Attachment

You can read something in a book or have it explained to you, and you may get it intellectually without having the 'a-ha' moment that really makes the truth personal to you.

I had the 'a-ha' moment about attachment years ago (although if you look at the way I live, buried under my umbrellas and computer cables and other junk, you might not believe that I ever really got the concept).

But even though I have already 'personalized' the Buddha's teaching about attachment/craving and suffering/dissatisfaction, I still find myself tangled in that trap.

I was driving down the street, and saw an old friend - well, more than a friend but something less than a girlfriend - standing on the sidewalk. I had not seen her in a long time.

I started to pull over, roll down the window and say hi. Then I thought, 'Well, what comes after "hi"? Will be she glad to see me, annoyed that I bothered her, or completely indifferent? Will I seem needy for having stopped to talk to her? How will I feel if her response to me is negative or unpleasant?'

And all this is going through my mind in the six or seven seconds between the time I first spotted her and the point that my car was even with her on the sidewalk.

I decided to just keep on going.

This is what comes of attachment. I pass people I know on the street almost every day of the week, and I never go through a bunch of mental gymnastics trying to decide whether to say hello. I just wave as I go by. Sometimes they wave back and sometimes they don't. I don't give any special significance to their response one way or the other.

But in this case, here I am driving down the street, paying more attention to the wheels turning in my own head than to the street in front of me, experiencing all those subtle physical reactions people have in stressful situations, over something whose significance exists only in my own mind.

This is the price of attachment. Forget about karma and what will happen in future lives – this is the payback right now. In this case, fortunately, it was just ten seconds of my life – plus whatever time I've spent this morning blogging about it – and not one of those fits of emotional turmoil that lasts for days or weeks.

It's one thing to say, 'Life is filled with dukkha, and tanhā is the source of dukkha,' and another thing to say, 'Y'know, attachment sucks.'

One is a teaching. The other is truth.

A View on Buddhism is a great resource for understanding Buddhist concepts. Well, I think it's a great resource — I suppose your mileage may vary. Anyway, here's the entry for 'attachment.'

Addendum: Here's the Wikipedia entry on tanhā.