Faith, Non Attachment, Identity and Martin Luther King
Humans can attach or cling to a wide range of things – from wealth and material excess to our very lives. We can cling to real goods as well as things that aren’t good for us.
Non attachment diminishes our clingy emotions – our egoistic and fundamentally fear-based attachments. It brings serenity in the face of adversity. It sets our larger passions free.
Non attachment is about experiencing our identity with something infinitely greater than ourselves. Non attachment may be understood as non-dualistic or mystical experience at a background level – minimized on the screen of our consciousness, so to speak.
In the contexts of mystical experience and non attachment, faith – all-trust, all-hope – is statement-like. We experience ourselves as so imbued or steeped in the infinitely greater than ourselves, as being so entirely part and parcel to that greater life or process, that we don’t stand outside our faith and its source to question it. We just live it. We just experience it.
Faith as experienced from the perspective of our usual human mindset of splitting the self off from greater reality to a pretty large degree is felt more as our relationship than our identity with the infinitely greater. While still very much identifying with our separate, mortal selves, we nevertheless know profound reassurance.
Here is a good illustration of non attachment, faith and the passion of a love set free. It’s a brief excerpt from the last paragraph of Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech on the night of April 3, 1968. He was assassinated the next day.
“Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now.”
Non attachment diminishes our clingy emotions – our egoistic and fundamentally fear-based attachments. It brings serenity in the face of adversity. It sets our larger passions free.
Non attachment is about experiencing our identity with something infinitely greater than ourselves. Non attachment may be understood as non-dualistic or mystical experience at a background level – minimized on the screen of our consciousness, so to speak.
In the contexts of mystical experience and non attachment, faith – all-trust, all-hope – is statement-like. We experience ourselves as so imbued or steeped in the infinitely greater than ourselves, as being so entirely part and parcel to that greater life or process, that we don’t stand outside our faith and its source to question it. We just live it. We just experience it.
Faith as experienced from the perspective of our usual human mindset of splitting the self off from greater reality to a pretty large degree is felt more as our relationship than our identity with the infinitely greater. While still very much identifying with our separate, mortal selves, we nevertheless know profound reassurance.
Here is a good illustration of non attachment, faith and the passion of a love set free. It’s a brief excerpt from the last paragraph of Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech on the night of April 3, 1968. He was assassinated the next day.
“Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now.”
Posted by Paul at 11:02 AM Permalink
28 Comments:
Thanks Paul.
Thanks for sharing.
Giovanna Garcia
Imperfect Action is better than No Action
"Faith as experienced from the perspective of our usual human mindset of splitting the self off from greater reality to a pretty large degree is felt more as our relationship than our identity with the infinitely greater."
Are you saying that if we have the usual human mindset of seeing ourselves as separate, then we will understand faith as simply a relationship with the All? Whereas if we don't have that usual human mindset we'll experience our identity with the All?
If so I agree, and it seems to be a tautology: that our separateness is an illusion.
But then, to be human is to swim in illusion, as a fish swims in water.
Is it not possible that faith and non-attachment are illusions too?
Aren't they simply more sophisticated strategies of adaptation and coping which some of us are privileged to be able to adopt, where others find riches or alcohol more readily available to them?
For in this world I see a plurality of adaptations. Despite the passing-down and refinement of cultures over the ages, there is little evidence that faith and non-attachment have superseded other adaptations. Contrast this with technology, in which the horse-and-cart and steam locomotive have been superseded in their turn.
So perhaps faith and non-attachment are not available to everyone, and the goal of evangelical religions such as Christianity is a false one.
Excellent observations, imo.
re: "So perhaps faith and non-attachment are not available to everyone, and the goal of evangelical religions such as Christianity is a false one."
What about this possibility: Non-attachment, (also called "deliverance," "moksha, "liberation,") is a psycho-neurological phenomenon that works whether conventional Christian theology is true or false. Non-attachment works because it is wired into our brains and into the world of relationships that we live within.
And I am not just picking on Christians here, liberation works whether any "ism" is true or false, including atheism.
ciao,
Raymond
As far as the world of relationships that we live within, I think there lies the rub.
When we find ourselves threatened in this world, we are compelled to defend ourselves, however physical-immediate or imaginary-complex the threat.
I suggest that non-attachment can only start to grow when we are able to drop our guard. This is not something we can consciously choose to do; because our body-consciousness (as opposed to head-consciousness, which is full of constructed fictions) insists on protecting us.
We can however choose (but only amongst the alternatives that we see) what kind of guard to raise.
Giovanna – Thanks and true…
Vincent and Raymond:
Vincent: “Are you saying that if we have the usual human mindset of seeing ourselves as separate, then we will understand faith as simply a relationship with the All? Whereas if we don't have that usual human mindset we'll experience our identity with the All?”
Yes. That said, the matter of identity with the All or God is easily misunderstood. A lot of people got burned at the stake in the Middle Ages – the “misunderstood mystic years,” I guess. Even today on conservative blogs I read about meditation as “Satanic” so maybe things haven’t changed as much as you’d like to think.
I’ve wondered about that too – whether some people are susceptible to mystical or non-dualistic experience and not others. My guess would be some are more susceptible and others less.
Like Raymond, I see no necessary connection between Christianity and such experiences – especially evangelical Christianity. The more fundamentalist strands in every faith tradition are least likely to experience/think in these terms; the contemplatives have this as their focus; and people outside of any faith tradition often focus on it too – for example, “artistic types.” A lot of poetry that doesn’t promulgate religion nevertheless articulates a non dualistic perspective – nature poets come to mind.
PS Vincent - Just saw your second comment as I was about to post this. I guess a lot of things having to do with inner life (as well as outer) are about adaptation or self defense in the face of challenging circumstances. Some types of adaptation enhance life but others end up constricting it.
Jan – We have lots of sources of inspiration in common.
This is an important point you raise:
"I suggest that non-attachment can only start to grow when we are able to drop our guard. This is not something we can consciously choose to do;"
This is true, I can't consciously and effectively drop my guard; it has to be immediate and natural. Too fast for the conscious mind to accomplish.
What we can do are forms of spiritual exercises that reset the dynamics of the brain's emotional centers; one important area is apparently the frontal lobes.
Then when it is time to let down the guard, it will be automatic and it will be the appropriate amount for the situation. I learned how to do this with emotionally disturbed people, but it applies to all other beings who I encounter.
ciao,
Raymond
I feel a certain serenity about my life but not because I think life is managed by some deity. I feel it because I know everything changes. I'm not going through a crisis of faith - even as a child I questioned the religious precepts I was brought up with and felt only freedom when I finally decided they weren't helpful to me.
I can be non-attached and still vitally interested in what happens in my life; I can work through my feelings to see if they are fear-based or not (one good practice is The Option Method).
You say: "In the contexts of mystical experience and non attachment, faith – all-trust, all-hope – is statement-like. We experience ourselves as so imbued or steeped in the infinitely greater than ourselves, as being so entirely part and parcel to that greater life or process, that we don’t stand outside our faith and its source to question it. We just live it. We just experience it."
But eventually we do question it, especially after the experience fades. I imagine there may be someone somewhere who always lives in that faith-based mystical experience. I know I've read of people who believe such a thing is possible. That's someone with whom I'd like to spend the proverbial "boat for a day" just to learn how it's done.
Non-attachment is difficult for ego to understand. We are afraid of non-attachment because we think is the purposeful suppression of compassion and fun. It is merely a detachment from the ego's drama.
Great post, thanks!
But I don't see so much a connection between mysticism and detachment, unless you mean that when a person is in some kind of union with God or with the universe, that they cease to care about the quality of life here on earth for themselves and for others.
That kind of gnostic ... the dualistic idea that the material conditions of life here are unimportant. I'd say, and I could be wrong because I don't know a lot about MLK, that he cared very much about the material conditions of life here for others, and that's why he was an activist instead of a hermit.
But maybe I'm still just not getting it.
Just to say here that while many connect the experience of faith to religious or spiritual beliefs, it’s there for those who don’t as well – which is why Original Faith doesn’t address the subject of belief. I don’t promulgate or criticize doctrine – plenty of people are doing enough of that – and focus instead on experience. And what I can’t question is the immediate self knowledge of being faith-full.
Kaushik – Yep… And a statement like that – “I don’t mind what happens” – is so easily misunderstood. I think it was Lisa who pointed out in a recent thread that we all exist on multiple levels. “Everything is OK” or “I don’t mind” or “I’m at peace” doesn’t negate the existence of those other levels and actually enhances our ability to live more emphatically and consistently from out of the level that is love.
Crystal – You write,
“I don't see so much a connection between mysticism and detachment, unless you mean that when a person is in some kind of union with God or with the universe, that they cease to care about the quality of life here on earth for themselves and for others.”
That’s a great point to explicitly raise – the connection between mysticism and detachment. In a sense, my whole book is about that – but I purposely avoided the word detachment because I don’t like it since it causes so much confusion. But that’s what people usually call it, so I’ve been using the word in these posts.
The language I prefer is the language I use in the book: language about a shift in identity from primarily identifying with what I call the disconnected self to identifying more with the One in whom we live and move and have our being, whether we think of this as being/reality itself or God. Our identity with that biggest picture is probably most intensively known in mystical or non dualistic experience but it’s possible for it to carry over into our day to day sense of who we are.
And that’s a liberating thing. It makes giving, loving, even laying down your life – our largest, most generous impulses – relatively easy to do even in difficult circumstances.
I don’t know much about hermits – I guess because they hide out! – but the figures I’ve most admired, like Gandhi and MLK, seem to me to have had their love liberated by their powerful sense of identification with God or life as a whole. For that matter, the one “guru type” I’ve met – Fr. Basil Pennington – also fit that paradigm. I don’t know the rules of monasticism, but he was not only the abbot at St. Joseph’s but also traveled the world teaching the centering prayer.
You and I have been arguing this issue for years and I don't think we'll ever change each other's minds :)
I'll say that for me, the best example of someone who layed down his life for others was Jesus. But he was anything but detached. The gospels are filled with references to him being sad to the point of crying, angry to the point of telling off religious authorities and trashing a temple.
I think people get the courage to be their best by becoming more themselves, not by disappearing themselves.
I think this is in some way connected to my yesterday's post, http://visheshunni.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/a-dead-leaf/
"I think people get the courage to be their best by becoming more themselves, not by disappearing themselves."
Who on this blog has said that? I am having difficulty finding who and what you are responding to. I think I may not have been reading carefully enough?
ciao,
Raymond
So to be clear, I've never thought that the only way for a person to lead a passionately constructive/creative life is through the kind of re-identification or "detachment" we're been discussing.
In my own experience, the people I've admired as being especially good people have included both folks who have no interest in the topic of detachment or doing things to promote it (like my mom) - and people who do (like one of my aunts).
For those who do, the self they lose, in part, is their egoistic self. Who they really are is freed up.
The verses of the NT are varied enough that people clearly emphasize those they like and see the Jesus they want - the guy who sends a lot of people to hell; your Jesus; and mine, who spent those forty days and nights in the desert doing a lot of contemplative prayer and said "I and the Father are one."
However, we do disagree if your idea is that meditation, mindfulness and detachment are always or almost always bad for people, making them cold and aloof. I've never seen or experienced this - just the opposite.
A parallel comes to mind. Recently my Uncle Paul died at age 90. A devout lifelong Catholic, he only stopped going to church when it became physically impossible.
He was my favorite uncle - warm, generous, considerate... I'd say that our values and morals were highly similar.
But I frankly don't "get" church services and rituals any more than he understood meditation, mindfulness or detachment. Our faith-paths were very different, yet I can see that faith, practiced his way, played as important and constructive a role in his life as faith practiced my way has played in mine.
The kind of people we become, how we lead our lives - to me that's the important thing. How we go about that shows some variation.
Vishesh, thanks for the link and I'll try to take a look as soon as I can - btw, apologies all around to folks whose blogs I check in on less than I'd like. My bedridden time has been going up and is now a couple hours a day more than it was a few months ago.
Veronda – I really appreciate that.
The exchange between you and Crystal re: mystic experience and non-attachment gets to the heart of the matter for me, and I think your exchange regarding Jesus, and what we know of his own manner and actions really probes this. You say regarding those who pursue non-attachment (whether explictly or not) "the self they lose, in part, is their egoistic self. Who they really are is freed up." I think that is exactly it, and there is still room for anger or crying in that freed up being. The anger or sadness is coming from a different place. Not from personal hurt or defensiveness, but from (for example) a love and union with humanity that expresses itself in that way when confronted with injustice. It's not a sign of ego. so non-attachment and passion are not opposed.
Yes, I get that.
"Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal."
John 12:24-25
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"For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;"
2Corinthians 4:16-17
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And the daoists "wu se", not insisting on my personal agenda, dying to that part of me that wants to insist.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
And Zen "Wu xin" No dominance by the conceptual mind's desire to rule.
In the garden of Gethsemane the night before his torture and crucifixion, Jesus is described as being in agony over what was about to happen to him. He was full of fear to the point that it is said he sweated blood which I understand is possible to do under great stress. He struggled with this fear even asking God to remove that cup from him if it be God's will.
Jesus had all this fear in spite of his identifiying with God the father to such an extent that he could say, "The father and I are one."
In the end, Jesus submitted to the suffering and he went through the torture, the humiliation, and the painful crucifixion with great fear, no doubt, but without resenting it or God. As he was dying on the cross, it is said he uttered words like "Why hast thou forsaken me?" suggesting that the strong spiritual peace and assurance he once felt at the core of his being was close to shattering.
I just wonder what others think of this Biblical account. I wonder what it might do to help us understand ourselves as human beings a little better.
Re: "I just wonder what others think of this Biblical account. I wonder what it might do to help us understand ourselves as human beings a little better."
Very much so, imo. The importance of doubt in spiritual growth has been essential to many of us.
We have the "Great Doubt" in Zen, and "The dark night of the soul" in Christianity. I suggest that Paul start a separate thread on this topic, even though it is directly related to non-attachment.
When we completely open up our hearts and allow that anything we believe might be wrong, we can be plunged into the great darkness. If we recover from that, we are free.
ciao,
Raymond
Raymond – I like these quotations. It was a long time ago I read them, but a couple sources of similar quotes would be The Cloud of Unknowing written by an anonymous monk I think in the twelfth century, and Thomas Merton’s writing. And good post suggestion…
Susie – To me, these passages – along with the final, “Into thy hands I commend my spirit” – are hauntingly authentic and beautiful, whatever a person believes or doesn’t about Jesus.
Personally, I feel that too often Christianity, while officially acknowledging Jesus as fully human and fully God, plays down the human part. To me, I find no contradiction in someone being especially close to God or very far along spiritually and also having an aversion to great physical suffering and death.
We exist as bodies and psyches even after we’ve awakened to the depth and closeness of our relationship to the One in whom we live and move and have our being. That awareness lets us get through what we have to get through with integrity and with the experience and knowledge that our faith and peace are deeply intact, however difficult our experience of life becomes.
Yes, and the dark night of the soul (La Noche Oscura) is from Saint John of the Cross. “The Cloud of Unknowing” preceded his La Noche Oscura and many think it greatly influenced La Noche Oscura.
Here is an excerpt:
"¡Oh noche, que guiaste!
¡Oh noche amable más que la alborada!
Oh darkness that guided me!
Oh darkness so much kinder than the dawn!"
The kindness of the night indicates that it is only in the night of doubt, when every other hope has been lost, that one might see that which is not contingent on hope.
The "divine" shows up when we give up on any other solution.
ciao,
Raymond
http://www.aniboom.com/animation-video/392520/MLK-Extraterrestrial-Americans-Holiday-Special/
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