Attachment

During our retreat in Garrison, I understood something about attachment. For the first time.

Before each meditation segment we recited a dedication prayer. The fourth line was : May they (all sentient beings) dwell in great equanimity, free from attachment and aversion to those near and far. (You repeat the four lines of the prayer three times whenever you sit down on a cushion.)

Free from attachment.

At some point it dawned on me that included myself.

Attachment? This is something I had never paid attention to.

Wanting something, hoping for something, that's attachment, isn't it? All the dedication and work and effort I have put into building my Journey practice, hoping it would grow, hoping it would serve a lot of people, hoping it would support me, hoping it would confirm to me that I am on the right path, that I made the right choices... that's an attachment I think. And a big one.

Over the last weeks I had already been in the process of shedding more and more of this particular attachment, and I have been feeling the breath of letting go, a gentle, loving liberation.

On the last day Mingyur Rinpoche said something very casually, that hit me with a burst of incredulity: When your meditation becomes an amazing experience, that's when you stop.

What? That's when I stop???

I thought this was the whole purpose of meditating, to reach those wonderful transcendent states of being, to go into those states of oneness, beingness, free from ordinary thought, resting in just pure awareness... wasn't that the goal? Practicing that?

No, apparently it was not. Not at first. Because at first you get attached to the result.

All of a sudden that makes sense. Of course! You get attached... to a goal. You start to rate yourself. Without noticing you are drawn into your personal version of the inner drama of your own judgement... swinging forever back and forth between good and bad.

So yes, I think I understand.

Attachment is as much part of our illusion as aversion, as any form of our story that makes us get upset, depressed, angry, or afraid. Either one tells us we need something in order to... xxx ... and in each habit of thinking we believe we'd be really happy, IF we only had... xxx. All along we miss the truth that we are chasing something... very temporary... impossible to reach because it forever keeps changing names.

I had never noticed how much of my thoughts evolved around making something happen, or rather: yes, I was aware of that, but in my mind I was working with the law of attraction, I was matching my vibration to something I desired. Now I am seeing this use of my thoughts a little differently. Very possibly I was setting myself up for the ongoing duality of failure or success. If something didn't happen, it was because I had not done a well enough job in attracting it. That never feels good. On the other hand, once success is there, it is not a stable state of being either. Maybe that's why life had felt like so much effort at times, maybe that's why I have those regular experiences at night when my energy just deflates from my body like a punctured balloon... there used to be lots of days when I was so tired I could hardly get myself into the bathroom to brush my teeth... and all I had done was sit at my desk all day.

Maybe life doesn't have to feel like that.

Struggle. No, that doesn't need to be here any more.

Something of that may have drained from me. In a mysterious way. On the last full day of the teaching we practiced a "watching meditation" by watching a video of a performance Mingyur Rinpoche had given in Taiwan earlier this year. A combination of teachings and sound through music. We were given the assignment to watch this: with awareness. That was all.

Big stage. Mingyur Rinpoche sits on a little pedestal on the right side of the stage, a Chinese translator sits on the left.

He speaks briefly, very simply, in short, chopped up segments about meditating and using music to help the mind from running all over the place, he makes a few jokes, and instructs the audience what to do when the music begins... in a moment of silence we see the word of the first theme: EXISTENCE... and then a blueish light goes on behind him in the center of the back stage, an orchestra becomes visible through a veil on the raised platform, and the music begins: a beautiful, yearning melody, sung by a flute, wrapped in the sound of all the many voices of the full orchestra, magically washing us with a sound... so complicated, so touching, so precise, so skillfully, so passionately drawn from each of all these different instruments... oh, all these people all joined together in the service of this sound. This moment, this achingly beautiful music contained all of the dedication, all the years of learning... the hours and hours of daily practice on their instruments... these intricately crafted objects that had each been created with such knowledge, a knowledge grown into a mastery that had evolved out of centuries and centuries of perfecting the art of instrument making, fueled by an eternal love for sound and music... born out of the striving for a creative expression of beauty and truth and joy and exaltation, all of that which had forever provided a counterbalance, a healing nectar for the lives outside... the daily life in the world... the human life that has throughout the eons, jolted us through fear and anger and pain and frustration, and greed and hardship and suffering... Suffering... so much suffering.

All of this washed over me in one fell swoop within the first few moments of this sound entering my body, and tears began rolling down my face. I gave in.

I wasn't able to put what was happening in those exact words I just gave a wooden handed attempt to describe it with. I just looked at my teacher... There was Mingyur sitting in a soft, warm spotlight on his little pedestal in his deep red monks gown, his face still, his eyes closed, his hands resting in his lap... so small. His head hardly as high as half of the big cello bathed in blue behind him. He so still, so peaceful.

And behind him all of human existence, with all it's fragile moments of utter love and beauty and all it's striving and all it's millennia of suffering, present in this sound of this orchestra, recorded months ago on the far side of the globe for me to witness in this moment.

Something unraveled inside of me. I don't know what it was. I just kept weeping.

Maybe my soul understood the different between attachment and freedom in that moment. I don't know.

I know it came to an end when the piece was over. I know it didn't return when the next piece started. Beethoven's fifth, the first movement. This was called EMOTION. But no emotions flowed. Maybe I knew it too well. I know there were a few more tears with the next piece: FREE, a Mozart piano concert... and that was all.

The next morning at about the same time I entered the small private sitting room Mingyur Rinpoche was using during his stay with four other people and took refuge.


Now I am giving my being the space to learn there is no goal. Not in meditating, not in life. I do this every day. Twice. For 20 minutes. That's a lot of learning.

I imagine ... the ease... the of being present... breathing with unhurried gentleness... moving from one simple task into the next... collecting each little completion like a pearl that slips up on the string of memory, collecting like a precious necklace in the soul.