Happiness is Letting Go

Renunciation is no more about holding on than it is about losing anything. It's about letting go internally even if we keep our possessions. Possessions do not belong to us anyhow. So all we are doing is holding on to unhappiness by holding on. How can we let go and keep everything we have? How can we arrive at this turning point?

Turning Point
Charlotte Joko Beck (Everyday Zen)
We may feel that whatever is going on in our thoughts and emotions is not okay: "I should be able to renounce all that. I should be able to get rid of it. I'm bad for thinking this or feeling that."

But that's not renunciation either. It's playing with notions of good and bad.

Some of us make one final effort. Because we are confused and discouraged about our daily lives, we finally decide, "I have to go for Realization! I must live a completely spiritual life and renounce everything else."

And that's great if we understand what it means. But of all the misinterpretations of renunciation, the most insidious come in this realm of so-called spiritual practice in which we have notions such as "I should be pure, holy, and different from others...perhaps live in a remote, quiet environment."

That has nothing to do with renunciation either.

So what is renunciation? Is there such a thing? Perhaps we can best clarify it by considering another word, "non-attachment"

We often think that if we fiddle with the surface events of our lives, trying to alter them, worrying about them or ourselves, we are dealing with the matter of "renunciation" -- whereas in fact we do not need to "renounce" anything; we need only to realize that true renunciation is equivalent to non-attachment.

The process of practice is to see through, not to eliminate, anything to which we are attached.

We could have great financial wealth and be unattached to it, or we might have nothing and be very attached to having nothing.

Usually, if we have seen through the nature of attachment, we will tend to have fewer possessions, but not necessarily.

VIII. Choices
Most practice gets caught in this area of fiddling with our environment or our minds. "My mind should be quiet."

Our mind doesn't matter. What matters is non-attachment to the activities of the mind. And our emotions are harmless unless they dominate us (that is, if we are attached to them) because then they create disharmony for everyone.

The first problem in practice is to see that we are attached. As we engage in consistent and patient zazen [sitting meditation], we begin to know that we are nothing but attachments: They rule our lives.

But we never lose an attachment by saying it has to go. Only as we gain awareness of its true nature does it quietly and imperceptibly wither away. Like a sandcastle with waves rolling over, it just smoothes out and finally -- Where is it? What was it?

The question is not how to get rid of our attachments or to renounce them. It's the intelligence of seeing their true nature -- impermanent and passing, empty. We don't have to get rid of anything.

The most difficult, the most insidious, are the attachments to what we think are "spiritual" truths. Attachment to what we call "spiritual" is the very activity that hampers a spiritual life. If we are attached to anything, we cannot be free or truly loving.

So long as we have any picture of how we're supposed to be or how other people are supposed to be, we are attached. And a truly spiritual life is simply the absence of that. "To study the self is to forget the self," in the words of Dogen Zenji.

As we continue our zazen today, let's be aware of the central issue -- the practice of non-attachment. Let us diligently continue, knowing that it can be difficult, and knowing that difficulty is not the point.

Each of us has a choice. What will it be? A life of freedom and compassion, or what?