So much of Zen practice is about working with our attachments. I’d caught a glimpse of the danger of attachments before I got to Zen. My roommate in college and after, my first best man, Peter Bornstein, gave me a profound teaching in those early days when we were both still single. I must have been going through a painful patch when Peter told me that you have to be able to see yourself ‘fine’ without the relationship in order to feel good in the relationship.
Linda Ronstadt said the same thing.
Attachment and possessiveness march hand in hand.
A few years later, I got another version of the non-attachment teaching from a Brookdale colleague, Al Myers. We were young and thought we could use the vehicle of community mental health to end poverty and racism in America. “You’re not doing your job,” Al said, “if you don’t get fired from time to time.” Attachment to a job like attachment to a lover leads to suffering.
But the problem was the specificity. Don’t cling to a particular job. In that attachment, you lose all freedom.
I was learning half a lesson. Don’t cling to a particular lover. Don’t cling to a particular job. In my Adlerian analyst, I got the same half lesson in working with my feelings. When Erika, asked, “Who would you be if you didn’t have your anger?” I knew the answer immediately. Usually, her questions stumped me, but this one was easy. Without my anger, I would be nothing but a puddle on the floor. I've spent years working on my anger.
It took Jishu to show me that the problem was not the particular relationships or roles or feelings. It was the clinging. It was the attachment. It happened in one of the first classes I took with Jishu. Paired with Jennifer Dohrn, I found myself asking, “Who are you?” Whatever Jennifer answered, I repeated my question until Jishu rang a bell, and Jennifer and I switched roles. Jennifer asked the questions, and I ran through the litany of who I thought I was: social worker, son, psychotherapist, Jew, activist.
Without realizing it, I was being introduced to my first koan, a koan that I have been wrestling with ever since. At a critical moment in the koan, the emperor of China asks Bodhidharma, the Zen teacher newly arrived from India, “Who are you?” As I hear the story, the emperor is at that moment irritated and offended by what he perceives as the arrogance of the foreigner. The emperor’s question sounds to me like “Who the hell do you think you are?”
Bodhidharma answers, “Don’t know.” No “social worker, son, psychotherapist, Jew” for Bodhidharma.
I continue to work with my attachment to the roles I’m playing, but they keep changing. One day I’m a writer. Another day I’m a patient. On the third day, I’m a retired person. When attachments arise. I can laugh, “That’s me clinging.”
Clinging is a killer. Perhaps the most obvious attachments are to our stuff. Greed and jealousy arise from our attachments to stuff. Sometimes, it’s stuff we have. Sometimes it’s stuff we don’t have but want. Salaries, titles, promotions, all became koans for me. I worked with them for years.
Recently, my attachment to stuff has been coming up again as Dee and I talk about downsizing. Nothing is imminent. We’re not up against a deadline, but we’re living in a big house. We’ve been here going on 30 years, and we’ve collected a lot of stuff. We’re not downsizing now, but we’re getting ready to downsize.
Dee’s been getting to it more than I have, so I came up with a plan for myself. I would work on downsizing one hour a day, three days a week. It sounded reasonable, but I didn't do it.
Dee found another idea for me. I’m not sure where she found it. Get rid of one thing a day. That’s working a little better for me. I still have my Marie Kondo in the back pocket of my mind. I was an early adopter and lent the book to everyone until finally it was not returned. Downsizing, I am following Marie’s advice to hold each article in my hand and to decide if I really want to part with it. Keep at it until I find something I’m ready to let go of. I work with it like a koan.
As is always the case, there’s more to a koan than initially meets the eye. I’ve been retired now after two careers, retired for two years. I have a rack of business suits and dress shirts that I haven’t worn since my last day in the office, that I’m never going to wear again. I could safely get rid of half of them and still have more than I need. So, what’s the hesitancy?
It’s not the suits and shirts. I don’t miss work or dressing for work. I haven’t had a tie on in years and don’t plan to. I’ve already told Morrigan when she talks about a wedding that I’ll wear my tux if the moths haven’t eaten it but no tie. She’s okay with that. But the ties too are hanging in the closet.
So, what’s the attachment? It’s not this stuff that I’m attached to. It’s something bigger, a scarier story. What does downsizing mean? That I can no longer climb the stairs to the second floor? I wouldn’t mind living on one floor and getting to that floor via an elevator. I wouldn’t mind that at all, but I don’t want to be physically unable to climb a flight of stairs any time I feel like it. I know I’m older, but if I forget something in the bedroom on my way out of the house, I can just go upstairs to get it.
These days, I’m not running upstairs to get anything. I don’t trust my balance. Actually, I’m not doing any running. But on some level, I’m not acknowledging the aging process. Someday, probably not in some far-off future, living on one floor may be a necessity. If I go slower on the downsizing, can I delay the aging?
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