Attachment is intrinsically related to suffering for the nature of all things is transience. Attachment desires the permanence of a specific phenomenon; however, if the nature of nature is impermanence, what do we call the birth child of these two opposites (attachment desiring permanence, reality innately impermanent)?
Suffering.
However, then what? So often, I’ve advocated for this high and noble ideal of perfect nonattachment, of going through this life appreciating it without holding on.
And, while such an ideal may have use in itself even if we cannot meet it — aiming high and shooting low — who amongst us can truly say that they live (and love) in perfect nonattachment?
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. None can protect themself from sorrow but through protecting themself from joy — and just who on Earth would do such a thing?
To truly live is to love. To love is to suffer. It is not only to suffer, mind you, for to love is also to know the highest of highs — but we all must bid farewell to the object of our affections one day.
This is life.
Perhaps the meditative mind is not about protecting oneself from pain, nor finding some cognitive loophole to avoid the experience of pain.
Perhaps the meditative mind is about developing the ability to experience all things to their highest and fullest and most profound depths possible.
Not to hold joy nor pain at an arm’s length, but to embrace them fully, to experience them both, to experience life, to their fullest extent.
Perhaps embracing both fully, somehow, is true liberation from suffering. To love it all — to love the highs, to love the lows.
THE CLOSET MYSTIC 