Relationships Without Attachment
Understanding personal relationships
in a spiritual system that asserts non-attachment is difficult, though
essentially it is neither complicated nor obtuse. Stated concisely, emptiness
tells us to relate to all beings in the same way–with an open heart filled with
compassion and love. But which beings we relate to and the intensity and
commitment with which we do this is often much less clear.
Interpersonal relationships fall on
a spectrum:
Loved------------------------------------------------------------------------Hated
This runs from the unconditionally
loved, such as children, to those we like, those to whom we are indifferent,
those we dislike, and at the far end, to those we hate.
Who falls where on the spectrum is
the result of our karmic connection to them. These are not static placements.
For example, during a divorce, a once loved spouse can become hated and later
one can be indifferent and perhaps even develop a liking for her again.
Speaking literally and
metaphorically, we start at our own doorstep. Our most intense commitments are
to our nuclear families, then our more extended families, then to friends and
colleagues, and so on to those toward whom we are indifferent. How much you are
able and willing to do for an individual is a reflection of their closeness to
your karmic doorstep.
Unfortunately, as we move from
indifferent at the midpoint toward those we dislike, feel anger toward, or
perhaps even hate, the intensity increases because we have a story that places
them front-and-center, on our doorstep. So where we choose to put someone on
the spectrum is very consequential.
Regardless of whether they are loved
or hated, emptiness tells us to treat everyone the same–with the vast open
compassionate heart that arises from our Buddhanature. To do this, we must
realize that regardless of where we place someone on the love-to-hate scale,
our spiritual practice remains the same: we respond to them with universal
love, with patience, compassion and generosity.
This is not to dismiss the
love-to-hate scale as unimportant. We do need to know the different between our
daughter and the neighbor’s kid, our business partner and our jogging buddy.
Relationships, which are in large part reflected by the scale, establish the
karmic responsibilities and obligations we have to others and in dong so
establish the intensity and extent to which we respond. I might save to pay for
my daughter’s college education, for example, but I am not likely to do that
for the neighbor’s child. Although I always want to be dependable with both, to
use another example, I am much more likely to take a call from my partner at
the office when I am on vacation than from the neighbor with whom I jog on
Sunday mornings. A married woman
with three children has very different karmic responsibilities than a novice
nun at a monastery, and so on.
These are simply karmic parameters
within which we function in the everyday world. They are the conditions of our
life. They determine the extent of our internal and external energies, of the
emotional and material resources we devote to other living beings.
Our spiritual path tells us not to
attach to these roles, however. To be a good mother, we don’t need to attach to
being a mother, to define ourselves in a spiritually unhealthy way by some
permanent understanding of me-as-mother. That’s not about relating to our
children, that’s about me and my needs. Instead, we need to look at the karmic
conditions of our relationship with our children, seeing clearly where our
responsibilities lie. Noting that they are constantly changing, we fulfill
those obligations as best we can, with an open loving heart that arises from a
profound sense of compassion, from our Buddhanature, from bodhichitta. This is
about being of benefit to our children, not about attaching to self; this is
about compassion and love, not self-cherishing. This is about responding to
conditions without attachments.
Our karmic responsibilities to our
children modulate as they grow older, as they leave the house, as do our
obligations and responsibilities to them. We need to love them without
attaching to our old stories about who we are.
We need to see karmic obligations
and responsibilities as conditions, conditions as conditions, not as
attachments. Then we are able to respond appropriately to each and every living
being, regardless of where they are on the love-to hate scale, appropriately.
No living being deserves us to be
self-cherishing and arrogant, which comes from the love side of the scale, nor
does any living being deserve our anger or scorn, which comes from the hate end
of the scale, nor our indifference, which comes from the middle. The scale
reminds us of our responsibilities, emptiness shows us how to act. These must
be understood and practiced together, as one.
For
further study: The monks who composed the Diamond
Sutra looked back from nirvana at how they had created their idea of who they
were and described it as having four aspects: Self, Person, Being, and Soul. Self
is the self-cherishing/attachment aspect, Person is the roles and
responsibilities aspect, Being is the deluded perception aspect; we don’t need
to concern ourselves much with Soul here. Studying the first three of these
will deepen your understanding of how to achieve a mind of universal compassion
and love and further you along the path to right relationships.
