My wife really can’t do roller coasters, but she does enjoy the thrill of being on a relatively fast moving thing when she’s at an amusement park. She’s still scared, so she’ll either grip on to the security bar or my hand until her entire hand is all pale from the grip.
As scary as the ride is, it would be silly to continue holding on to the bar after the ride has ended. So she lets go instantly, telling me with a shaky voice how thrilling the ride was. Then we go on to have lunch or get in line with another ride.
Can I tell her to let go during the ride? During the ride I can scream and shout to her, “LET THE GRIP GO!” and it won’t happen. We all know theoretically even if we let go of the security bar it will still hold us in place. But at the moment it feels like the moment we let go of the bar, the entire ride will dismantle and kill us.
This is such an excellent example of how attachment works. When we are consumed by attachment, it feels practically impossible to let go. But the moment the context changes and we are no longer consumed by attachment, detaching is almost trivial.
What is the hottest attachment topic? Probably money or romance or life itself (as opposed to death). Suffering comes in three broad buckets: desire, anger, and ignorance. To relieve the suffering we let go of the attachments to them and boom! It goes away in an instant.
For some attachments it will be easy to let go instantly, but for others it will be very, very hard. But the stickiness is not inside of the objects of attachment. It’s not that money is inherently sticky. It’s not that romance is inherently attractive. It’s not that life itself is inherently desirable. Why we stick to these attachments is inside of us.
It’s important to point out once again from my wife’s roller coaster story that even when you let go, you won’t fling out of the ride. Just because we detach from money, it doesn’t mean we are going to never make money. Detaching from romance doesn’t mean you’ll be a celibate forest monk. Detaching from life doesn’t mean you’re going to instantly die.
Detaching puts you at ease and gives breathing room in your life. There’s a famous jiu jitsu saying about the importance of being comfortable in an uncomfortable situation: being pinned is like trying to solve a math equation under water. You’re going to do moneymaking activities anyway; it won’t help you to be stressed out about it. In fact, the ease will make the moneymaking activities more relaxed and therefore invite you to do more of it naturally.
It’s like me in school when I hated the idea of learning. I couldn’t bear to look at the textbook because ironically I wanted to get good grades. But fast forward ten years later, I find myself voluntarily researching the topics I learned in school and actually understanding it for the first time now that there’s no pressure but a relaxed interest in learning.
My Buddhist teacher, being a monk, meets a lot of people who are terminally ill or about to have a big procedure. He tells them, “why are you stressed? Your doctors are the ones who should be concerning themselves about how to get you better. You can relax”. That is detachment from life.
I have this habit of watching water boil. I like it, it’s interesting to see how water gets to boil. One day this must have been annoying to my sister, because she snapped at me and said “it’s not going to boil faster just because you’re watching”.
I think this is unconsciously a habit that we all get into for some reason: we think the more we hold on to something, the more we yearn, the more we stress about it, the faster or the better the results will be.
The kinda unfortunate thing is, you don’t really realize how much you’re torturing yourself by stress until you experience a completely stress-free state. It’s like getting a fish to imagine breathing.
So how does one detach? You could try detaching from the roller coaster state, but it’s much easier to detach after the ride is over. What we have to realize is, the ride is already over. There is no roller coaster, there is no reason for us to continue attaching.
But the ride may not be over from your perspective. An outside observer claims the ride is over. How do you bridge this gap? From your perspective, why isn’t the ride over? How does the external claim that the ride is over differ from how you’re experiencing your current situation?
This kind of inquiry naturally leads to understanding how the attachments are formed in the first place. Is it required in order for you to let go? No, but it certainly helps.
You have everything you need to let go of things today. This is always nice to keep in mind.