Because we don’ know any better’. That is how we are conditioned.
The selection is so habitual and automatic that unless it elects to observe and question its selections, it doesn’t know what it’s doing.
Because your “fondness” is a conditioned "fondness?
“Avoiding attachment” is not a ‘care’. You don’t ‘attach’. Period. Attachment is all we know. That is what life is for us. Just look at this for a moment. Don’t say, “but I must be attached to someone, something,etc.”… Consider it as a possibility.
Talks in New Delhi, First Public Talk, 30th Oct, 1982, “The Root Cause of Confusion”
So we are asking, is pain, the anguish, sorrow, brought about by our isolation of mind, of thought, of action? Is sorrow the result of our daily attachment, how we are attached to people? Please wake up to all this, see the truth of all this. Please explore the nature of attachment. It breeds anxiety, fear, pain, jealousy, hatred. All these are the consequences of attachment. You are attached to your wife or to your husband. See the consequences of it. You depend on each other, that dependence gives a form of security. When that person leaves or dies or runs away from you, you are then in pain, in agony, you have suspicion, hatred and sorrow. Don’t you know all this? It is nothing new. This is an everyday fact of life. It may not happen to you, but it is happening to others, millions of others. In their relationship, there is sorrow, fear, agony.
We are asking, is attachment one of the causes of this sorrow? I am attached to my son and he dies, and then I invent various forms of comfort. I never remain with sorrow. To remain, not to escape, not to seek comfort, not to run off to some form of entertainment, religious or otherwise, but to look at it, live with it, understand the nature of it - when you do that, sorrow opens the door to passion. You are not passionate people because you have never understood the nature of sorrow and the ending of sorrow. You have become very dull. You accept anything, accept sorrow, accept fear, you accept being dominated by politicians, by your guru, by all the books and traditions. That means you never want to be free and you are frightened to be free, frightened of the unknown. You invent various forms of consoling, illusory images and hopes.
So what? If I am fond of my parents, my way of life, and my home, that works for me. I am happy with my lot. I am not being argumentative. I want to understand why being happy with oneself must be made wrong because it is “conditioned”. Perhaps, conditioning is necessary for man-made society to function in a viable way.
Escape from what? I get it about being attached and dependent on someone and that person dies. That’s the way it is. It’s not ideal because nothing lasts forever. We suffer and move on.
Of course it does…That’s why we do it.
“Perhaps” it isn’t…
[quote=“sree, post:27, topic:232”]
Escape from what?
Escape from loneliness for one thing, from insecurities of all kinds. Look into why you are in a relationship or have been in a relationship and fill in your own answers. It’s not too hard.
Conditioning is programming. We react to most things, stimuli, exactly as the society we grew up in has “conditioned” us to do. It’s not a plot of a few people. We are all conditioned. We see things not as they are but through the screen of conditioning. We spend our whole lives reacting and doing pretty much the way we have been trained, conditioned to act. For example, organized religion is just so much mythology. The Ancient Greeks believed in their gods as did the Romans but now most people think these old religions is all nonsense. If humanity survives long enough, which is in serious doubt, people will eventually see Christianity the same way as we see those ancient religions.
Yes absolutely, thoughts are usually colored and conditioned by feelings/desire. The question now is, is there any thought which doesn’t have feeling/desire as it’s very basis. As I see, they both can’t be separated from each other and also from action, unless of-course with self-knowing as the basis and consequently an overcoming of it together as a complex. K calls it right thinking and to my understanding is that which provides the direction for oneself and others (if in dialogue) considering enough discipline has gone in the backdrop as a process to contain and still the feeling/action aspect and in understanding oneself.
This in bold is what I am realizing. My ‘attachments’ are my life. If things are going along relatively well, not too much angst, suffering, depression, etc, I’m interested in this K. ‘teaching’ as maybe something I’m missing and should ‘get’. But here is what I’m seeing and a few of the other posters are bearing this out: I ‘want’ my attachments. But K. is talking about being free from attachments. How can there be “freedom from the known” if I want to remain attached to the known? So…if anyone agrees that this is the quandary we’re in, can we explore what these psychological attachments are? My wife, my children, my house, my money, my career, my country, my ‘religion’, my…I don’t see any physical reason for being ‘free’ of them, but can we look at what is involved with not being psychologically ‘attached’ to them…or to anything for that matter. I think that this was part of the urgent message K. was trying to get across.
I understand what you are saying Dan. I have been considering the implications of what K has said about attachment and dependency. It occurred to me while I was doing my walk in the mountains this morning that what K said is pretty much all or nothing. What I mean is if our internal dialogue is not constantly running, as most of ours are, and which also implies that we are in the present moment by moment without time. So attachment is thought. We think about our loved ones, remember the many experiences we have had with them and what we might do in the future together. We become dependent on them emotionally and physically.
But when this internal dialogue is not running when there is just awareness then there is no attachment/dependency, no memory. When we loose someone close to us we feel the loss momentarily, perhaps, and then the mind is silent again. This doesn’t mean we don’t have a close and loving relationship with other. In fact K, in the book which I am re-reading now, states that attachment and dependency is not love. It is exploitation. I can’t be more specific about the pages where he said this.
What I’m trying to point out is that we will stay attached/dependent because that is our conditioning. But when thought/conditioning ends then so does dependency. We can’t just take the parts of what K has pointed out that we like and disregard the rest. What K pointed out is one wholeness, not fragmented.
I get it, and it was very early in my inquiry into “attachment”. Loneliness is a natural part of being human. This is why we live together in a group like pack animals. Is this wrong? Loneliness, to the person, is like thirst, to the body. The latter is a natural biological need while the former is a natural psychological need. I wonder if it is sane to deny the body of water and the self of socialization with other people. We know that children need to socialize for their emotional development.
The question is for me about psychological attachment. Not about staying away from anyone or anything physically but about dependance, jealousy, possessiveness, greed, acquisitiveness, territorialness etc.
There is more than one way to view religion in general and Christianity in particular. People were pretty brutal to each other in ancient times and religions were attempts at civilizing social behavior. Christianity was a reaction to the barbaric ways of the Romans who ruled that region in the eastern Mediterranean. Today, those Christian values inform our laws that forbid us from killing one another. Although, priests and nuns pray to God, they were instrumental in setting up schools and hospitals all over the world. Our top universities here in America were founded by Christians.
In and of themselves, those traits are part of what we are. They present a problem only when they drive us into unreasonable realms. If we are fair and balanced, things would be fine. Acquisitiveness is not a fundamental flaw. For example, a $100 billion net worth is obscene to me but $300 million would be fine.
Sree, this is just a suggestion. Don’t be in such a hurry to come to conclusions. Look at things without making choices immediately. Can you just be aware of somethings without reacting?
There is nothing wrong with caring, we all care about something. The problem is that without awareness we end up caring about illusionary things that doesn’t actually exist, things that exist no where except in our own minds, which are are usually created to puff up one’s egoic self.
Your criticism is appreciated and is valuable to me. The moderator has informed me that robust exchanges between veterans like you and me are not suitable in open forum. Can you take this outside in a private message?
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