Is Awakening The End of Attachment?

In January there was a fire in my house. It took half an hour between me calling out the fire service and them putting the fire out, but in that half an hour my life dramatically changed.

I lost the majority of my possessions and had to move home as the house was inhabitable. This was a stark lesson in the temporal nature of everything!

I was checked out for smoke inhalation damage by the paramedics. My blood pressure had rose – a sign that my body was in shock, but I also felt very calm and unworried about the whole thing.

I could have died in the fire. My possessions were gone. Strangely enough none of this seemed to matter. I was alive, well and breathing normally. Stuff was happening, but it was not happening to me, the essential nature of who I am.

The awakened mind is not a mind that feels no emotion. There is joy as well as sorrow – but what there is no clinging to the emotions.  For a few days after the fire I would awake at night with images of the fire in my mind. I would allow these images to stay for a while, then go back to sleep. At no time did it occur to me to say to myself how terrible, how tragic!

Possessions are temporary things, they arrive in your life, they go from your life. They are not the source of happiness. Allow them to come then allow them to go.

Awakening is not the complete end of attachment. There are still things that I cling to. The difference in my life now is that when they are taken away, there is less pain at them leaving. There much more acceptance of what is happening.  So much of the time what is happening you cannot do anything about anyway. All you can do is accept what is. I tried to put the fire out, but it got so fierce that I had to leave the house. Then all I could do was sit down in the grass opposite my house and just witness the progress of the fire and the arrival of the fire engine.

The mind is sometimes like the fire – it can rage and burn. Allow it to be, observe its games. None of this is happening to you.