Attachment formation and how you deal with it

yoga and booze

haaaaaaa

it's my serious answer!
:)

i was listening to a radio interview the other day with a woman who was once a corporate management/money type and pretty much dying of stress even though she'd convinced herself she loved it and the complicated relationship life that was a part of it, and then, through a series of events, she became a buddhist monk! she was pretty inspiring and laughed a lot. re: non-attachment, she said:
"love hard without trying to control the outcome"
and
"to be happy is a moral obligation"

"love hard without trying to control the outcome"

it takes a lot of work and always being conscious of your own thoughts and feelings and the reasons behind them, but you'd be surprised how much better it can make you feel

I think in the long run I've come to accept that few friendships last for a lifetime, but that doesn't mean I won't feel sad for individual friendships ending. However, usually it's more of a case of an indidual friendship slowly fading out rather than ending dramatically, which makes it easier to deal with.

wow i like that rrrobyn

If you regard other people as mere flesh robots, you don't get attached to them. And it makes them much easier to kill...

When they've outlived their usefulness, that is.

sounds like your friends have the problem to deal with it, surmounter.

re: non-attachment, she said:

"love hard without trying to control the outcome"

The zen school reponds: 5/10, at best

Not trying to control the outcome is in itself trying to control the outcome. Aiming at non-attachment is itself an attachment.

"to be happy is a moral obligation" - hang on a minute - this sounds like a considerble attachment and investment. What 'moral obligation' ?These are the words from 'self-help through self-delusion', not buddhism.

Please allow happiness and sadness to run through you naturally. "A violent wind does not last for a whole morning; a sudden rain does not last for the whole day."

(sorry to go all nude spock for a moment)

"love hard without trying to control the outcome"

No offense, but this sounds like something only a superhuman could do. Most of us at the very least expect to get a bit of love back from loving someone. If that someone doesn't reciprocate our feelings in any way, the love is almost sure to die. Maybe that sounds terribly selfish to a buddhist, but that's how relationships work for most people.

(x-post)

i feel like buddhism in today's world/western world maybe these these kinds of sounds bites of slightly flawed semantics?
but yeah def more on the self-help side of buddhism that

not that buddhism has a self-help side

i don't know - whatever works!

"love hard without trying to control the outcome"

doesn't this just mean, you can't MAKE somebody love you? seems pretty healthy to me.

it's like that line in Adaptation where the brother talks about how it's more important to know who you love than to be loved back

I think Jesu Christu said something sim'lar

Is it really? I always thought knowing someone comes part and parcel with loving her, but I couldn't really go on loving without ever getting loved back.

(x-post)

It's much easier for Jesus to say, because he's a god, and millions of people love him by default.

Forming attachments is dead easy with a Mac. Just go to the PDF pull-down menu in the Print screen.

Tuomas I don't think anyone is advocating, like, staying in a dysfunctional abusive relationship or anything; just saying that loving someone shouldn't be contingent upon getting something in return.

"love hard without trying to control the outcome"

probably works... till you have kids.

xpost to self: or in other words, if you feel you love someone but find that that love can't sustain itself without getting an equal return, then maybe what you're actually in love with is some notion of the other person potentially loving you. which is totally natural and not at all a bad thing, just so long as you can admit it to yourself and not get angry at them for it.

(also I should probably note that I use the word "love" in a much looser and more hippie-ish way than most people, so keep that in mind)

i do think the need to be loved is a strong one. but i also think a lot about who i love and how i show it. and that makes me who i am to a great extent: who i love, or what i love.

Trying to control your children's outcomes will fuck you up too, you just don't realize it until they're screaming "I HATE YOU" down the hallway and getting eating disorders/drug habits/abusive boyfriends.

Caring for other people more than you care about yourself is always a total dud. Is that zensightful? do I get points?

Trying to control your children's outcomes will fuck you up too, you just don't realize it until they're screaming "I HATE YOU" down the hallway and getting eating disorders/drug habits/abusive boyfriends.

-- Laurel, Monday, October 29, 2007 3:02 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

what i meant was really it's harder to live the life of abandon when you have kids, being kind of non-negotiable commitments and all...

but with the other thing, over-control could, i suppose lead to those things, but i've seen it happen the other way too -- neglect can just as easily bring on that stuff.

Oh god no, I'm just kidding. How can you possibly NOT want to do everything right for them, you're all they've got for so many years...

"Nothing ruins the taste of a peanut butter sandwich like unrequited love." - Charlie Brown

Caring for other people more than you care about yourself is always a total dud. Is that zensightful? do I get points?

Well, since you asked.....

2/10...Overly cynical in any case, but fatally flawed as love isn't ours to control (ever been 'spun off your feet'?)

As the good book says: "God may be love I dare say. But what a mischievous little devil love is".

This feeling about attachments possibly suggests a few things. do you feel that you are quite fixed/static/permanent - and that others are drift in and out? and that somehow you are lacking in control - you would like others to stronger fixtures in your life?

It can often be a question of worldview, those who see life as an integrated continuous whole - of the past/present/future as linked, and we would like continuity to be maintained with the people we form attachments to travelling through this with us. And those who see life as more transitory/ephemeral, can only think of the present. Life probably needs people at both ends of this spectrum, but this doesn't mean that we have to stay the same.

In your case perhaps you could focus more on self and less on others - ie - it is 'they' that drift out of your life - suggests it is 'they' that have the control? Perhaps you could do more to take some of that control over direction back?

<i>"love hard without trying to control the outcome"</i>

I don't think this statement is as bad as some of the other people above. I take more issue with the first part. It is unclear what 'love hard' means. It seems stifling to me. I am more ok with the second part but I wouldn't think of it so much as trying not to control outcomes, but more about trying not to invest so much in outcomes (or even trying to see the positive in less than desired outcomes). I suppose you could just say 'try be a bit more detached'

<i>to be happy is a moral obligation</i>

This statement is kind of stupid, yes. Perhaps for certain people in certain situations this kind of thing is helpful but in general I don't like this kind of thinking, as it ignores negative things in ourselves that we shouldn't be ignoring, we should be addressing

This board doesn't allow html?

Formatting help

For strong text, use: your text
For emphasised text, use: your text
For strikethrough text, use: your text
For underlined text, use: your text
For block quotes, use:

your text

your text

(x-post)

Certainly that phrase will never sell t-shirts:

"George Bush invaded my country and I'm morally obligated to be happy"

i kinda like it

Your main problem, Surmounter, is thinking in terms of "attachment formations."

Caring for other people more than you care about yourself is always a total dud. Is that zensightful? do I get points?

Well, since you asked.....

2/10...Overly cynical in any case, but fatally flawed as love isn't ours to control (ever been 'spun off your feet'?)

As the good book says: "God may be love I dare say. But what a mischievous little devil love is".

-- Bob Six, Tuesday, October 30, 2007 3:13 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Link

well i give this a 1/10. we have complete control over who we love or fall in love with. getting out of love is stickier but you make the decision to fall in the first place, right? therefore tombots statement stands.

we have complete control over who we love or fall in love with.

Show me your face, so I may laugh in it.

The zen school reponds: 5/10, at best

omg this is the most inane thing ive ever read

I think in the long run I've come to accept that few friendships last for a lifetime, but that doesn't mean I won't feel sad for individual friendships ending. However, usually it's more of a case of an indidual friendship slowly fading out rather than ending dramatically, which makes it easier to deal with.

-- Tuomas, Monday, 29 October 2007 12:52 (Yesterday) Link

I disagree with this. The friends I have made - and invested in - are for keeps. Occasionally things drift and fall, but largely the mutual commitment of frienergy (got, fucking shoot me for saying that) is acknowledged on both ends.

I mean, I think friendship is kind of a Kirkegardian leap of faith. It'll fail a lot of the time, but the potential rewards are so much greater and more likely than the occasional upsets that there's really no downside to trying.

< / platitudes >

Your main problem, Surmounter, is thinking in terms of "attachment formations."

-- Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Tuesday, 30 October 2007 15:41 (1 hour ago) Link

;) i was a psych major. and i really do believe relationships early in life carry a lot of weight when it comes to making friends later on.

to be happy is a moral obligation

Aw shit the last thing Ye Classique Depressio Sadsaque needs is guilt over not living to some completely arbitrary (and I would say untrue) moral obligation. All emotions are part of being a mulitfaceted individual. The sad never made me a-splode but this philosophy would drive me to, uh, counterproductive life at best.

this is hitting me hard again. maybe it's just the time of fucking year...

the more you cling to people, the more they'll push you away, sad but true.

hope you are ok, innit.

thanks :-) i'm great, with family and everything's good, i wasj ust talking to an old friend online last night and she reminded me of other old friends bla bla bla. i miss all my old friends!!