We live and move and have our being in a network of entanglements, regardless of whether we are conscious of it or not. This is because our instinctive and ingrained habit of attachment (Pali: lobha) and clinging (Pali: upadana) saturates our entire psyche leaving no cell untouched. We are drenched in attachment and clinging which we often mistake as “love.” This is why we have an oxymoronic phrase such as “love-hate relationship.” True and pure love admits no hate. But attachment and clinging are permeated by hostility and hate as their flip sides. Attachment and clinging are twin aspects of entanglement and entanglement inevitably brings anguish.
Attachment is a wrong consciousness appropriated by mind that exaggerates the pleasant and positive qualities of a thing or person and consequently grasps onto it as a source of happiness.
Clinging builds upon attachment to grasp tightly onto something or someone in a compulsive and relentless way despite the reality of change or dissatisfaction.
Both attachment and clinging are sources of affliction, anguish, and suffering. They do not bring happiness, not the lasting and not even the fleeting kind. But our delusion which is wrong consciousness deny this reality and believes in the opposite that attachment and clinging bring happiness. We compulsively thirst and hunger for the next pleasurable contact that we hope will give us the satisfaction we desperately seek. Even when we do obtain the pleasure of our desire, the momentary “happiness” that we think we get fades away quicker than a puff of smoke and we are left hungry for another shot. This sorry state of affairs applies not only to things and privileges we crave for in the world but to even our closest relationships. We might take refuge in relationships as a source of happiness but if we are honest and wise, we would see that relationships are mostly if not always rooted in attachment and clinging. Our pride refuses to see this and we justify and rationalize it all as “love.” But this is self deception. Yes, there may be degrees and slivers of love in our relationships but in the end they are shot through with attachment and clinging. We hate to admit this but this is a fact. We can see and know this clearly if and when we can allow our minds to be still and to know what is in each disintegrating moment. No, relationships are not and cannot be our refuge of happiness.
Family is especially sticky and troublesome, riddled with attachment and clinging. Society tells us lies about itself and about the essential role of “families.” But there is vested interest in this: social reproduction and perpetuation of the taxation system that generally benefits the top dogs more than the masses. The reality of families is affliction and suffering, if we are to see and know without bias and prejudice, without our vested interests and emotional insecurities. Let’s face it: we have no choice in coming into this world. We are suddenly born or rather thrown into existence that we never sought for, at least not in our memory. Two people had sex, we were conceived, and ten months or so later we were thrust into a hostile world where conditions for death surpass the conditions for life. Entropy and decay alone testify to this fact, let alone the many causes and conditions in this world that could potentially elicit death to a life form. To survive and thrive, we have little choice but to struggle against all odds. We did not choose our parents or families. This is actually terribly unfair, if we think about it and suspend our theories about past karma and rebirth. Once born and foisted upon a family we did not choose, we are expected to bear the burden of playing our socially sanctioned role in that family and society. Do we have a choice? Often not, given our vulnerability as infants and toddlers and subsequent layers of cultural conditioning and religious indoctrination that impose upon us a weight of obligation and duty that almost suffocates us. But the irony is this: all of this burdensome mess is rooted in attachment and clinging, the delusion that our familial relationships are super important, super good, super needful, and super happy-making. And of course, it stems from our attachment to sexual pleasure and orgasmic bliss.
None of these evaluations are true. Quite the opposite, they are lies. But if there is true love devoid of attachment and clinging, there can be an equanimous caring without stickiness or stuckness. Such relationships look radically different than what we are generally used to — sticky and stuck, suffering-laden to the core. Relationships can then take their place in the cosmic symphony but without unnecessary entanglement and extraneous emotional drama. A common idiom “blood is thicker than water” implies that we should prioritize our family over other people like friends; that we should be more emotionally and socially involved with family more than with other sentient beings. This actually is idiotic, not idiomatic. When we have children, we see them as more valuable and important than other people's children. Is that coming from true love or attachment? The answer is obvious. Children are born to us not out of our altruism and love but out of lust and desirous attachment. This is a simple brutal fact. One that we do our best to deny out of pride and prejudice. We sugarcoat our sexual desire with flattering talk of love and responsibility but fail to see clearly the hidden drives of our compulsivity. In truth, children often become a source of strong persistent attachment and hence become a bondage that hinders our ultimate liberation. Anything can happen to children of other peoples and in faraway lands but nothing must happen to my children. This is how our self-centred minds think. This does not sound nice but inconvenient truths seldom sound nice.
Suffering knows no boundaries. Neither does true love. But it is precisely suffering-inducing attachment and clinging that sets up boundaries and divisions, adding to the chaos that we see in our world of experience. Emotional prioritization and social grading occurs in a mind that is biased and judgmental and a heart that is constricted, not in an awakened mind-heart. To take that idiom literally, its assertion is factually problematic: blood is mostly water, with water making up more than 50% of blood’s composition, the rest comprising blood cells and platelets. Thus, blood while seemingly “thicker” than water is actually made up of more than 50% water. If we really want to love, then this love must be universal and all-inclusive, not partial and biased. That said, even friends are not always true friends who are able and willing to listen and care for us. More often than not, they dump their woes on you and expect you to pick up the pieces for them. They talk too much and fail to listen in an intelligent and compassionate way without being patronizing. I call these "friends" emotional vampires. They drain me of emotional and life energy, and do not even consider offering their energy to me for a moment. Such friendships are often built upon attachment and clinging, which is why they do not nourish and enlighten. What we need is spiritual friendship based on mindfulness and wisdom, unbounded love and enlightened awareness.
Spiritual teachings of the highest order speak of such universal all-embracing love that transcends man-made divisions and categories of family and friends, even foes. Such love is rooted in wisdom that brings us to the other shore of freedom where duality and dichotomy vanish completely. Such universal love does not mean we no longer care about our family or friends but they are given the same equanimous sense of care and warmth that we would give to all sentient beings — without attachment and clinging. Our warmth and loving friendliness would extend and expand equally to all sentient beings who suffer from defilements of their minds. And both suffering itself and those who suffer are seen through as empty of inherent existence and thus contingent displays of reality. Only then can we truly love. Only then would our love be an agent of freedom and not bondage.
Jesus of Nazareth points to a deep insight on non-attachment in light of absolute truth when he exhorted: “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26-27 NRSV-CI). This does not mean to literally “hate” but to let go of our biased sense of priority and valuation that places familial relationships above our devotion to God as absolute truth — seeing family as more important than God and getting attached to them inordinately. Attachment to God itself can be just as problematic. In truth, such attachment is actually not so much to “God” per se but to our limited ideas about and concepts of God. For God as the ultimate perfection has nothing that can be exaggerated to any extent in order to elicit attachment and clinging, given that everything about God (as is the Buddha as philosophically understood) is by definition unsurpassed and unsurpassable.
Religion may have to shoulder much of the blame for this sorry mess of relational entanglement. The dynamic of religious reproduction and social perpetuation of a tithing base motivates much of religious rhetoric around having babies and setting up families. The word “love” gets touted around much but there is little wisdom in discerning the underlying tendencies to attachment and clinging that permeate our so-called “love.” A simple test is this: is there suffering in your “love”? If there is, it is shot through with attachment and clinging. Perhaps the institution of marriage sanctioned by religion is that very social mechanism by which attachment and clinging get hallowed enough to incentivize sexual reproduction, which in turn serves the agenda of consolidating society’s taxation base for the future. The trouble is, without honest wisdom, marriage can easily become an entanglement. Contemplatively speaking, the real purpose and meaning of marriage is spiritual union of two living breathing nominal persons for mutual enlightenment, not entanglement. It takes courageous insight to see this radical reality and to interrogate hand-me-down normative beliefs.
Religion tells us we need to become a part of some new religious family once we are “converted.” But the problem is this: all families are psychologically dysfunctional and hurtful in one shade or another, and religious ones are not exempt. In fact, they can be worse and thus hurtful many times over. When the mind is polluted by attachment and clinging, there will be suffering and hurt, pain and grief, sorrow and despair. Period. This is not something to be elated about. There is no reason to glorify suffering, hurt, pain, grief, sorrow, and despair. When religious doctrines try to do that — to glorify suffering as some deep truth of salvation or spiritual growth or the like — we miss the point completely. We veer into sick masochism.
The nightmare of religious conversion and its aftermath is not something to celebrate or commemorate. I speak from my own experience. There is no freedom in entanglements of any kind. Religion as institution is one strong, sticky, stupendous, sorry, and suffering-laced entanglement. Be done with it and be truly free, not in the small petty self but in the timeless, spaceless, absolute empty ground of being that has no name and abides nowhere. Freedom is happiness and happiness is utterly free. Upon total, irreversible, and unqualified relinquishing of all entanglements from inside-out, freedom naturally dawns. Nibbana is not some pie in the sky when you die. Die to the known and plunge into the beyond. Now. Relinquish the delusional self and be knowingly aware in emptiness. Here.
Be done with entanglements. Be free.
And now, Yoga.
