1) what does ''do not attach to anyone'' meant?
2) what does ''do not attach to families'' meant?Who are our ''families''?
Originally posted by Endurehardships:1) what does ''do not attach to anyone'' meant?
2) what does ''do not attach to families'' meant?Who are our ''families''?
Attachment means holding, investing identification with objects. For example money is just money. But when we identify with it, thinking it is 'my money', then it becomes a big deal to us. We are not willing to let the money go and if we lose the money, we will become very sad. If other people lose money, we don't feel so sad, but if it happens to us, we feel sad. Some people become depressed when they lost a lot of 'their money'. It is investing the sense of 'I' and 'mine' over objects. Money by itself is an impersonal phenomena, it's just pieces of paper, only if we invest our sense of identity with it that it suddenly seems very precious. Similarly we could say that in nature originally nothing belongs to anyone, but people project, imagine, that we could somehow 'own' the forests and rivers and territories of mother earth, and wage war against others who imagine and project their own boundaries of what rightfully belongs to them and others. Attachment is this sense of investing identification.
Non attachment means, seeing through all sense of 'I' and 'mine'. See that nothing is truly graspable, inherently existing, and nothing is truly 'I' and 'mine'. Everything appears due to causes and conditions and subsides due to the dispersal of the causes and conditions. Nothing have real existence. Nothing is graspable, they are transient and empty. They are just an appearance due ot the congregation of causes and conditions. This is the truth of all phenomena. There is nothing truly 'I' or 'mine' or 'other', there is just the everchanging stream of sensate reality that thought illusorily separates a part into 'me', and another part into 'others', and as a result of believing in the sense of self, there's a sense of 'me' trying to 'chase after', 'own' or 'control' the 'others'. Reality is undivided in any way into subject/object, doer/done, experiencer/experienced, but as J Krishnamurti says, the gap between subject and object (the projection of the separation between 'self' and 'others') is the source of all miseries in humanity.
Not recognising the true nature of mind and reality, we grasp at duality. When we recognise the nature of reality, illusions stop, suffering ends. It doesn't mean we can't love other people, it just means the sense of 'self' trying to possess, own, control, and attach to objects ceases, and along with the resulting suffering.
We have to gradually let go of everything to understand what non-attachment is. Non-attachment is one of the most difficult 'skills' to learn, will take lifetimes.
Hi Endurehardships, when you fall in love with someone, you form an attachment to the person, when the person does not love you and wants to leave you, but you still do, you feel hurt. When the person whom you think, is your best friend or colleague does something contrary to your expectation or interest, you feel anguished. When your family member is very ill or dies, you feel more pain than if it were somebody else. Why? Because of your attachment to them. Everybody fall sick and dies, but you suffer more due to you strong attachment!