Oakville Zen Meditation
Love & Non-Attachment: Is there a Zen paradox ? How to practice non-attachment in loving relationships.
Zen is teaching to practice loving kindness and non-attachment to whomever/whatever since attachment is the main culprit of our “suffering” which includes our negative feelings. Can we love and be non-attached at the same time? Is there incompatibility? Paradoxally, Zen replied: “Maybe not”
It says : “Love fully, but release your grip.”
What non-attachment or detachment do not mean in loving relationships?
It is not indifference, uncaring, coldness, or emotional and physical unresponsiveness.
It does not mean tolerating harm or becoming passive while facing unfairness.
Healthy boundaries, spacetime freedom, and independance are part of an optimal relationship, because real love respects both people’s dignity, independence, and growth.
Instead,non-attachment means:
1- To live with people as they are, not as you want them to be. This is respect and tolereance.
2-The capacity to live our love fully without being ruled by our sub-conscious self-centered needs.
These needs are behavioral, physical or emotional such as pleasure, identity, control, certainty, security.
3- To be mindful of our ego bursts such as anger, and to deal with them effectively when they occur, and they do all the time.
4- Being conciuous of the possibility of losing this relationship since nothing is permanent.
The "Mindset"clutter about the person and Love:
The concept of the mindset is particularly relevant here. If our mind is "frozen" or stuck on a specific image and label of someone we have created, we aren't actually loving the person, we are loving her/his image's expectations that we created. We are generated a fictional “ lover avatar”
By practicing non-attachment to this clutter, the mindset disappears and becomes fluid, open and receptive, allowing us to appreciate the person as she/him is in the present moment, rather than being attached to whom we want them to be.
Zen teaching is aiming at:
1- Love without controlling:
A Zen way of loving-kindness is to wish for the other person’s independence, serenity, and well-being, whether or not it benefits your own comfort zone and your self-centered needs. That means we care, we help, we stayZen teaching: honest, but we do not try to grasp, or to control.
Practicing non-attachment in daily relationships means staying loving and present without ego-driven clinging, w/o controlling, or w/o making sure that our peace, and comfort do not entirely depend on the other person’s behavior. It is a way of caring deeply while keeping our inner freedom away from our ego-driven needs.
2- Love without an ego-driven mind’s mess:
The less you try to " own" the person, the more room there is to actually see and appreciate her/him. By removing the "clutter" of your own image,needs, expectations and fears (attachment), your love becomes a clean, unobstructed flow of attention. As the saying goes: “If you love a flower, don’t pick it. If you pick it, it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be as it is” . Picking the flower is control, let it be as it is love.
3- Being mindful & respectful of the respective needs of each other.
Conclusion:
Non-attachment does not mean to be detached from the loved on but rather to be detached from your self-centered thinking, behaviour, and expectations, all of them mostly ego-driven, and sources of potential problems. Does the idea of "loving without owning" feel like a loss of security for you, or does it feel like a form of freedom
