Attachment

One of the ideals in Hinduism is detachment. Detachment from the fruits of one's actions, detachment from life because it is not ultimate reality.

It's a really tricky thing to come to terms with.

On the one hand, lack of attachment saves one from pain. If we were enlightened (supposedly) we would enjoy people and objects while we had them, love them thoroughly, and also be fine when they were not with us. Things come and go, but really, as our universal Selves, everything is with us and everything is in us.

The trouble is that the idea of being detached from one's family and friends, from one's spouse and children, sounds horribly inhuman. It sounds cold and cruel.

This is a topic of frequent discussion at my study group. What does it really mean to be detached? Does it mean that we don't care? Does it mean that we don't stop bad things from happening because we should not care about the result of our action?

This is a subject that I think could take lifetimes to come to grips with.

However, I had a moment of insight the other day because I was reading a book a friend lent me about codependency. This is a psychological term that is often applied to the spouses of addicts. There is a tendency in those who love alcoholics or drug addicts to become overly involved in the addict's life, to try to fix him or her and ease their pain by taking away the addict's responsibility. There is a chapter in the book about detachment.

I was moved by a quote from a member of Al-anon, which is a sister group to AA (alcoholics anonymous) specifically for those whose lives are affected by alcoholics or other addicts. This person said, "Detachment is not detaching from the person whom we care about, but from the agony of involvement."

I think that is pretty profound and gave me a different perspective on what attachment and detachment are.

It's a concept I will still struggle with and keep refining my understanding of. I look forward to reading the rest of this book for more insight. It is called Codependent No More, it's a classic in this field.

Comments

I'm sorry to say that I have set up comment moderation. Your comments will now not show up until after I have reviewed and approved them. You also will no longer be able to comment anonymously. I hope that this won't cause problems, please email me if you have concerns about it: aambablog@gmail.com

I know that my friends here understand that while the Internet is an open forum of many different ideas, this blog is my space and I need to control the message. I don't wish to silence anyone who has legitimate questions, concerns, or objections.

If you keep the language clean and polite, then I will certainly publish contrary opinions and allow for a friendly debate.

I will not publish comments with name-calling, excessive capital letters, or personal attacks.

Please remember, my firm belief is that we are all family and we should treat each other with the love, respect, and dignity that we show to our most beloved family members.

*****
Oh, and on a different note, I wanted to mention that you'll now see a third blog listed on my profile. In case anyone sees that and is confused, I decided to set up another blog for yet another of my passions in life. I have this one for my religion and I have one for my knitting, my third big passion in life is disability rights. I know that seems a bit...different...from the other things you see around here, but it is another side of me. I get easily frustrated and angry about injustices I see against people who have disabilities, so I express rants calling out those behaviors on that blog.

How to Wear a Sari

Let's lighten things up for a bit, shall we?

I promised a while back to post information about how to wear a sari for those who don't know or are intimidated by it.

As it turns out, I don't have to put up directions and take pictures, etc. because I just found a wonderful YouTube video for it. It looks like these girls are developing a website with useful information for young Indian women. I'll be keeping an eye on their videos!

From Pakistani to American

I was reading the Gori Wife Life blog and she had a funny post about how her Pakistani husband is embracing the culture of the American South.

"I come from The South but my Pakistani born and bred husband seems to be working harder on embodying the typical redneck persona."

http://thegoriwifelife.blogspot.com/2010/12/southern-pakistani.html

I think a lot of people enjoy testing out other cultures and it's great when we can feel comfortable adopting the parts that we like, that make sense to us. And when it's a culture that we weren't born to, we do put a lot of effort into it!

Race

There was a comment yesterday on one of my older posts that I wanted to address. Here is the comment and my response to it:

Svaha said...
Ambaa,
Why call yourself a "white" Hindu? Why is skin color so important as a means of identifying yourself? Sanatana Dharma is about unity, not separateness. Its not about the externalization of God, but the recognition of universal and internalized divinity. Its great that you want to identify yourself as a "Hindu" (whatever that means), but please do not insult our core religious beliefs by bringing confused notions of race and skin color into the mix.
December 27, 2010 1:32 AM

Aamba said...
Well, Svaha, the reason I named the blog White Hindu is because at the time I felt that it was my skin color that was keeping me from being accepted as fully Hindu. It was extremely frustrating to me, so this was a way of taking back that word, taking control over how people see me.

However, in the year since I've kept the blog, I have become more and more entrenched in Hinduism and have found the acceptance I was looking for. I now rarely feel kept back and taken less seriously because of my skin color, though it does still sometimes happen.

The other reason to put race into it is that this is not a blog about the definition of Hinduism, it is a blog about the intersection of culture and religion and ethnicity. That is the issue I am interested in exploring.

How are religion and ethnicity related? How do people perceive them? How does one move into a religion that was not given to him or her by ethnicity?
December 28, 2010 2:45 PM

The thing is, this blog is about race. I'm not interested in pretending that we don't somewhat judge each other based on ethnicity. It happens, it is part of our world.

Yes, Hinduism is universal and accepts all people as equally a part of God, but that is not always how it is practiced. People are still imperfect and do judge one another and make assumptions about one another.

I am confident and sure of my religion. It has been part of me all of my life. What I came to the Internet to explore is the cultural aspect of Hinduism and how I might fit in there.

I think my skin color is relevant to this discussion and I don't think that it is a confused notion of race. Different races exist and we are all still trying to figure out what that means and how it effects our lives.

There are many who are uncomfortable when we label ourselves by ethnicity. I do not label myself as white in order to keep others back or to separate myself. I would rather not be separate, but many times I still am. I felt that my skin color was an elephant in the room, as the expression goes. No one wants to mention it or acknowledge it, and yet it has an effect on how I am perceived.

People wonder about me and question me in ways that I don't think they would if I were Indian.

They think, "Who does she think she is?" They think the same things they think when they see a white rapper with cornrows!

That is what fascinates me. Expectation v.s. reality.

I'm sorry to people who are made uncomfortable by my direct reference to race, but that is exactly what this blog is about: what it means to be a non-Indian Hindu.

Christmas

I am back from the land of Bible quotes on gas station price boards, billboards for Christian radio stations, and ads for churches on TV and at the movies!

Everything went really well, actually.

I had told one cousin about being Hindu and the news had spread, though no one had a problem with it. The only reason I knew that the cat was out of the bag, as it were, was when we were having pizza for dinner one night.

My uncle was trying to convince me to try a new flavor of pizza and he said, "If you try it, you'll be saying 'Praise Jesus, that's good pizza.'" It's just an expression he uses, and then he stopped and said, "Or, 'Praise Shiva.'"

I was very surprised!

I had some conversations about it and as I said before, everything was really positive. My brother even chimed in at one point and shared his view that the resurrection of Christ is really just an example of reincarnation. The thing that made it special was only that he knew he had been reborn and most of us don't. That surprised me too, since my brother rarely weighs in on religious topics, it doesn't seem to interest him much. He also said that he doesn't see why anyone needs to pick one.

I'm glad for him and my parents that they do not feel a need to choose between Christianity and Hinduism, but I obviously do feel that need!

It was lovely to see my family, whom I love dearly. I wanted to visit our friend Kat, but a surprise snow storm made the roads impossible to drive for a day and a half!

But now I'm back safe and sound and ready for the next adventure.

My parents

My mom just sent me this article about Sanskrit Day in Boston. She and my Dad are in some of the pictures!


Sanskrit enthusiasts celebrate language | Articles | INDIA New England

This is them here:


I'm so proud of them!

(The other non-Indian couple in the pictures are friends of my parents, they have all been studying together for more than thirty years now)