Everything is Here and Now: Secure Attachment of the Buddha
Dear friends,
Over the years, I have sometimes found myself believing that I need a particular person or thing to make myself feel whole. This feeling is best captured by the expression (coined by Renee Zellweger’s to Tom Cruise in the film Jerry McGuire): “You complete me.”
As I’ve started learning about attachment theory, I see how this feeling stems from the anxiety of being cut off from the truth of my innate wholeness and connection to the cosmos. Understanding all the ways that human beings try to cope with our existential fears of separation helps me better understand and accept my own anxious thinking, which allows more space for transformation. (Some interesting videos on attachment and relationships here.)
There are three basic attachment stances: anxious, avoidant, and secure.
An anxiously attached person needs others to help manage emotional states. If we are anxiously attached, we might feel unsettled or upset when we don’t have support from our chosen people. This often leads to clinging to those people and not having the ability to enjoy our life when we are separated from them.
In avoidant attachment, we go in the other direction. When our sense of safety is threatened, we run away. We tell ourselves it doesn’t matter, I don’t need that person or situation anyway. I am fine all by myself. We deny that our lives depend on each other.
In secure attachment, we recognize that we both want and need connection with others and at the same time we are capable of holding ourselves as whole and being OK, regardless of our emotional state.
One route to more secure attachment may be through the Buddha’s teachings on interbeing and emptiness. When I touch the insight of interbeing, I know I am made of my parents and grandparents, all of the places I’ve been, the people I’ve been with, the books I’ve read, the food I’ve eaten, etc. The insight of emptiness takes me further in understanding that there is no separate self, no permanent enduring “Annie” that I can hold on to. Annie-ing is a process, not a noun.
Like a wave or a whirlpool, we clearly exist and yet there is nothing we can claim is enduring and separate from the underlying water. We are a temporary energetic coming together of elements of the cosmos into our body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness.
In knowing that we’re already connected to everything, we don’t need to panic when we are apart from our beloved. Just as the whirlpool is both water and whirlpool, we are both ourselves and the entire cosmos. If we tend toward avoidant attachment, then understanding our non-self nature might prompt us to ask ourselves: Who is escaping and where else is there to go? What are the conditions for happiness already here?
Thich Nhat Hahn writes in How to Love:
One of the greatest gifts we can offer people is to embody nonattachment and nonfear. This is a true teaching, more precious than money or material resources. Many of us are very afraid, and this fear distorts our lives and makes us unhappy. We cling to objects and to people like a drowning person clings to a floating log.
Practicing to realize nondiscrimination, to see the interconnectedness and impermanence of all things, and to share this wisdom with others, we are giving the gift of nonfear. Everything is impermanent. This moment passes. That person walks away. Happiness is still possible.
Secure attachment allows us to be comfortable both being close to others and being alone. Knowing the truth of who we are in relation to other beings and the cosmos, can help us move beyond our anxious or avoidant attachment patterns. And, when we practice mindfully being with the truth of our wholeness on a regular basis, we can trust that we have the ability to live our life fully present, no matter what comes our way.
with love,
annie