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Attachment Question

inthedharmainthedharma
edited August 2006 in Buddhism Basics
We are suppose to not have attachment to ppl or things. I completely understand why.

But HOW do you love your husband/wife, children and grandchildren without being attached? How is this achieved ?

Deb

Comments

  • BrianBrian Detroit, MI Moderator
    edited August 2006
    understand that love and attachment are very different. I am learning this the (extremely) hard way.
  • PalzangPalzang Veteran
    edited August 2006
    I would agree with Brian, who, as he says, has learned this the hard way (as we all do). I would go even further, tho, and add that the only way to really love someone is to not be attached to them at all. Attachment is like owning someone. Can you ever own someone? No, not really, not even if they let you. Attachment is at its root a delusion that can never be true. So we just set ourselves up for suffering by becoming attached to someone or something.

    Palzang
  • BrigidBrigid Veteran
    edited August 2006
    I agree.

    I think it's about selfish and selfless love. Selfish love depends on what the others do for us, what they provide us with. Selfless love does not. Selfless love doesn't depend on anything other than our capacity to love. The bottom line is can you let them go without falling apart because you can't live without what they were providing you with?

    My father always says that the problem with loving our cats so much is that they die. I tell him over and over again that that's not the problem. That's the way it is. The problem arises because he will miss what the cats have given him. But to really love the cats in a selfless way is about what we have given them and when they die we can say good-bye and let them go on their way knowing we did right by them. It's a clean break without the suffering that comes from the attachment of depending on others to provide us with something we crave.
  • SimonthepilgrimSimonthepilgrim Veteran
    edited August 2006
    Most of us, I'm sure, have come across Gibran's The Prophet. In his chapeter on 'Children', he defines how we need to love our offspring, but the same can be said about our partners as well:
    Your children are not your children.
    They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
    They come through you but not from you,
    And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
    You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
    For they have their own thoughts.
    You may house their bodies but not their souls,
    For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
    You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
    For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.



    And Paul of Tarsus lists some of the qualities of love:


    (1 Corinthians 13)
    Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth

    Nothing in there about grasping or clinging!


  • inthedharmainthedharma
    edited August 2006
    Thank you Palzang, Brigid and Simon it is starting to become much clearer.
  • ajani_mgoajani_mgo Veteran
    edited August 2006
    Wow, I have never come across that poem before, Simon, I think it's fantastic!

    Well, a 15-year old may be giving an immature view... But I too had to learn it the hard way... But I find that the New Testament helps at times in a secular light. Be unconditional! :rockon:
  • federicafederica Seeker of the clear blue sky... Its better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt Moderator
    edited August 2006
    Some attachments are good.... My personal attachment, for example, to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha have proved to be a life-saving attachment...I feel sure that without all three, the experiences I have lived recently would have ultimately destroyed a good part of who I am.... (let's not go into the semantics here, of "I" and "Me" and "Who I am"...!!) But I am conscious that at one point or another, these too, will have to be released and left behind.... everything changes...The dynamics of everything that surrounds us is ever-evolving....we are not the same 'We' of our childhoods....we have left childish things behind.... Would we consider marrying our very first "Love"? Possible, but doubtful....! We've moved on.

    Hold on to Love. Cherish the essence of being precious to others, just as they are precious to you. The twinge of sadness we feel when we realise all will have to be released, is the "Clinging" part.... embrace that too. It's what makes us human. But recognising it, exposes our Buddhas within.....
  • HannaHanna
    edited August 2006
    I've read part of what you quoted before (but had no idea where it was from), Simon, so thank you for letting me see the rest. :)
  • ajani_mgoajani_mgo Veteran
    edited August 2006
    federica wrote:
    Would we consider marrying our very first "Love"? Possible, but doubtful....! We've moved on.

    True, I find myself more aware of the whole business after my breakup, even though I, childishly, still cannot let it go after so long, and still weep over it at times. In the HHDL and Howard Cutter's The Art of Happiness, they spoke about the human ability to adapt, unfortunately, I think I am very slow in that, even as I try to speed it up using rational Buddhist thought.
    federica wrote:
    The twinge of sadness we feel when we realise all will have to be released, is the "Clinging" part.... embrace that too. It's what makes us human. But recognising it, exposes our Buddhas within.....

    But what does it mean really, fede, by recognizing the clinging? I feel pain, I know that I cling, I remind myself everyday of the concept of impermenance, in the failed relationship, and in the pain I still feel, knowing that the former would have been gone, and the latter will be going. Yet, I fear that it does not do my Buddha-nature any more good than bad as I continue to cling... Onto nothing, essentially.

    I don't know about anyone else, but for me, being in love and out of love calls for largely different "qualities of Love". If I am still employing that of being in love now to get out, I would only be causing my ex severe hurt, and things are more complicated than that.
  • colleencolleen
    edited August 2006
    i guess im not new in saying yea simon.. loved what you wrote.
    i havent heard that sayin in years..
    where did it come from?

    in case others are scrolling i copied and pasted.

    Your children are not your children.
    They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
    They come through you but not from you,
    And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
    You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
    For they have their own thoughts.
    You may house their bodies but not their souls,
    For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
    You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
    For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.


    simons earlier post
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