Picture from last summer.  It’s the same sun, though.

Ryuho Okawa repeatedly writes about the danger of attachment. (Of the mind, not in e-mail. Perhaps I should write about that one day…)

Lately I have noticed that I am starting to look forward to reading his books in the morning. (Commute is my primary reading time.) So, starting last Friday, I am switching to Huston Smith for a while. I have had his autobiography for weeks or more now without getting started on it.

After I wrote this, the voices in my head started playing a song by Chris de Burgh, that starts like this:
“There is something on my mind
And I’m losing concentration…”
Checking. It is When I think of you from the album Quiet Revolution. It is basically a love song on behalf of the mentally challenged or extremely inexperienced. Relax, I don’t love Okawa that way! But the song is indeed a hilarious example of attachment. I must commend my invisible friend subconscious for excellent taste in entertainment. Of course, it is roughly the same taste as me, since it is me in a sense. Or the other way around.  Anyway, you can listen to it on YouTube or from my record collection while thinking “this is your brain on attachments”. In that perspective it is quite enlightening.

For contrast, the same CD has a much more mature love song, which is a pretty good example of  “love that gives”.  Love that gives is not an attachment. In the Greek Bible, there were 3 words for love, in Japanese there are two, so it is a local and temporary problem that we are mixing up our loves.  If we think of them as “love that gives” vs “love that takes”, it is pretty easy to tell them apart.  If you listen to it on YouTube or from my record collection while thinking “this is your brain on real love”, it should make sense.

“And if you’re crying inside, remember that I will be here;
and like the same sun that’s rising on the valley with the dawn
I will walk with your shadow and keep you warm;
and like the same moon that’s shining through my window here tonight
I will watch in your darkness and bring you safely to the morning light.”

See how the focus has shifted from “me, me, me” to “you”.  In the first song, it is the “I” who is on the receiving end, who is the subject and the center of attention.  But in the second song, the “I” has become an object, or more exactly a servant, a source of love, hope, strength and courage. And even a love that transcends distance and time itself.  This is what we seek to become.  Light willing.