Does a Detached Person lack commitment?

Some of you asked me if a person who practices detachment would be without commitment to anything to which he is detached. If we were to let go of things, there would be no passion, no commitment, just indifference.

In my two previous posts, I have been talking about attachment and detachment. But, what is attachment? What are we to let go of when we practice attachment? Let’s take some examples of attachment.

Some Examples of Being Attached
When you wake up in the morning, and you utter these words, “Oh, God, it’s Monday.” This implies that this new day is like no different from other Mondays before it. And, this new day promises nothing new.

You had experienced that gave you pain. You decide to be afraid of it and therefore will want to avoid it at all cost.

You had encountered something in the past that gave you much positive experience. Subsequently, you want to relive the past experience in the present as well as in the future. You search for a similar situation, and you expect the same experience.

The problem with treating every Monday as though it is no different from past Monday is that you don’t give the present and yourself a chance to experience something new. Instead, you bring along the image of past Mondays and paste it on the new day. The term ‘Monday’ is just a word that we attach to a certain day. But the day itself, the present itself, is always something new.

While you may have experienced something in the past that caused you pain, physical or otherwise, fear - which is different from pain itself - is produced when you wish to avoid it. Ironically, by attempting to avoid the pain, fear intensifies.

Enjoying something in the past and wanting to have the same experience in the future are two different moments. In your very first encounter, you did not expect or anticipate that you were going to receive a positive experience. To expect it to happen again is a form of attachment that produces ‘pleasure’.

Detachment
In all of these cases, attachment is an act of indifference towards the present moment ‘where’ something new always happens. Attachment is act of repeating the past in the present and in the future. And, when reality ‘bites’- surely, it will - the result is one of disappointment and despair.

The person who practices ‘detachment’ does not forget the past, but neither is he attached to it. While he is aware that today is marked as Monday, he bears himself to the ‘new’ day and so is receptive to new things that arise during that day.

While the ‘detached’ person has experienced pain in the past, of which he remembers, he is not ruled by fear. A detached person therefore faces what caused him pain so he may understand it, embrace it. Consequently, he lives without fear. (Yes, it is possible and attainable.)

We must remember that the Buddha, who practiced detachment, was compassionate, loving and understanding. A detached person, therefore, is one who is far more committed to learning new things, and treating people as absolute values.

Attachment, therefore, avoids commitment because commitment requires that one lives in the ‘now’.

Attachment: the cause of Insecurity and Selfishness

David Hume, a British philosopher of the 18^th century, argues that as much as we want to believe that we have a self, there is no empirical evidence. All that we have are mental impressions that are banded together by memory. Because of the constant conjunction of these mental impressions, a mental habit of connecting these impressions, coupled with the belief that every effect has a cause, has led to the belief that there is something that is thinking these mental impressions. We give it a name: the self. But the self, by itself, is not an impression.

Grammar may also have contributed to the belief in the existence of the self. Take, for example, “Peter is running”. This is the simple 'subject – predicate' form, which has it that the predicate refers to the subject. The predicate, in this case, is the action, and the subject is the acting agent. But, what about 'It is raining'? The predicate is 'raining' and the subject is the 'it'. What is this 'it” that rains? Grammar imposes its structure on reality.

Some may argue that there is a true self that lies behind the mental impressions; or that there is a true self that is different from the empirical self that consists of mental impressions (memory). The feeling that there has to be something does not guarantee that there in fact is a some thing.

In other words, we want so much to believe that something of us, the soul, will live forever, after resigning ourselves to the fact that something of us, the body, will die and turn into ashes. We crave for immortality.

It is this belief in the indestructibility of the self (or, the soul if you wish to call it) and the experience of pain and suffering, that makes us insecure. Centered on this insecurity, we plan our lives for the purpose of surviving.

Wanting so much to believe that we can and must live forever makes it very difficult for us to appreciate the value of compassion and love, and our responsibility towards the well being of the others. We cannot love the others because we are comfortable with our being insecure. We act aggressively towards those who rile up our comfort zone.

Until we let go of the illusion of the 'true' self, we will stay selfish and live in fear.

Forgive, but don’t Forget!

We have come across the phrase, ‘Forgive and Forget’. We forgive, but if we mistakenly think that forgetting is a part of forgiving, then we’re in for a big surprise. To forget is to lose the memory of our past actions and experiences. If we lose that, we are bound to repeat them, again and again. Forgiving demands that we remember not only of what we have forgiven, but also of the past. Forgiving however demands that we do not chain ourselves to the past. To chain ourselves to the past is to be attached. Forgiving is to let go of attachment. Forgiving is detachment. Forgiving is to let go of the past without forgetting. By forgetting, we do not necessarily let go of the past. We just don’t remember. We become chained to it. And, if we don’t remember, then we are likely to be attached to it. We re-enter the loop of hate, jealousy, prejudices, unforgiveness, etc.

Perhaps, we thought that forgiving is also to forget because we mistakenly associate forgetting with the act of letting it go, letting it be. But, as said earlier, through forgetting, we do not remember of past attachments; and so we are most likely, in the future, to be attached to that which we have miserably forgotten.

What do you think?