Rise and shine readers! Wash your hands because we have a hardy plate of Thought Breakfast this morning. For our main course, we’re continuing this week’s theme by exploring the Christian and Buddhist concepts of detachment and love, and how they coincide. For our side dish, we’ll be considering my favorite paradox, Euthyphro’s Dilemma. To finish up, we’ll munch on Part Two of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Going Home, which unironically is called “Going Home.” Let’s get through this hump day thoughtfully. Thought Breakfast is served!

The passed couple days, I’ve thrown around terms like attachment, detachment, agape, and compassion. It’s easy to get caught up in these concepts, but let’s dive into what they really mean.

The Buddhists warn against having attachments (tanhā) as they are the root of all suffering (dukkha). This is a broad, complex topic that is covered by many many books, so I’m gonna try to sum it up in the best way possible. When you experience suffering, you call it your suffering. By identifying with your suffering, you are holding onto it, thus keeping it around for longer. This concept can be cast onto any emotion, feeling, or notion. Consider your attachments; what can’t you live without? What makes you feel uneasy? What makes you anxious just thinking about?

We cling to people, experiences, results, and ideas. Through this clinging, we give impermanent things the impossible pressure of permanence in our minds. We want certain things to happen and last forever, but that doesn’t happen in nature. So in the concept of love, you actually need to let go. The Buddhist idea of love is simply compassion. More so, it’s compassion without clinging. So to love completely in Buddhism, you have to love with awareness; knowing that all beings and things are interdependent, already complete, and impermanent. Once you drop this “clinging,” compassion arises. That compassion is the true and raw form of love.

In Christianity, there exists a similar concept. However, where Buddhists warn us against attachment, Christians warn against idolatry. Idolatry is when we cling to created things with no regard for the creator. There exists in Christianity the idea of Caritas, meaning charity or divine love. The worldview under this idea is that you should see everything as floating out of and returning back to God. The idea goes further, however. Christianity, in its logical western style philosophy, recognizes that we our incapable as mortal humans of doing away with our desires. They exist because God gave us the function to desire, so they must serve a purpose. However, this leads to almost a higher form of love than the Buddhist compassion.

Christians turn to the idea of agape; willing the good for another free of any benefit toward you. At it’s deepest level, agape is what happens when your will aligns with God’s, which is the true and highest form of love and being that can be comprehended by the human mind.

St. Augustine says in his Confessions, “He loves you too little, who loves anything together with you which he loves not for your sake.” (Confessions X (29))

Both of these traditions posit that the obstacle in front of all humans searching for true love is the ego; the false sense of self that calls everything “mine.” Once this clinging comes to an end, what follows is pure divine love for everyone and every thing.

“Does God love things because they’re holy? Or are things holy because God loves them?”

This is a concept that philosophers have been wrestling with for centuries. If things are holy because God loves them, then that makes holiness, piety, even goodness arbitrary. But if God loves things because they’re holy, then that means holiness, piety, and goodness exist outside of God.

From the Christian standpoint of humility, I’d say the point isn’t to make a choice, but to ultimately realize that holiness or goodness are not contained by our linear language categories, but nonetheless will keep being holy or good.

Today’s book reflection will tie very close to the overarching theme of today. Coming back to Thich Nhat Hanh’s Going Home, there’s a section called Our True Home. Thây says,

“When we are mindful, fully living each moment of our daily lives, we msy realize that everyone and everything around us is our home. Isn’t it true that the air we breathe is our home, that the blue sky, the rivers, the mountains, the people around us, the trees, and the animals are our home? A wave looking deeply into herself will see that she is made up of all the other waves and will no longer feel she is cut off from everything around her.”

What a beautiful passage highlighting the beauty of the interconnectedness of nature. It’s true, the wave could not exist if it weren’t for the other waves; and once she realizes that, she will no longer feel disconnected.

So go through today remembering we wouldn’t be where we are if it weren’t for those around us. And just as so, those around us wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for us. Munch on that for today, and come back tomorrow ready for a steaming hot plate of thought breakfast.

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Remember to stay mindful, smell the flowers, and take it easy.

Chef Ricky - Thought Breakfast

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