FRIDAY, March 29, 2024
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Attachment to detachment a sticky Buddhist problem

Attachment to detachment a sticky Buddhist problem

Re: “Can we ‘Mercedes’ our way to nirvana?” Stoppage Time, February 24.

I enjoyed Tulsathit Taptim’s somewhat tongue-in-cheek defence of Benz-owning monks, but maybe we should start off with a question. “Why do we think it’s wrong for monks to own Benzes?”
There are the restrictions of Buddhist discipline, of course, but the answer goes deeper than that. The Indian religions – Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism – place great emphasis on detachment. If you’re detached you won’t feel the need for a Benz, or any other luxury for that matter. And monks, especially senior ones, ought to be detached. 
Indian religions value detachment so much because their primary goal is to attain a state of inner fulfilment. This goes by many different names: nirvana, god-realisation, self-realisation, enlightenment, whatever. Attachment, especially to material objects and sensory enjoyment, diverts the mind from the quest for inner fulfilment, and thus becomes an obstacle to religious life. If a monk owns a Benz, or any other luxury, devotees get the uncomfortable idea that he’s fallen short of the goal, strayed from the path and become ensnared by attachment. 
This is why the Indian religions value austerity. It shows that the monk has attained inner fulfilment. He doesn’t need Benzes and iPads and smartphones and condominiums and all the rest of it. The ideal is epitomised in the great Tibetan saint Milarepa, who was content to live in a cave in the frozen Himalayas wearing nothing but cotton and subsisting on a diet of boiled nettles.
The problem is that monastic discipline forces monks to practise austerity before they’ve attained inner fulfilment. In essence, it forces them to “fake it”. This is why we get so many “rogue monks”. They haven’t attained inner fulfilment, so they still feel the need for sensory enjoyments. Attain that inner fulfilment, and attachment to enjoyments ought to drop off naturally. 
This at least is the way it works in theory, and we certainly would like to see more of it in practice – usually by other people, not ourselves! Not many of us have a taste for boiled nettles.
But all of this dodges the Great Conundrum. Desire for desirelessness is still a desire, and attachment to detachment is still attachment. But there is a little-known solution to this problem, taught by the great 19th-century Indian saint Sri Ramakrishna. If you get a thorn stuck in your foot, use another thorn to dig it out. Then throw both thorns away. 
William Page
 
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