Because to me it seems that they are trying to justify non-attachment being healthy where in relationships it makes it seem like you are always on edge because you know it will end. It also to me makes it sound like the relationship is cheap, like why invest in it if you just know that it’s going to end some day. I mean yeah we do get hurt when these things end, but that’s normal. It’s part of life and living is about learning to move on from those things. I know I’ve lost in the past and it hurt, but I wouldn’t trade that for happier times or being non attached. It seems to me that non-attachment and disinterest go hand in hand. I mean…if you are setting goals and you don’t care about the outcome then why are you setting goals to begin with? The whole point of a goal is that you care about the outcome.
Yeah I don’t buy that idea. “Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”
This idea was explored in Simon and Garfunkel’s famous song “I am a schmuck, I’m from Long Island”. Check it out.
I mean I know I have experienced hurt in the past from losing things, but I wouldn’t trade that sort of feeling. To me that makes me feel alive, to know such pain, not to just be happy and unaffected by things around you. Sounds more like being dead to me.
Or Stephen Stills, “If you Can’t be with the One You’re Attached to, Attach to the One You’re With.”
Sigh. We’ve discussed this before: “Non-attachment” in a spiritual sense, at least as typically used in, e.g., Buddhist philosophy, does not mean not caring about a relationship or not “investing” in it because you know it will inevitably end.
It means extending to your relationships the general non-attachment perspective of not being desperate or needy about them, or dependent on them for your basic happiness. The point is not to care less about the relationship, but rather to become spiritually and emotionally stronger and more resilient so that you’re able to care more about it and make it a better relationship for yourself and your partner.
Non-attachment doesn’t mean that you’re unaffected by or indifferent to losing things or people that you care about. It just means that you have a healthy awareness and acceptance of the sad fact that someday, somehow, you inevitably will lose them.
That is a lot healthier than the attitude this schmuck has. He seems to define attachment as clinging, but clinging is an unhealthy attachment. I’m attached to my daughters and grandson ( not to mention my wife) without clinging to them.
Perhaps knowing that all relationships are finite (my wife and I have 40 more years, tops, given our age) why not appreciate them with intensity while we have them?
A meal is soon over, but we should appreciate each bite while it’s on our plates.
That’s exactly what the author of the OP’s linked article is saying:
It’s better for me to have attachments. YMMV.
It’s not that being attached makes you live longer, it just seems like longer.
It is clear that Mr. Manacorda means non-attachment in the spiritual sense, to say that attachment (love) is not forever. You can tell from the huge picture of Buddha and the caption “the root of suffering is attachment”, if not from reading the text.
I’m sorry if this comes out pedantic, but whether attachment as described makes for a better life is wholly dependent on just what a better life is. If the root of suffering is attachment, and a better life is one with less suffering, then it follows that non-attachment leads to a better life than attachment.
If that’s your thing, go for it. It’s not for everybody. Some people really believe love is forever, that attachment persists through death; non-attachment therefore demotes eternal love into a temporary, mortal passion. And for some that will kill a relationship.
~Max
They certainly make for a better vacuum cleaner.
They certainly make my vacuum cleaner more useful.
ETA: Ninja’d by Gatopescado!
But that just makes you on your toes the whole time about losing something, so you’ll be less likely to invest or care about it if you are just going to lose it someday. I know he thinks it doesn’t foster indifference and that it makes one live in the moment with intensity, but that just doesn’t seem to be the case. I mean if you know that the relationship won’t last then you won’t make efforts to make it last, you’ll likely just be “meh” about it and when it end you’ll just be “so it goes”.
The thing is that it does lead to indifference if you are not attached to the outcome of the relationship. It’s like goal setting, if you aren’t attached to the outcome then why even bother with it to begin with. Same thing with your kids (if you have them), being unattached means that you don’t care what the outcome with them would be.
Knowledge that what you have will end someday tends to be followed by disinterest and indifference in the end. If I know that everything will end someday that would tend to make me less passionate about life. If everything ends eventually then why bother? It doesn’t make me present or passionate or more loving, it just makes me cold and indifferent. I know that people will cite cake or food as an example but that doesn’t really work here (since that is known to not last).
Bolding mine.
The article, your own cite, combines non-attachment with carpe diem! and, if you agree with his logic, avoids the specific outcome you describe. It just sounds like you don’t agree with his logic, but I can see many people, especially adherents to eastern philosophies, agreeing with him.
~Max
Nope. That may be how you personally react to the awareness that the time of your relationship is necessarily finite, but the perspective that people who practice non-attachment are striving for is different.
Well, that’s your own personal take on it, and it’s because you’re not doing non-attachment right, or so a follower of a philosophy of non-attachment would probably respond.
I know they agree with him but that doesn’t make their analysis correct. They could unknowingly be attached but believe otherwise. I mean isn’t compassion a form of it since you are concerned about the suffering of others.
That’s not exactly true. The monks that I have met in the past (when I was younger and visited a Buddhist center) didn’t seem that invested in life around them, I mean they answered questions in the like but none of them mentioned non-attachment as this guy does.
It’s not my personal take but the reality that seems to happen with non-attachment. I know that with people there is a balance between being suffocating and disinterested. Based in what this guy says it sounds like disinterested, and that the only way he gets to being more engaged with life is through major cognitive dissonance. Reminds me of the Broward Meditation claiming non-attachment yet not telling me anything unless I signed up for their classes.
They don’t do a good job of explaining how it’s not being disinterested, because from all their literature it sure sounds too much like it. Recognizing that things will end tends to sap enthusiasm from people I meet.
Why bother if you are not attached to a person - and attached in the sense most of us would use the word, not the weird definition he uses.
For one thing, these are lifelong-celibate monks, right? Those folks are essentially the pro athletes of Buddhist doctrinal practice; their training for life as religious ascetics is not the same as what ordinary schmoes like us are attempting to achieve in the amateur leagues. For another, your track record in interpreting other people’s intended meaning does not inspire a lot of confidence that you accurately understood the monks’ perspective on life.
I’m aware that you have a tendency to claim that your personal opinions based on your own limited personal experience are simply objective reality, but that doesn’t make it true.
Sure, which is why, as a Buddhist would put it, people need to consciously practice this technical spiritual form of non-attachment. Namely, the practice of non-attachment is what makes people able to reconcile their awareness of the fundamental reality “that things will end” with their ability to be enthusiastically involved and happy with things while they haven’t ended.
Otherwise, people end up either making themselves mentally and emotionally blind to a fundamental reality of life until it mugs them with misery and despair, or else, as you note, losing the ability for enthusiastic happiness because they’re so busy bracing themselves for the eventual mugging by fundamental reality.
Personally, I can kind of see the Buddhists’ point that we’d be better off being able to combine awareness and acceptance of the reality of inevitable future loss with ability to retain joy and enthusiasm in the present appreciation of what we haven’t yet lost.
“Weird”? The whole point of the OP’s linked article, ISTM, is to explain the difference between the ordinary-language meaning of “attachment” that most of us are familiar with, and the technical sense of “attachment” in Buddhist philosophy.
Yes, if you insist on interpreting “attachment” in the former sense and ignoring what the author has to say about “attachment” in the latter sense, then obviously attachment is a good thing for relationships and the article makes no sense. Discussion over. :rolleyes: