Attachment

I have taken to making notes of my thoughts through the course of the day. As I walk my mind frequently goes into overdrive of thoughts and thinking but when I get back home the thoughts have disappeared from the mind as if they had been loosened with the laces of my walking boots.

It is like the brilliant thoughts that flit through the mind in the middle of the night but disappear with the darkness in the breaking of the day. Now I have not taken to getting up during the night to make notes because having done that in the past I have often discovered that what sounds brilliant during the night looks like nonsense in the light of day. Though many a problem has been solved during the long hours of the night. Something that seemed impossible all of a sudden seems so simple.

My new project is about working through once again the eighty-one verses this time trying to explain it with a word and a description. My word yesterday was detachment so my thoughts this morning are very much along those lines.

As I walked I played with this thought.

A man who has gone out of his town comes back and finds that his house is on fire.

It was one of the most beautiful houses in the town, and the man loved the house almost as much as anything else he owned.

Many were ready to give him twice what it was worth to buy it from him. He had never agreed to sell it and now he stood watching as it burned.

A great many people gathered, but nothing could be done, the fire has spread so far that even if you tried to put it out, nothing would be saved. So he becomes very sad.

As he stands watching it burn his son comes running and whispers in his ear.

"Don't be worried. I sold it yesterday and at a very good price. The offer was so good I could not wait for you. Forgive me."

The father thought, "thank God, it's not ours now!" Then the father is relaxed and became a silent watcher, just like all of the other watchers.


Please think about it! 
Just a moment before he was not a watcher, he was attached.

It is the same house, the same fire, everything is the same, but now he is not concerned. 

In fact, he started enjoying it just like everybody else in the crowd.

Then the second son comes running, and he says to the father, "What are you doing? You are smiling and the house is on fire?" 

The father says, "Do not you know, your brother has sold it."

He said, "We have taken only advance amount, not settled fully. I doubt now that the man is going to purchase it now."

Again, everything changes!!

Tears which had disappeared, have come back to the father's eyes, his smile is no more there, his heart is beating fast. The 'watcher' is gone. He is again attached.

And then the third son comes, and he says, "That man is a man of his word. I have just come from him. He said, "It does not matter whether the house is burnt or not, it is mine. And I am going to pay the price that I have settled for. 

Neither you knew, nor I knew that the house would catch on fire.'"

Again the joy is back and the family became 'watchers'! 

They are no longer attached.

Actually nothing is changing!

Just the feeling that "I am the owner! I am not the owner of the house!"

That makes a whole world difference. Beware of what we become attached too. Attachment can lead to many things and many emotions such as jealousy.

Have a wonderful day and my apologies for my longish rant today.