Q. Non-attachment vs keep fighting; which is better?
Let me ask you back. Non-attachment vs keep eating; which is better? Non-attachment vs keep taking care of one’s children; which is better? Non-attachment or keep seeing a doctor; which is better? You should not mistake non-attachment for giving up everything. When you are not attached to anything, you should not have attachment even to ‘not keeping fighting’ because clinging to ‘not keeping fighting’ is also a kind of attachment. True non-attachment is not whether you do something or not, but whether you cling to it or not, or whether you can see it as empty or not.
Let’s suppose that you play with a paper plane with your children. You can stop playing with it anytime without your mind being hurt whenever things require you to stop it, whereas your children feel sorry or unhappy when they are forced to stop playing, for one reason or another, when they are preoccupied with it.
For example, when the paper plane happens to break for some reason during the play, you don’t feel your emotion swayed, whereas your children, heartbroken or disappointed, may burst out crying. Your attitude towards the same paper plane is quite different from your children’s because you have no attachment to it, but your children do. Having non-attachment to a paper plane doesn’t mean that you should not play with it together with your children but means that you don’t cling to it.
©Boo Ahm
All writing ©Boo Ahm. All images ©Simon Hathaway
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