Non-attachment and love -- can you have both?

Is it possible to really and truly love someone and at the same time practice non-attachment?

• Love is caring intensely about another person's happiness. More so than one's own happiness.
  
• Non-attachment means that we observe their happiness or unhappiness but do not become either elated or despondent about what happens to them. No matter what happens to them.
  

• Love wants to have contact with the beloved. To see, to hear, to touch, to talk with, to experience.
  
• Non-attachment accepts the time together and the time apart with equal satisfaction. It does not want the beloved to go away, but neither does it seek to prolong time together, nor minimize absence.
  

• Love seeks intimacy by knowing and understanding the beloved.
  
• Non-attachment accepts what is shown or given, but does not seek to create intimacy through seeking or asking.
  

• Love remembers and imagines the beloved when they are not near, recreating their presence through memories, personal mementos, or perhaps a shared favorite song.
  
• Non-attachment accepts separation and does not seek to create a feeling of connection through memories or objects. And of course, non-attachment never has a favorite song.
  

• Love wants to be loved in return
  
• Non-attachment accepts one's own feelings without expecting or even wanting anything from another.
  

Today I am far from my beloved. And I miss him. I played a song that reminds me of him. I have been thinking about the fun things we've done together, the wonderful talks we've had. I've imagined our next visit.

And I have failed entirely in non-attachment. Or have I?

It is my personal feeling that non-attachment was never meant to apply to people. That loving and caring for people is the whole point of this sometimes otherwise pointless existence. Non-attachment is wonderful for freeing us from loving things, from wanting things, from keeping things from others who might need them. From putting a love of transient objects as the center of our lives.

But the Buddha was a compassionate man. He taught skills to help people overcome suffering. He did not sit by, dispassionately while people suffered and keep his enlightenment to himself. He cared. He loved. The way other people felt mattered to him and he spent the majority of his life trying to relieve suffering and increase happiness.

How did we get from that gentle, compassionate man to a place where we see virtue in not becoming attached to PEOPLE? For never really opening our hearts to the beauty of love.

Haven't we missed the whole point?

Saying Goodbye to a Friend

There are many ways to lose a friend...

Sometimes one person moves far away, and despite promises to stay in touch and visit often, the days and weeks and miles come between. Conversations become shorter and the times between them longer. Then one day, without anyone realizing it's happening, the two go from "friends" to "someone I used to know."

Other times some one comes between the two, and loyalties are challenged. A new love interest, a new spouse, a new baby...and suddenly there is no time or energy for the way things used to be. We may be sad, but we understand that people change and that sometimes a friend for one season may not be the right friend for another.

Sometimes there is a parting of ways because of a betrayal, and try though they might, the chain of trust has been shattered. And friends become strangers or even enemies.

But the hardest to take is when one never really knows what happened. One day the person is part of your life. You talk, you visit, you make plans, you laugh. And then in what seems like an instant, the other is gone. Calls are refused. Visits cease. And in the online world, your IM's are rejected. You search your heart, trying to understand what you did, what you said. You talk to friends. You go over and over in you head, trying to imagine what went wrong. But still you have no answers. If you do see the person, your questions remain unanswered. You want to know if there is something you can do to make it right again. They don't want to talk. You have ceased to exist for them.

For one of my friends, I have ceased to exist. At some point in the past few weeks, he decided to end the relationship. To close the door. And I cannot understand. But I have to accept.

I wrote early on in this blog about my efforts at non-attachment. And my limited success. And so, in the spirit of learning that spiritual skill, I offer this post. Good bye my friend. I have learned much from you and I am grateful to have had you in my life for the time the universe allowed. The door will always remain open on my side, should you ever wish to walk back through it.

I wish you well in all that comes your way. May your path be one of love and happiness and peace.

Non-attachment and Starting Over

I've been studying Buddhism for years and years and years. Although my faith lies in the basics of Judaism, Buddhism is an integral part of my daily practice.

One aspect of Buddhism that I've been working on is non-attachment. For those of you not familiar with Buddhist practice, this is basically reaching a point where we can let go of objects, personal goals or even people in our lives with a minimum of regret. More of just an acknowlegement that they were there and now they are not.

It's a lofty goal, and one I thought I was doing well in moving towards. I had given away hundreds of books, calmly swept up the remains of once precious collectibles without a thought of replacement or sadness. Lost books, pictures, mementos and other objects without a backwards glance. I walked away from a big house and moved in a small apartment. Left the relative finaincial security of a troubled marriage to go out and try to make it on my own with my daughters. I still wasn't ready to display this level of non-attachment to people, but I thought I was well on my way and quite frankly, doing amazingly well.

And then my friend's house burnt down. He lost everything. All at once. Only his children and his friends left, he now faces the daunting task of starting over at 54 years of age. With 4 children to care for. And in a instant, I realized that my achievements in non-attachment were zero.

I have been giving away what I choose to give away. Yes, I hold on to far less than I did, but the choices have been mine. And the the few things I lost or swept up in pieces...they were small, one-at-a-time losses. Nothing major. Nothing huge. Certainly not everything at once. I have thus far been spared the loss of everything.

Some people who have been through a devastating loss like my friend's have come out months or even years later feeling that it was the best thing that every happened to them. A re-birth, although they all say they did not recognize it at the time. Nor would they have appreciated anyone trying to tell them that at the time. They needed to work it out for themselves...this was a very personal cleansing.

Perhaps for some, it is a process, this non-attachment. And for others, it is a test...something they have to learn all at once as a fire or flood or hurricane strips away all they believed they owned.

All I know is that there is some order here, somehow. And that I pray my friend will find it. And that I will continue to try to learn, again from scratch, what it means to let go.