You Don't Own Me...or Anything Else!

While sitting in meditation earlier this week, I had an experience some might call satori (a sudden moment of crystal-clear understanding), in regard to the concept of non-attachment. What became obvious to me in that moment is that non-attachment is really the only relationship to the things and people around us that makes any sense at all. This is not to say that there are not things that we truly enjoy or people we love with all our hearts. The simple point is that not one of these things or people is "ours" at all.

When I was in elementary school, I learned that the island of Manhattan had been sold to the Dutch settler, Peter Minuit, by the Linape tribe of Native Americans for 60 guilders (the equivalent of $24). Like everyone else, including the teacher, I saw this as an example of successful European gamesmanship over naive "Indians". What I now see so clearly is that the real "fools" were the Europeans who, unlike the Native Americans, did not comprehend that the idea of "owning" a piece of the earth is patently absurd. The Linape, like almost every other Native American tribe, lived in harmony with the land and if the Dutch wanted to give them gifts to live on that land, then okay.

As I look around "my" home, I can see many things, some quite valuable, that are in a legal sense "mine". My wife and I have a deed to the land and house where we live which states that we own this property. Yet, if one truly considers it, at best we have temporary custodianship (my wife's term) of this and everything else we can be said to own. In reality, we have the use and pleasure of things while we live, clearly a temporary situation. When seen that way, being attached to any of these things is ridiculous because the attachment itself is an illusion. At most, we are contemporary in time and space with everything and everyone. The cars, the guitars, the computers, the clothing, all of it, will be there even if we are not, so how are we attached?

There are various pieces of art in and around our home that give us great pleasure. They are interesting and/or beautiful and we love looking at them; it is their beauty that can be ours from moment to moment, but not they themselves. When we are dead, that beauty will be available to whomever else is in their presence, be they our children or relatives or someone completely unknown to us. So how can they be seen as ours in any sense at all? We know that through some tragedy or happenstance, all of these things could be destroyed in a matter of hours. Yet, we also know, were that to occur, if we are not harmed, their loss cannot change who we are because they are in no way a part of us. 

We have lived alongside two dogs, and now a third. The law says dogs belong to us but they are (or were) living beings with minds of their own. We are companions while they are alive, which is sadly too short a timespan, but they belong to no one but themselves. We are fortunate to enjoy their company while we are together on the planet. The same can be said of the people we love. I, like everyone else, have lost family members whom I loved. They live on in my memories of them, of the pleasure of their company and of the things their presence in my life taught me that have become part of who I am. They are gone and I am still walking the planet without them; were they ever mine? I am married to a woman with whom I am deeply in love. The law says she is "my" wife, yet in reality, there is nothing to stop her from walking out of my life except her deep love for me. So how can she be said to be mine? We both know (and have spoken of) the fact that barring some freak accident involving the two of us, one of us will outlive the other, and this will be a source of great anguish. Knowing this makes every moment we spend together precious, because we acknowledge the temporariness of the situation. We do not "belong" to each other; we choose to remain with each other because of the love we bear. Isn't that a far more beautiful and significant thing?

Finally, even attachment to our own lives is foolish and illusory. The air we take in each time we breathe, which sustains our lives, is only in us for a second before it is in someone else. The food we eat and the water we drink is with us temporarily as we draw its nutrients before even it leaves it. As we know all too well, this thing we call life can be snatched from us literally in a second. Even if we have life for many years, at some point we will not. Even life is not "ours" but on loan from the universe. It is that fact  that is the motivation to live each day well, caring for each other, and doing no harm.

All I have said above is the very reason that living each moment in mindful awareness is the only truly sensible way to spend our lives. Knowing that attachment to anything or anybody is nothing but an illusion, their very presence during the time we share becomes precious. We and everything in the universe but coexist for a time…and isn't that wonderful.

We Have Seen the Buddha, and He Is Us

Last week, I saw the film "Les Misérables" for the second time. I had seen the Broadway musical on stage at least four times, and read the book many years ago. Jean Valjean has always been one of my very favorite characters in all of literature. In my Pantheon, he is on a par with Atticus Finch from "To Kill a Mockingbird" as the kind of human being we should all strive to be. Upon this most recent watching, it suddenly became apparent to me that although motivated by devotion to a Christian concept of God, Jean Valjean is the embodiment of the Buddhist concept of Loving-Kindness.

Valjean's moment of enlightenment and attainment of Buddhahood comes from his encounter with the priest from whom he steals the silver. When the priest forgives him and treats him as a "brother", Valjean's seething hatred is transformed by his sudden awareness of the power of love over hatred. It is at that point that he steps upon the path of loving-kindness that he will walk the rest of his life. It could even be said that he is returning to his true nature, since the crime for which he was imprisoned was stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's child who was starving to death.

In every encounter he has throughout the rest of the story, every decision he makes or action he takes is focused through the lens of loving-kindness. This is shown most clearly in those instances when the choices he makes are directly against his own self-interest, even at the risk of being sent back to prison, the most hellish experience of his life. "Consciousness, once raised, cannot be lowered," is a phrase I often quote. In his enlightened state, Valjean is incapable of ignoring the plight of others, not for fear of punishment in some Christian afterlife, but because he has realized his compassionate nature. Ultimately, he shows loving-compassion to every person with whom he comes in contact, even Javert, a man devoid of compassion (the Jungian darkness to Valjean's light) who has hunted him all his life, blinded by a sense of Old Testament righteous anger in service of The Lord. Valjean's acts of compassion toward others are not dependent on the nature of their encounters; they are not situational; they emanate from his very nature, a nature we all share as humans. To parody the comic-strip character Pogo, " We have seen the Buddha, and he is us."

The beauty of all this is that Valjean is not some kind of extraordinary being; he is an ordinary man whose awakening changes his life forever. I think this why he so captures our imaginations and our admiration. He is one of us, an ordinary human being with the ability to choose to live compassionately. To see him do so, over and over, when any of us might have shirked, both encourages us to emulate him and shames us in our lack of resolve. Each of us can take up the banner of loving-kindness and can make it the touchstone by which everything we do may be measured. Doing so accesses the very best part of who we are and opens the door to our spirituality in a way that nothing else can. If we are to make contact with the infinite in any meaningful way, it is only in touching the lives of our fellow beings with compassion that we will do so.

Perhaps Victor Hugo put it best at the end of "Les Misérables":

"To love another person is to see the face of God."