One of the amazing things about nature is that it seems to always make the best of whatever it is given. You only have to look at a dandelion growing in the cracks of concrete to admire nature’s ability to respond to all situations, however desperate or challenging. Nature makes no requirements and doesn’t pick and choose, it just survives, thrives, lives its life to the full.
We human beings seem to be the only part of Mother Earth that can take a different approach. We can decide that we will only allow ourselves to really relax into life and be truly happy once certain requirements are first met. As Anthony De Mello puts it:
An attachment is the belief that without this possession, person, or outcome you cannot be happy. What is the price for clinging to attachment?
Each time you are anxious and afraid, it is because you may lose or fail to get the object of your attachment, isn’t it?
And each time you feel jealous, isn’t it because someone may make off with what you are attached to?
And almost all your anger comes from someone standing in the way of your attachment, doesn’t it? And see how paranoid you become when your attachment is threatened-you cannot think objectively; your whole vision be comes distorted, doesn’t it?
And every time you feel bored, isn’t it because you are not getting a sufficient supply of what you believe will make you happy, of what you are attached to? And when you are depressed and miserable, the cause is there for all to see: Life is not giving you what you have convinced yourself you cannot be happy without.
De Mello continues:
Almost every negative emotion you experience is the direct outcome of an attachment. So, there you are loaded down by your attachments – and striving desperately to attain happiness precisely by holding on to the load. The very notion is absurd.
Zen teacher Diane Eshin Rizzetto describes these deep attachments as “requirements that we place upon ourselves and the world” and writes:
Requirements aren’t something we consciously choose. They develop slowly over time from a combination of our unique cultural experiences, our upbringings, and our natural tendencies… They form the blueprint of the self-centered dream in which we view the world as we think it should be rather than how it is. Requirements can be likened to coloured glasses through which we view all our experiences.
Great spiritual traditions the world over have recognised the great challenge facing each human life:
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