Ah geez. You're a better man than I at the whole non-attachment thing. My cats (one of whom is a dead ringer for your smudge) are an excellent practice for in terms of patience, attachment, etc. But, on the rare occasion that Alaska has escaped (mine are all indooors), I completely lost my shit.
That got me to thinking about the non-attachment thing. I grew up in a family where there was, as I've mentioned before, a lot of drinking. In addition to that, we moved from city-to-city four times in my childhood. After my parents split, I moved from my mom's house to my dad's, then to my grandmother's.
So there were a lot of profound changes in my life. I wonder if that doesn't predispose me to non-attachment.
The Buddha grew up almost literally in an ivory tower. From birth until the day he fled home to become a holy man, we are told, he never left the grounds of the palace where he was born. This was a man - a prince and heir to the throne, in fact - used to a comfortable, predictable, stable life.
Compare that to, for example, a 'military brat' whose parents were required to change locations frequently. Or someone whose family went from wealth to hard times in our region's boom/bust oil economy.
Some people who grow up in chaotic families crave chaos their whole lives - so much so that they create it themselves if circumstances don't provide it. Others, like me, crave just the opposite: quiet, solitude, consistency.
But I think it's probably easier to be free from attachment if you grew up in an environment where experience taught that attachment is futile. And in that way I may have an advantage over even the Buddha himself.
2 comments:
You're on to something. Growing up, my life was both stable and chaotic. I grew up in one town, going to school with the same friends from K through 12. My parents were also stable - the kind of alcoholics that just sit quietly and get drunk in the living room. No violence, and rarely an embarrassing scene. Yet, because there was no sense of security for a child, my animals became my emotional support. So, even to this day, it's my animals that to whom I am the most attached. Other people, stuff, not so much.
Interesting thoughts about what may predispose one toward non attachment. It does seem to me in any case that a strong tendency to form egoistic attachments is part of the human condition.
I was impressed when I read that as an old man, the Buddha, when some of his followers wanted to deify him, insisted that he still had trouble following his own Eightfold Path!
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