Love is something if you give it away, Give it away, give it away. Love is something if you give it away, You end up having more. It's just like a magic penny, Hold it tight and you won't have any. Lend it, spend it, and you'll have so many They'll roll all over the floor. For love is something if you give it away, Give it away, give it away. Love is something if you give it away, You end up having more. Money's dandy and we like to use it, But love is better if you don't refuse it. It's a treasure and you'll never lose it Unless you lock up your door. For love is something if you give it away, Give it away, give it away. Love is something if you give it away, You end up having more. . . . (From Magic Penny by Malvina Reynolds)
Attachment, the strong desire to hold on, to cling so as not to be separated from someone or something, that's what Malvina Reynolds' song is all about. Don't hold love too tight because if you do, you will lose it. Aversion, the strong desire to let go, to push away, to be separate from someone or something, attachment's opposite, lives implicitly in the song as well. Don't refuse love. Don't hold it too loose.
According to the Sufi story, "One afternoon, Mullah Nasruddin and his friend were sitting in a cafe, drinking tea and talking about life and love. His friend asked: 'How come you never married?' 'Well,' said Nasruddin, 'to tell you the truth, I spent my youth looking for the perfect woman. In Cairo I met a beautiful and intelligent woman, but she was unkind. Then in Baghdad, I met a woman who was a wonderful and generous soul, but we had no common interests. One woman after another would seem just right, but there would always be something missing. Then one day, I met her; beautiful, intelligent, generous and kind. We had very much in common. In fact, she was perfect!' 'So, what happened?' asked Nasruddin's friend, 'Why didn't you marry her?' Nasruddin sipped his tea reflectively. 'Well,' he replied, 'it's really the sad story of my life.... It seemed that she was looking for the perfect man...' "
Attachment, that's what Mullah Nasrudin is talking about. Attachment to our ideas of what we think we want; what we think we need; the ways we think the world and people should be. Aversion, that's what Mullah Nasrudin is talking about. Wanting to be separated from non-perfect people. Wanting to get away. Many think that attachment-aversion are particularly Buddhist teachings, but actually they occur in many religions, and in psychological theories. Didn't Jesus say "Sell all that you have, and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me?" (Luke 18:22) In Buddhism, attachment, holding on too tight, and aversion, holding on too loose, are understood to be causes of suffering.
So what is it about attachment and aversion that we are being told here? First let's look more closely at the nature and causes of attachment-aversion. Many people don't particularly like this part of Buddhist teaching because they understand it to mean you have to not care; you have to be detached from life. You can't have goals, dreams, wishes, desires, passions. But that's not it. Neither Malvina Reynolds, nor the Sufi Nasrudin, nor Jesus, nor even Buddha is telling us not to care and not to engage with life and with each other. That's not it. They are saying that attachment will not bring us what we most want; will not bring us what is truly of value. Neither will aversion. Yet we have so many attachments. What's that about? Attachment occurs when we hold onto expectations and assumptions, even in the face of a different reality. Attachment occurs when we are so dependent upon a certain outcome, a certain result, that nothing else will do. Attachment to what we want, when we want it; attachment to what we think should be. You know what this feels like. Sometimes I have cravings for Italian food, my favorite cuisine. Sometimes I especially want a good marinara sauce. I mean good “ not too much garlic, but pungent, tomatoes that are not too bitter, but not too sweet either, spaghetti cooked to al dente perfection. Guess what? When I want that spaghetti marinara so particularly, I never seem to find it. Nothing pleases me. I cannot enjoy the food in front of me because I have constructed the dish in my head. I am so attached to my idea of what I want for dinner that I can't be present to appreciate what I do have. Familiar? In high school I had a friend Debbie. Her sister and her mother both attended Cornell University and they expected Debbie to do the same. So did she. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say she felt the weight of their expectations. Problem: Debbie' s grades did not measure up to Cornell admission standards. But Debbie learned that if she scored the highest grade in some state-wide test she would be automatically admitted to Cornell. She studied and prepared herself for that test and, impressively, got the top mark in the whole of New York State. Off she went to Cornell. She dropped out before the freshman year ended because she developed colitis, an inflamation of the colon. Surprising? Maybe not. Debbie, her sister and her mother clung so tightly to their desire for her to attend Cornell that they sacrificed her health to fulfill their dreams and expectations. This is attachment. Dependent upon a certain outcome to the extent that nothing else will seem acceptable, or possible, or good. Some of us have attachments to feelings of pleasure: sensual, emotional, and/or psychological. Some of us have attachments to things, possessions, acquisitions, money. In the South of India, people used to catch monkeys in a very special way. Actually they let monkeys catch themselves. What they did is cut a small hole in a coconut, just large enough for a monkey to put its hand in. Next, they fixed the coconut to a tree, and filled it with sweets. The monkey smelled the sweets, squeezed its hand into the coconut, grabbed the sweets and .... found that his/her fist did not fit back out through the hole. Now the trick is that the last thing the monkey will think of is to let go of the sweets; so he/she holds him/herself prisoner. Nothing could be easier for a human being than to come and capture the monkey.
(http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org)Buddhist view of Attachment.
Sometimes when we fall in love we also fall into attachment, or aversion. Person A: "Say you love me! Say you love me!" Person B: "You love me.." We long for the our loved one to fulfill all our needs, to complete us, to make us happy. Isn't that some version of romantic love? No more loneliness. We begin to feel that we own those we love in some way. We want to make them over in the image we would like. We identify with them to the extent that we take their behavior, their reputation, their accomplishments and failures as a direct reflection upon us. We fear losing them. We think we cannot live without them. We long for them. See what has happened? We have taken the person we love and made him/her into an object to satisfy ourselves. It no longer matters, or we can no longer see, who he/she really is. They only exist for us. We can do this to our partners and we can do this to our children. This level of attachment in love does cause pain. I know it. I have experienced it, both as the objectifyer and the objectified. Have you? And conversely, sometimes when we fall in love we fall into aversion. Afraid of losing ourselves, we push the other person away. We keep a big distance. We send mixed messages, ambivalent signals. Come closer; go away. Similar objectification, different behaviors. This level of aversion in love does cause pain. I know it. I have experienced myself as the one who runs away, as well as the one run away from. Have you? We all have a balance point between closeness and distance and much of love is finding the intersections of connection and independence in which both can exist lovingly and as separate, free persons. Sometimes, our closeness-distance balance is not in harmony with our strongest selves and at those times we cling, with attachment, or we run away, with aversion. Attachments and aversions come in many forms. How does that happen? What goes on inside us that brings us to attachment and aversion? Much. But please understand. That we form attachments and aversions is not a sign that there is something wrong with us. It is not a sign that we must change, or feel bad about ourselves. Both what we cling to and what we run away from give us information about ourselves and they give us the opportunity to look inside for the reasons under the attachments-aversions. When we can uncover the reasons, and the imbalances, the painful experiences, or the lack of harmony they represent, we can begin to transform and heal those aching places. It is in our nature to attach and to run away. Among the many factors involved in causing this is our need, our desire for control. Control over ourselves, our surroundings, even other people. Life is risky and bad things happen and our vulnerability is always with us. It's only natural to want, to need, to feel some power over our lives, if only to know some measure of security and safety. Sometimes, though, our need for control gives rise to attachments and aversions. When we want to control the outcome of any particular situation, we can become attached to our opinions, our knowledge, our thoughts as if they represented the only truth, or the very best views. As Robert Anthony said, "If you find a good solution and become attached to it, the solution may become your next problem." We can become inflexible, even arrogant, about listening to the ideas of others, or taking them seriously, or accepting that they may be as good as our own. We Unitarian Universalists might recognize that one. We can become rigid in our insistence on our own way. When we want to control other people, we can become attached to an image not grounded in reality. We try to change them. Maybe we become critical, maybe we give lots of advice, maybe we complain. We have trouble accepting others as they are. When we want to control ourselves we can become attached to the image of ourselves that we carry around. We do not recognize who we are or what we think or what we feel unless it conforms to that image. Let's say we told a major lie and hurt someone close to us. Yet our image of ourselves is as a caring, honest, kind person. So maybe we say, I'm a good person, how could I do something so wrong? I'm a good person, therefore what I did was not really so wrong, or it was your fault. You made me lie because I didn't want to hurt you. I'm a good person. We have trouble knowing ourselves as we are and taking responsibility for our behavior.
Fear and lack of trust also give rise to attachments and aversions. We feel fear so we run away from other people and from certain situations. We do not trust that a person will be truthful, or loyal, or help us, so we run away. We do not trust ourselves; we might fear that unpleasant emotions will drown us so we do not let ourselves feel them. Or we have been so disappointed in love that we will not allow ourselves to connect with another person. We try to protect ourselves from pain through aversion motivated by fear. Or through attachment and clinging, also motivated by fear. If I close my fist what I want will not go away. Or our fear takes the form of scarcity mind, and we become attached. I know someone who grew up very poor, with seven children in the family and literally not enough to eat. He has grown into an adult who counts the number of shredded wheat pieces that everyone gets, to make sure there is enough. Unfortunately, our life experiences have given us reasons to fear this or that. Maybe as children we learned that running away was the best protection. Maybe we learned not to trust ourselves or anyone else. Maybe we hoped that if we held on with all our might, what we feared would not happen.
Change often gives rise to attachments and aversions. Ever try to feed a new, green food, to a child? I don't want that. I don't like it. How do you know until you try it? I know, I know. I'm that child if you try to feed me olives, or okra, or runny eggs. Many of us react to changes, at least in the beginning, with no, I don't want that. I like things as they are. Many of us will fight against change, will sabotage it, in an effort to hold onto a past or prior way of life that we experienced as pleasurable. We become attached to pleasure and our desire for pleasure, and to preserving it as long as we can. We become averse to unpleasant experiences, actual or anticipated, and do everything we can to not have them.
How can we cope with our various attachments and aversions? By welcoming them as quirky relatives, joined to us by long-standing bonds. By being aware of them as they come up. Am I holding on tightly? Am I holding on loosely? Is there anxiety around this? Is this working? Once we have awareness, we can look at what might be underneath the attachment and aversion, with honesty and compassion. We can recognize them for information bearers. Information that can liberate us. What's causing this? What are we trying to accomplish? Are we getting what we want?
Because the truth about attachments and aversions is that they do not help us accomplish what we want. Remember Mullah Nasrudin. They do not enhance the love and friendships in our lives. Remember Jesus; they do not bring us the treasure we seek. They do not bring us more control ; they do not diminish our fears and lack of trust, they only increase them by feeding them. They do not help us to cope with the inevitable change that is life. They do not promote our strengths, our courage, our wisdom. Attachments and aversions enslave us. We are not free to be who we fully are, or to celebrate who others fully are. We are not free to be in the reality of present moment. And the present moment is all we have. The past is a memory and the future a dream. I know the present moment is not always a wonderful moment. But you know what? I want to be there anyway. I want to have enough trust in myself to know I can be there, present with whatever. How freeing, how empowering, how loving is that?
What, then, does caring, engagement, pleasure, thought, loving look like without attachment and aversion? It looks like caring about something or someone and being okay with a number of possible scenarios. The caring is directed to allowing the situation and the person unfold, in other words able to enjoy the lasagna and let go of the spaghetti marinara. It looks like engaging with the world, working for justice in occupations you believe in and at the same time open to learning from the ideas and opinions and beliefs of others. Not imposing one's own world view but respecting every person's freedom to decide for themselves. It is my friend Debbie turning down the idea of Cornell University and her mother proud of her choice of City College. It looks like taking pleasure where we find it and letting it go when it's over. We cannot duplicate yesterday's sunset, or the walk we shared with a friend, or the music we heard on the radio and they are all the more precious for that. It's knowing that the expensive shoes or funky socks or fancy toys will not bring us abiding pleasure and not looking for it in those material places. It means living counter-culturally, not buying into the consumer mentality of an economy that equates happiness with materialism. It looks like loving with the doors and windows open. Freedom in relationship and relationship in freedom. A voyage of both self-discovery and intimacy. Letting the person you love be themselves and not an extension of you. Nasrudin marries the imperfect woman. We care, we engage, we delight, we think, we imagine, we love. Deeply. But without holding on so tightly that we destroy or live in fear of losing. Without holding on so loosely that we risk dropping what we hold. Attachment and aversion are part of human nature. But in those times when we can let them go, we soar with freedom. We find a deeper happiness and love. A greater fearlessness. We live from the stronger parts of ourselves.
The Whole Self by Naomi Shihab Nye "You put your whole self in You put your whole self out Whole self in and you shake it all about" The Hokey PokeyWhen I think of the long history of the self on its journey to becoming the whole self, I get tired. It was the kind of trip you keep making, Over and over again, the bag you pack and repack so often the shirts start folding themselves the minute you take them off. I kept detailed notes in a brown notebook. I could tell you when the arm joined, when it fell off again, when the heart found the intended socket and settled down to pumping. I could make a map of lost organs, the scrambled liver, the misplaced brain. Finally finally we met up with one another on a street corner, in October, during the noon rush. I could tell you what I was wearing. How suddenly the face of the harried waitress made sense. I gave my order in a new voice. Spoke the word vegetables like a precious code. Had one relapse at a cowboy dance in Bandera, Texas, under a sky so fat the full moon was sitting right on top of us. Give me back my villages, I moaned, the ability to touch and remove the hand without losing anything. Take me off this mountain where six countries are visible at once. I want to remember what it felt like, loving by inches. You put in the whole self “ I'll keep with the toe. But no, it was like telling the eye not to blink. The self held on to its perimeters, committed forever, as if the reunion could not be reversed. I jumped inside the ring, all of me. Dance, then, and I danced, till the room blurred like water, like blood, dance, and I was leaning headlong into the universe, Dance! The whole self was a current, a fragile cargo, a raft someone was paddling through the jungle, and I was there, waving, and I would be there at the other end.
Song #16 Tis A Gift to be Simple