Commitment Versus Attachment

When I feel committed, it gives me purpose, energy, direction. But to fulfill my commitment, especially if someone else is committed to the opposite cause, I need to understand all angles, all sides. I need to not let disdain and scorn and hate get in my way It's a lot like practicing law.
  
Attachment feels different.  It feels like a clingy state. There’s something I want, I think I know why,and I’m sure I know best. I’m not learning, not open, and often, not understanding. There’s a tightness - it’s inside the word itself - and separation, and sometimes, hate.

Maybe commitment is about being fierce, and attachment is vicious. Maybe commitment is about caring and attachment isn’t. I don’t know for sure. What is the difference for you?

Transcript

Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 485. It’s nice to see you.

I was listening to Joseph Goldstein, one of our senior Western teachers in the Insight tradition of mindfulness. I love listening to Joseph because he’s very clear and wise, and also has such a great sense of humor. 

Joseph wasn’t talking about current events so much as he was talking generally about how, when things aren’t going well, we want them to change, and when things are going well, we want them to stay the same, and all that wanting is what causes us so much suffering. What he was talking about was the Four Noble Truths – that life includes pain & suffering. That pain isn’t optional but suffering is. That suffering happens when we experience pain and want (or “crave” or “grasp for”) things to be different because we believe that’s what will bring us happiness (or experience pleasure and crave for things never to change). That when we investigate craving, we realize it’s just craving, just a state, nothing more. And that when we see that, and let go – drop the craving – we can walk the path to liberation.

Joseph wasn’t talking about current events, but he could have been. If he had been, maybe he would have said, to all of us, sure, I have the same moment you have when I open the paper, which is a kind of immediate “no, wait, what?.” Which is great when it leads to wise action – “OK, so how do I frame this? And how do I help?” But which isn’t great if it solidifies into, “this shouldn’t [or can’t] be happening,” and then turns into anger or hate or contempt. 

In other words, Joseph says, there’s a difference between commitment – “I see that this is not wise, and that the people making it happen are deluded; may they be free from delusion, how can I help,”; and attachment, which looks like, “I see that this is not wise, I hate the people doing it because they’re so deluded, may they all fall into the frozen Potomac,” with bonus attachment points for, “and they deserve my hate or my scorn,” or worse. Because commitment, and what flows from that, is a wholesome and potentially even powerful choice. But disdain and scorn and hate, aren’t wholesome and aren’t even really very powerful in the end, even if they feel powerful. I love Dr. King’s quote about that. He said, "You have very little morally persuasive power with people who can feel your underlying contempt.” 

Plus, hate is just increasing our own suffering by creating a clenched, contracted, moment that at least for me, I can really feel in my body. Do you know what I mean? It’s so interesting to me that a state of mind, or an emotion, can do that, and that it’s so obvious and so intense. It’s almost paralyzing, in the sense that it’s like I’m clenched down, not only body but also mind, and there’s almost no possibility, at least in that moment of hate (and hate’s a bucket, right – hate’s the big bucket which includes all these “lessers” like derision, scorn, contempt, disgust – we know that list) – so at least in that moment of hate, for me at least, there’s no possibility of seeing clearly or acting with wisdom. 

And hate is also creating more suffering for others. Whether it’s people who seem to be carrying or leading with hate or disdain or scorn or contempt as well, and look tight, too, like I feel, and I bring hate into that room and things get even tighter because the mirror neurons start flashing and then we’re all hating together, or whether it’s when I bring hate into a room of neutral or even happy people and it creates tightness and hate there. It’s the opposite of community care, even with a group of people who are all on the same page. 

So the question is, how to let go of hate without feeling like I’m not speaking or acting in a principled way. Because in some ways, hate and anger feel like good fuel. 

James – hi there, thank you! – always says, look underneath hate and anger and see how much caring is there, right there underneath. I love that. It’s something to live by. And it helps with commitment, which is what I want to be living into. When I’m committed to something or someone, it means I care enough to do whatever I need to do, that’s within my capacity, to make it happen. It means I’ll stay up late, work twice as hard, get it done if I possibly can. 

But if I’m committed to something, and someone else is equally committed to that something not happening, then I need to care enough to understand. I need to understand why the other person is just as committed as I am, but to the opposite outcome. Even though it might be a situation where it seems like I never will be able to understand, and no one else will either, or there’s nothing to understand, I still need to understand. It’s so much like practicing law. I’m just not going to be doing my client justice if I don’t take the time to understand the other side’s case – and I’m just not doing the world or even myself justice if I’m not trying to understand whatever is going on, moment by moment. 

What I notice at this juncture is that disdain is not my friend. Disdain is a flavor of hate and it’s the one that tends to come up in a situation like this, when I’m committed and I just can’t understand how anyone could be committed in the other direction. It’s big impediment for me, in understanding. All flavors of hate are, but I’ll just say that disdain is pretty familiar these days. 

In the same way the that classical hindrances – grasping, aversion, restlessness, worry, sloth, torpor, and doubt – get in the way of formal mindfulness practice, hate is a hindrance to understanding. And without understanding, my commitment – speaking only for myself here, but my commitment can only be theoretical. 

And this, for me is the crux, the difference, on the ground, between commitment and attachment. Because for me, attachment requires no understanding. I can be attached to my side of the argument, or my view, or even my disdain, without understanding a single thing about the people who are either committed or attached to the opposite. Because attachment is just grasping and clinging. It’s just suffering. And as Dr. King is implying, it won’t get us very far. 

I’m not making a prediction here that understanding will get us far, or as far as we need to go, but it does feel like a requisite to commitment. And I really like this frame of commitment versus attachment. So that’s what I’ve got for today.