Attachment, Impermanence and the Self: Part 1

A person who likes music is not a musician. A person who collects art is not an artist. However, one who embraces experiences from any of life’s activities with focus and determination through thick and thin can identify themselves with such activities as a practitioner. Hence, a person who paints and works hard to perfect their skills is a painter. A person who practices an instrument, even when their fingers hurt and the music is terrible, is a musician. It is in this way that I can say that I am a Buddhist.

I don’t mean to get caught up in labels, for I believe that ultimately to label yourself is to restrict yourself from the things that exist beyond these labels. My reasons for embracing the teachings of the Buddha are personal and it is not my intention to qualify them here. It is my intention simply to explain my thoughts that have arisen throughout my experiences working with the principle tenets of Buddhist logic and philosophy.

Like any activity that is approached sincerely and honestly, the lessons learned are often difficult and uncomfortable. But with the bad there is always good and with the good there is always bad. Therefore, with the perfect vision of retrospection one realizes that there is no such thing as good or bad in the black and white perspective we so desperately try to maintain to simulate order from our otherwise unknown or misunderstood sense encounters of our past present and future. These good/bad experiences help us grow not only in the given activity that we have pursued but in our life in general.

It is very rare that a person experiences pain or pleasure in one area of their life and fails to have it affect their approach to the other areas of their activities. This is, in fact, what shapes our ambitions and inhibitions. It has been called our fright flight response. In a primitive instinctual way all animals have this from birth and it is what many people believe to be the essential mechanism of self preservation. In addition to this natural instinct from birth, we attach more fear and habitual responses as we go through the trials and tribulations of our given life’s journey.

As a Buddhist, I am aware of the importance of realizing all phenomena is impermanent and constantly changing. You don’t have to be Buddhist to believe in perpetual change and impermanence as it is self evident and is firmly substantiated by scientific analysis. However, the extent of our realization of impermanence is often shallow and exclusive only to material objects and the faint notion of our own mortality.

I can speak for myself in stating that impermanence in regards to relationships and emotional attachments is not the first thing that comes to my mind when pondering these teachings. It is exactly this misunderstanding that causes me much guilt and suffering when I am faced with the loss of a loved one, either through death or through the tides of time.

In many ways, the shock of losing someone due to death is much easier because it is so bold and unavoidable. You are forced to face the facts and are therefore forced to handle them in some way in order to move on with your life. There are countless ways to handle this shocking experience but whatever path is chosen it is inevitable that you will choose one and in time follow it to where it leads you.

Not so easy to handle is the loss of a loved one through the ever-changing roads we travel that are sometimes multi-lane highways merging into the single-lane side streets and alleyways of our life’s journey. Unfortunately, this kind of loss is more subtle and generally hits us when it is too late to deal with appropriately.

Nevertheless, it is exactly the suffering of these losses and changes that help to shape who are and who may become.