As a Buddhist practitioner and a therapist (for lack of a better term), the word "attachment" is packed with irony. Attachment, in the Buddhist sense, is clinging to thoughts, feelings, people, objects, anything that for the moment we invest with a sense of permanence. Suffering arises because nothing is permanent, so we experience loss when we come to depend on something always being a certain way. Non-attachment frees us from how we want the world to be, and allows us to be in the world that actually is.
  In psychology, or at least how I approach it, 'attachment' is the basis for emotional and relational health. The safety and reliability of our earliest caregivers become the foundation for later development. Our inner world of expectations and trust shape subsequent relations with the self, others, and the world.
   One could state that non-attachment in the Buddhist sense is not possible without attachment being achieved in the psychological sense. We need a profound and preverbal confidence in ourselves and the world (and our teacher, I might add) to make that vast leap of letting go.
    The really painful and disorienting miles on the spiritual path can also be seen as a letting go of the failed relationships that betrayed us, and turning our focus to whole of reality, including our experience, and allowing that to be the basis of our (psychological) attachment. From that newfound confidence, we can let go, knowing that letting go is not an abandonment but an acceptance. As Dogen put it, "to carry yourself forward and illuminate the myriad things... is delusion...that the myriad things come forth and illuminate themselves is awakening..." (see this for a helpful discussion of this aspect of Dogen's thought).
  
   The unexpected is the great teacher. When we seek to tighten control over much of our lives, the effort casts a shadow. That shadow is our inability to accept, or even see (!), what we don't expect. The pile of un-lived, unacknowledged life piles up in our darkness, and one day, topples over us.
   In this respect, we deny certain parts of reality because we can't deal with it, because we haven't the confidence (based on prior experience) that we can accept it without being overwhelmed. So it piles up and up, until it can't be denied any longer. But that can go on a long time.
 
 

Blue Mountain Zendo

    Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting the Blue Mountain Zendo. It is a tiny place, tucked in a quirky little village on the edge of Allentown, PA, astride the 6oo acre Lehigh University forest preserve. Instead of going through west part of town to get there I drove the two or three miles on the edge of the preserve along the Lehigh River and the freight rail. The big river appeared in flashes through the dense trees, and after a while, the asphalt gives way to gravel and the road drops down to the railroad bed. Then the road rises again for awhile, all wooded, until I popped out into an uphill, winding street dense with older, narrow houses. The zendo is the best kept house on the block.
    Joriki Dat Baker greeted me, and we sat down for tea. One of his most senior students joined us, and we shared our stories: mine of the school and my practice, his of the zendo and his practice. Joriki is a perceptive, inviting man, easy to laugh and wears his deep study lightly. None of that "stink of Zen" here.
   They used to be in Bethlehem; I had gone to a few meditation sessions there. But this modest little place had the feel of community rooted in Zen practice... it felt right.

   Over the next few weeks I hope we can a establish a bond between TAS and Blue Mountain. They offer sesshin, weekly services, a small residential training, and face to face teaching. Any of you, dear readers, who wish to know more can contact me or drop in at their website.