Alan Watts on Attachment and Love
Monday, October 7, 2013 at 10:45AM From The Fundamental I, part of the Out of Your Mind lecture series.
So you see, there’s really nothing to worry about. Cause’ the – the important you is perfectly indestructible; it’s what there is. Our comings and goings, our fortunes and misfortunes are a sort of mirage. The more we know about them -- the more we know about the world, the more diaphanous it seems, and therefore everything in the world has the characteristics of smoke; you know when you blow a cigarette or pipe or something and a cloud of some and you see it in the sunbeam, and it’s full of whorls and designs and all kinds of marvelous things going on, and then slowly it disappears. Well everything’s just like that.
You know there are two attitudes you can take to that state of affairs. You can say, “sour grapes, it’s all a lousy, wretched trap. And I – here I am and I’m given all these feelings of love and attachment and joy of life, and then I fall apart. My teeth drop out, my eyes become feeble, I get cancer or cirrhosis of the liver or something, and then it all falls apart, and it’s too bad." Therefore, therefore don’t become attached to things, don’t enjoy life. Treat it, holding it off like that – just like a very, very firm person who’s been jilted and says, "never again will I get mixed up with love because love hurts.”
But on the other hand, a weaving of smoke can be very beautiful, provided you don’t lean on it, provided you don’t try to preserve it, catch hold of it – then you destroy it. So exactly the same way -- there’s nothing in the way of form that you can lean on, that you can grasp. And if you see that, then the world of form is very beautiful. If you let it go.
To love people, you see, if you’re husband and wife, you must let each other go. Otherwise the marriage is either going to break up, or it’s going to be hell. If you love a person, you say to that person, “Look. I love you, whatever that may be – I’ve seen quite a bit of it, and I know there’s lots that I haven’t seen, but still it’s you and I want you to be what you want to be, and I won’t be happy if I’ve got you in a cage – you’d be a bird without song.” And they’re likely to go on loving each other.
A separate/related quote on love to boot:
Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.
-Jiddu Krishnamurti
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