EMAIL DOWN: OUR EMAIL HAS BEEN DOWN FOR A FEW DAYS, FOR FOLKS TRYING TO REACH ME.

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I like to go with a gentle approach to “attachments,” because the simplest way to get rid of our “overly tight grip” on life is not by gripping life tighter. It is, instead, attained by releasing the wheel and allowing the vessel to go as it will.

One learns to walk this road by trusting and allowing life to be what it is, not trying (once again) to make ourselves and the world “the way we insist they should be”.

So, I believe our approach to attachment should be simply a willingness to allow thing to come and go (even the treasures and people in our live that we cling to) … and to embrace the world, and its events, the way they are (even when we do not care for them).

By doing so, one is non-attached.

Nurture the garden, take tender care of each blossom … laugh as the flood sweeps it all away.

“Non-attached”, by the way, does not mean “disattached” … I love my family members, cherish our relationships and time together, for example … but must be willing to see them go when the time has come.

That, for me, is the Buddhist way of unattached, yet mindful care … or “non-attachment,” you might say.

The Buddha had been an aescetic, and tried the road of “self-denial” as a means of freedom from attachments. But, ultimately, he rejected that way and preached the “middle road,” the way of moderation. So, I think that having our small likes, dislikes, prejudices, biases, strong and weak points, bad habits and all the rest is not the problem of “attachment”. Without those things, we are not human, just cold machines.

Instead, it is merely a matter of accepting our silly humanity with all the good and bad, beautiful and ugly points, seeking as best we can to nourish the good and not do harm … but ultimately embracing the way we are as we are. Then, we are “non-attached”. I think.

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