I was listening to one of the modern Gurus talk about how one should not detach, but engage with life. He drew distinction between engagement and entanglement - the former being full active involvement and latter being partial involvement with what happens in life.
I think it is very important to be fully involved with life - but with constant remembrance of the transience of everything around us. There are two aspects here - involvement and transience. Here is what I mean by transience.
Transience
Life is transient. Relationships are transient. Things, people, emotions, pain, pleasure - everything is transient. I cant think of a single thing that is not transient. No single moment is like another. The relationships that we have - continuously change, and sometimes abruptly end. People, even those who we are closest to, come and go. Live and Die. Food Perishes. And new seeds sprout. Trees are cut. Paper is created. And so on. Transience and impermanence is very overt and stark in our face.
Yet, we have a tendency to hang on to a certain current state of being. Or pine for certain time gone by. Or pin hopes on a certain bright, happy future. We always define our lives in a certain point of time - past, present or future. We work very hard to earn a lot of money so that we can buy our objects of desire - a house, a car or the like - in future. We drink ourselves silly to numb our senses and see the present become a pleasant haze. We spend hours together thinking about the great times that have gone by and invent ways to recreate the old magic.
We are so keen to have a safe haven of permanence, that we try to overlook the transience all around us. It seems to be our basic need to seek security and predictability. We invest most of our time and energy in further enhancing the predictability of life - make it more safe, secure and planned. And we think we are happy and we have a purpose in life. Sometimes, life jolts us out of this delusion. Sometime, we refuse to be jolted out. But transience remains an essential feature of life - whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
One way to look at life is to say that if everything is transient then why involve oneself with anything at all. Why to have relationships, play the householder, work for living and so on. Why not just be in careless abandon and let the roller coaster of life take you along.
Another way to look would be to internalize transience as basic building block of life and then live life with full involvement - engaging fully with each moment yet remembering that whatever is happening is transient and that the way it is supposed to be. To stop yearning for any one moment - and to be involved and immersed in every moment.
I think it is very important to be fully involved with life - but with constant remembrance of the transience of everything around us. There are two aspects here - involvement and transience. Here is what I mean by transience.
Transience
Life is transient. Relationships are transient. Things, people, emotions, pain, pleasure - everything is transient. I cant think of a single thing that is not transient. No single moment is like another. The relationships that we have - continuously change, and sometimes abruptly end. People, even those who we are closest to, come and go. Live and Die. Food Perishes. And new seeds sprout. Trees are cut. Paper is created. And so on. Transience and impermanence is very overt and stark in our face.
Yet, we have a tendency to hang on to a certain current state of being. Or pine for certain time gone by. Or pin hopes on a certain bright, happy future. We always define our lives in a certain point of time - past, present or future. We work very hard to earn a lot of money so that we can buy our objects of desire - a house, a car or the like - in future. We drink ourselves silly to numb our senses and see the present become a pleasant haze. We spend hours together thinking about the great times that have gone by and invent ways to recreate the old magic.
We are so keen to have a safe haven of permanence, that we try to overlook the transience all around us. It seems to be our basic need to seek security and predictability. We invest most of our time and energy in further enhancing the predictability of life - make it more safe, secure and planned. And we think we are happy and we have a purpose in life. Sometimes, life jolts us out of this delusion. Sometime, we refuse to be jolted out. But transience remains an essential feature of life - whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.
One way to look at life is to say that if everything is transient then why involve oneself with anything at all. Why to have relationships, play the householder, work for living and so on. Why not just be in careless abandon and let the roller coaster of life take you along.
Another way to look would be to internalize transience as basic building block of life and then live life with full involvement - engaging fully with each moment yet remembering that whatever is happening is transient and that the way it is supposed to be. To stop yearning for any one moment - and to be involved and immersed in every moment.
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