““A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.””
Previously we looked at our relationship to the impermanence of the physical world. Most of us don’t like that everything comes and goes. Our discomfort leads us to attach or cling to external and internal objects believing they will steady the unsteady nature of experience. However, we suffer when we find out that our attachments also come and go. So, letting go in this case is about releasing our attachments and reclaiming the sense of our universality. Each of us are an integral expression of the ever changing being-ness.
We can also see attachments as we look at our relationship with the interdependence of all things. Simply put, this means that nothing exists independently of anything else. A wooden table is not separate from all the things that helped the tree to grow, the people who harvested the tree, the designer that imagined its use, the craftsman who fashioned the table, the shops that sells the table, the people who buy it, the people who will dispose of it, and the earth that will welcome it back. The table is one expression of the interdependence.
We, too, are a part of a broad and expansive universe of possibilities and changes. However, very early in our development we start to deduce (erroneously) that we are, in fact, separate from everything else. This might begin as we realize we are not our parents, we are not our crib, and so on. We feel we are not part any of the objects we perceive and that they are separate in and of themselves. One side effect of believing in our own separateness is a sense of isolation. So, again we attach to things to alleviate our isolated, alone feelings. We create an feeling of ownership of things we grasp and call them “ours” and “mine. Letting go here is also about releasing our attachments and assumed ownership of experience and reawakening to the fact we are far from separate. We are really among the limitless possibilities with everything and everyone.