
---Ralph Marston
“Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete. Love is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being "drawn toward." Love is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation with one's friends and enemies. Love creates righteousness, or justice, here on earth. To make love is to make justice. As advocates and activists for justice know, loving involves struggle, resistance, risk. People working today on behalf of women, blacks, lesbians and gay men, the aging, the poor in this country and elsewhere know that making justice is not warm...”
---Carter Heyward
“Consciousness will always be present, though a particular consciousness may cease. For example, the particular tactile consciousness that is present within this human body will cease when the body comes to an end. Likewise, consciousnesses that are influenced by ignorance, by anger or by attachment, these too will cease. But the basic, ultimate, innermost subtle consciousness will always remain. It has no beginning, and it will have not end.”
---Dalai Lama
"But letting go is hard to do because our human mind persistently wants to hold on; it has an enormous and ancient habit of holding on. In fact, holding on is all we know; holding on is literally us, and we do not want to give ourself up. Letting go feels like death and we are frightened of death because it means the end of us. And actually letting go is a kind of death- it may be literally sometimes death: we have to let go of our life sometime. But actually whether it is what we call death or just everyday letting go it really is death anyway. Every moment we have to die - every moment anyway we do die to this moment of our lives. It is gone and it will never return. If it is a wonderful moment it will go away and if it is a terrible moment it will go away in exactly the same way. Every moment dies to itself and this is how every moment of our lives takes care of itself completely; every moment contains within itself its own perfect resolution. To practice letting go is to participate with this actual moment by moment dying which is life: to let go is to join our life.
This sounds drastic in a way and I know a lot of people don’t like to hear about this kind of thing. Letting go really is dying but dying isn’t just dying: dying is freedom, release, peacefulness.
Dying means laying down the burden of our life and going off into the mountains for a big hike, just wandering around, like a cloud. Dying means that we don’t hold onto anything of the six senses- whatever we see hear smell taste touch or think we just appreciate it for what it actually is - we don’t “me” it and try to hold it fixed- we just let it come and go- we allow it to be born and die as it really is being born and dying moment by moment. This is really the kindest way to live and it is the only way to love: to let each thing really be what it is and then to let it go- to let it be free. To try to hold ourselves or our world or another person in place is impossible. Nothing can be held in place.
Life is very pressured, very stressful, very burdensome- and this is why- because we are trying mightily to hold in place what cannot be held in place, we are trying to preserve the unpreservable and fix the unfixable. Actually everything has integrity as it is; everything is surrounded by immense space: each of our thoughts, even our miseries, certainly trees and grasses, the sun and moon and clouds, our human body- everything passes and reappears as it is, all of it operating together in a marvelous harmony of freely passing by, if we will only let it, if we will only let go and allow it to be that way in the course of our living.
The life of letting go is the life of freedom, the life of nonattachment.
Nonattachment doesn’t mean we are distant from things or have no warmth or no care for things; the word nonattachment is good because it suggests some distance and in love there always has to be some distance- some spaciousness or openness. In ordinary everyday human life there is always some desire- if there weren't any desire there couldn't be any life. But if desire is held onto too strongly it becomes very confining. If there’s too much strongly held desire in our loving then our loving becomes confining too and soon it is no longer love, it turns into dependency, or even antipathy; real love has to have some distance in it, some nonattachment.
With the eye of nonattachment we can see that the object of our love can never be possessed, can never be held onto. When I say this maybe it seems tragic to you. In a way it is tragic, tragic if you don’t like it and you don’t want to accept it. But if you accept it you see that it is a good thing that we cannot possess or hold onto the object of our love: because if we could it would not really be a living being; it would only be our invention, and inventions are not lovable. Any living being needs its own integrity and its own freedom and spaciousness- so there has to be always some distance and nonattachment in loving. And desire, if you study it carefully and very closely, has this aspect to it: desire has spaciousness around it if you will allow it, if you don’t insist on crowding your desire too much.
We do crowd our desire as a rule, and then it becomes usually painful because it can never be fulfilled. This is what hungry ghosts are- beings who crowd their desires into a very tight corners and so experience the tremendous suffering of endless unsatisfiable desiring. All addictions are like this- this is the mind of addiction, the hungry ghost crowded desire mind. But if we practice letting go and open up space for our desire and for the object of our desire- allow our desire to be itself and then to go away and allow the object of our desire to be itself and then to go away then we really don't have to suffer and we can enjoy our desire and its object whether we satisfy our desire or not. Actually everything is already letting go- you and I are already let go. So there is no need to satisfy our desire. Sometimes when it is right for us to do so we do- but even then we don’t possess anything. We just enjoy something for a moment and then let it go. So desire can come up and it need not be a big problem."
http://www.everydayzen.org/teachings/talk_nonattachment.asp
There is a new world before me and in me each day. That is a simple yet profound reality. I can choose to clutch my yesterdays---my memories---my foundational principles; but, that "holding on" can often carry a tremendous burden of suffering with it. In such a context, everything I experience is reviewed in the light of what was, but what was is just a mere ghost. The act of "holding on" lies to you body and mind because it is not in the now. It has no real-time voice in the today.
It is strange to come into this awareness. It is a powerful reckoning that resembles the Transfiguration. All at once you know who you were, who you are, and who you will become in any course of action.
I think Western society has been blessed with tremendous material gain. Material gain is not alive, though. It is tangible and exchangable, and somewhat "giving," but it is also non-living. I wonder if it is not our fascination with this non-living entity that keeps us attached to absolutely every aspect of the universe and disallows much growth and development---growth and development that could bring Love and compassion into our individual and global spheres. [Growth and development that may not have reached its time! But, then who knows that much about time?]
As I study Eastern philosophy and/or religions, I am compelled to express how similar these idealogies are to my own "home grown" philosophy stemming from Christianity. I have these resounding lessons penetrating the rafters of my mind which originally said emphatically, "As a Christian I must die to my self. And as a Christian, I must recognize that my treasures are stored in heaven, not here on earth where the moths can eat them."
How is this not like letting go? How is this not nonattachment?
I am thirty seven. I have lived through and in many relationships. I have had 3-4 best friends. I have had many varied personalities I have attracted into my world...and just as many that I have repelled. I have had three major loves, and one minor love. Each person I have known---no matter how significant a part they played in my hours, days, nights, months or years, has brought me a myriad of gifts. I have learned from them. I have taught them. I have become myself through their mirroring and their shadows. My relationships are all that I AM.
Today,I am at a very new place. I mean, really, I am creating a whole new exciting pattern to engage and be in. It is an amazing place!
I have a friend that has been in my life for close to a year now. He makes me think a lot, and I feel that he "was sent" to me [and I was "sent to" him] {{And I use those terms SO very loosely.}} so that I can know and experience life very differently than I have known and experienced it before now. To date, I have been a pretty big attachment freak. I am not sure I understand why that is.
Is it because I came into being in a big family of attachers? Is it because I experienced dysfunctionality at a high level during my most formulative years? Is it because I was divinely placed so that attachment would be a growing point in this lifetime? I just don't know.
Nevertheless, it is interesting. This particular guy friend is consciousness that my consciousness has "known" before. [[For lack of better terminology!!!]] From the beginning of this time's intersection, I felt him deep inside me and it has been very alluring. I have not recognized this "consciousness" aspect in previous friendships; though in hindsight I can see, 20-20, several life connections that were in such a light. My Chris was one such life connection. Chris and I's souls felt inseparable. [They still do.]
My new friend guides me "subconsciously" through the corridors of light and living. He acts, speaks, does and doesn't do... and I follow him through the spaces just below the threshold of my being. [Occasionally I will go 180 degrees from him, but often, I just go his Way because somehow it feels like my Way as well.] Maybe it is just the Way. I don't know.
The two of us partake in an odd dance of connecting and letting go.
I think in the past, I would have dissolved any kind of friendship that caused me to work at this level of mental intensity---or, at the very least, I would have become ill. But, today, I am feeling up for such a challenge. Perhaps now I am living through everything that is not mind and so I am not so exhausted and overtaken. I am definitely not overwhelmed by the lack of attachment. I am, instead, curious. And I like to be curious. It is fun. [Yes, there are days of frustration as well. I haven't had enough experience with the art of letting go!]
I am reminded that I share the spaces of the world with all others. And I have learned through yoga and meditative exercises that breath is the most important function of the body because breath is life. [Though that is much easier to acknowledge than to live] My new relationship fosters my breath---my breathing---and additional space. I can feel myself attaching to that which I like and feel connected to, and then I breath and I am able to release and let go. It is quite exquisite. It is quite dynamic. [The catch is that by letting go, you actually release yourself into the Great I AM. You trust your eternal being.]
And as the breaths become more and more, and I become stronger and stronger, I am enlightened about a bigger view that I suddenly see. I am growing into all that IS. Nothing is mine. Yet, I AM all that IS. And I feel special and good and beautiful and full of Love. But, more importantly, I recognize the point of consciousness. Oneness.
My friend is just a nice man. [Well, he is not JUST anything!!!] He is unusual, yes...at least within my circles of recognition. And I enjoy that for sure! But, I do know that his collective consciousness remains from some distant world we once shared---or perhaps we will share---maybe both.
Consciousness always remains, and he and I live within the remainders. And the force that lies between us reminds me of that.
It is interesting to expand into that which is LIFE. I enjoy the knowing of living----the living of living. It is temporal and permanent all at once. Dismissing the mind---the manager of our experiences---brings us closer to the ethereal connections which are not in part at all. It is merely what we choose to see [even if our upbringing did the choosing for us]: PARTS. Love is not a culimation for it is not in part. It is the greatest state of being. It IS who we all are.
There is no need for attachment if we can widen our vision far enough to experience Forever. Forever brings our knowing into totality. Forever is the blink of an eye. [How is that for a profound paradox???]
I cannot know past this moment; and yet, I can know everything all at once.
So, here I am looking for nonattachment. Life is bringing me its fruits, its toils, and its barrenness one breath at a time. Everything is a blessing if you recognize Forever. And consciousness is just that! Resting in the knowledge that we are always all that we can be, enables us---no, empowers us---to paint a picture with our existence. Everything around us and in us gives us color, texture, rhythm, you name it! We just need to see life for what it IS.
I am thankful for the role that my guy friend is playing in my world. Without him, how long would I have had to wait to learn the treasures of nonattachment? I believe every person is uniquely and wonderfully made, so I must think that his presence in my here and now was perfectly planned, perfectly orchestrated. The very thought of that makes my eyes light up with joy and gratitude.
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