Lucia Lloyd’s sermon: Camels, Needles, and Attachments
Sept 8, 2019
Proper 23, Year C
Luke 14:25-33
It’s a tough gospel passage today, isn’t it? So let’s approach it from an entirely different angle. Anthony De Mello, in a brief essay entitled “The Eye of a Needle” asks,
“What can one do to attain happiness? There is nothing you or anyone else can do. Why? For the simple reason that you are already happy right now. So, how can you acquire what you already have? If that is so, why do you not experience this happiness which is already yours? Because your mind is creating unhappiness all the time. Drop this unhappiness of your mind and the happiness that has always been yours will instantly surface. How does one drop unhappiness? Find out what is causing it and look at the cause unflinchingly. It will automatically drop.
“Now if you look carefully, you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is Attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy. This emotional state of clinging is composed of two elements, one positive and the other negative. The positive element is the flash of pleasure and excitement, the thrill that you experience when you get what you are attached to. The negative element is the sense of threat and tension that always accompanies the attachment. Think of someone gobbling up food in a concentration camp; with one hand he brings the food to his mouth, with the other he protects it from neighbors who will grab it from him the moment he lowers his guard. There you have the perfect image of the attached person. So an attachment by its very nature makes you vulnerable to emotional turmoil and is always threatening to shatter your peace. So how can you expect an attached person to enter that ocean of happiness called the kingdom of God? As well expect a camel to pass through the eye of a needle!”
These things that De Mello is saying about attachments may be things we associate with Buddhism in general and Zen Buddhism in particular. It may be that we have become so accustomed to the teachings of Jesus, or at least the common interpretations of the teachings of Jesus, that we no longer hear how striking Jesus’ teachings actually are. But Jesus has been teaching us about attachments all along, as De Mello reminds us with this reference to Jesus’ teaching that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. And if we feel some resistance to those teachings, De Mello points out a few things to us:
“Now the tragedy of an attachment is that if its object is not attained it causes unhappiness. But if it is attained, it does not cause happiness—it merely causes a flash of pleasure followed by weariness; and it is always accompanied, of course, by the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment. You will say, ‘Can’t I keep just one attachment?’ Of course. You can keep as many as you want. But for each attachment you pay a price in lost happiness. Think of this: The nature of attachments is such, that even if you satisfy many of them in the course of a single day, the one attachment that was not satisfied will prey upon your mind and make you unhappy. There is no way to win the battle of attachments. As well search for water without wetness as for an attachment without unhappiness. No one has ever lived who has come up with a formula for keeping the objects of one’s attachments without struggle, anxiety, fear, and sooner or later, defeat.”
De Mello is onto something here. The cause of our unhappiness really is that simple: we want what we don’t have, and even when we have what we want, we are always afraid and worried we might lose what we do have. And the fact remains that our mortal lives have losses over and over again. Does this mean we are supposed to become cold and uncaring? I don’t think so. In fact, I have known people who have come through devastating losses and emerged from them with a depth of graciousness, compassion, peace, and even joy that wasn’t there before the losses. They are able to offer love freely and to enjoy love freely without clinging and with very little stress. The thought that it is impossible to be happy without a particular thing or without a particular person is very common, but it can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I expect the people who discover that it is possible for them to be happy again after the loss of a particular thing or a particular person, are those who are open to the idea that it is possible, and so they do find happiness again.
De Mello talks about how to go about that: “There is only one way to win the battle of attachments. Drop them. Contrary to popular belief, dropping attachments is easy. All you have to do is see, but really see, the following truths. First truth: you are holding on to a false belief, namely, the belief that without this particular person or thing you will not be happy. Take your attachments one at a time and see the falseness of this belief. You may encounter resistance from your heart, but the moment you do see, there will be an immediate emotional result. At that very instant the attachment loses its force. Second truth: If you just enjoy things, refusing to let yourself be attached to them, that is, refusing to hold the false belief that you will not be happy without them, you are spared all the struggle and emotional strain of protecting them and guarding them for yourself. Has it occurred to you that you can keep all the objects of your attachments without giving them up, without renouncing a single one of them and you can enjoy them even more on a nonattachment, a nonclinging basis, because you are peaceful now and relaxed and unthreatened in your enjoyment of them? The third and final truth: If you learn to enjoy the scent of a thousand flowers you will not cling to one or suffer when you cannot get it. If you have a thousand favorite dishes, the loss of one will go unnoticed and leave your happiness unimpaired. But it is precisely your attachments that prevent you from developing a wider and more varied taste for things and people.”
De Mello provides this conclusion: “In the light of these three truths no attachment can survive. But the light must shine uninterruptedly if it is to be effective. Attachments can only thrive in the darkness of illusion. The rich man cannot enter the kingdom of joy not because he wants to be bad but because he chooses to be blind.”
So now we have come to the final sermon in our sermon series on things Jesus says you don’t have to do. We thought we had to be attached to things and to people. We have been clinging to our attachments so strongly and for so many years that we did not know there was any other way of living. Then Jesus shows up and says, “No, you don’t have to. You don’t have to be attached to things. You don’t even have to be attached to any of your own possessions. You don’t have to be attached to people. You don’t even have to be attached to father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself.” You don’t have to cling to any of those things, you don’t have to cling to any of those people, you don’t have to cling to your life. You can be nonattached to all those things and still be just fine, better than fine; you can be free, joyful, loving, ready to follow me into the kingdom of God. It sounds at first like a tough gospel passage. Until we consider that maybe it’s our worries and our stresses and our miseries about our losses and our fears about the future that are the tough part, and what Jesus is offering us is liberation and joy.
“What can one do to attain happiness? There is nothing you or anyone else can do. Why? For the simple reason that you are already happy right now. So, how can you acquire what you already have? If that is so, why do you not experience this happiness which is already yours? Because your mind is creating unhappiness all the time. Drop this unhappiness of your mind and the happiness that has always been yours will instantly surface. How does one drop unhappiness? Find out what is causing it and look at the cause unflinchingly. It will automatically drop.
“Now if you look carefully, you will see that there is one thing and only one thing that causes unhappiness. The name of that thing is Attachment. What is an attachment? An emotional state of clinging caused by the belief that without some particular thing or some person you cannot be happy. This emotional state of clinging is composed of two elements, one positive and the other negative. The positive element is the flash of pleasure and excitement, the thrill that you experience when you get what you are attached to. The negative element is the sense of threat and tension that always accompanies the attachment. Think of someone gobbling up food in a concentration camp; with one hand he brings the food to his mouth, with the other he protects it from neighbors who will grab it from him the moment he lowers his guard. There you have the perfect image of the attached person. So an attachment by its very nature makes you vulnerable to emotional turmoil and is always threatening to shatter your peace. So how can you expect an attached person to enter that ocean of happiness called the kingdom of God? As well expect a camel to pass through the eye of a needle!”
These things that De Mello is saying about attachments may be things we associate with Buddhism in general and Zen Buddhism in particular. It may be that we have become so accustomed to the teachings of Jesus, or at least the common interpretations of the teachings of Jesus, that we no longer hear how striking Jesus’ teachings actually are. But Jesus has been teaching us about attachments all along, as De Mello reminds us with this reference to Jesus’ teaching that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. And if we feel some resistance to those teachings, De Mello points out a few things to us:
“Now the tragedy of an attachment is that if its object is not attained it causes unhappiness. But if it is attained, it does not cause happiness—it merely causes a flash of pleasure followed by weariness; and it is always accompanied, of course, by the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment. You will say, ‘Can’t I keep just one attachment?’ Of course. You can keep as many as you want. But for each attachment you pay a price in lost happiness. Think of this: The nature of attachments is such, that even if you satisfy many of them in the course of a single day, the one attachment that was not satisfied will prey upon your mind and make you unhappy. There is no way to win the battle of attachments. As well search for water without wetness as for an attachment without unhappiness. No one has ever lived who has come up with a formula for keeping the objects of one’s attachments without struggle, anxiety, fear, and sooner or later, defeat.”
De Mello is onto something here. The cause of our unhappiness really is that simple: we want what we don’t have, and even when we have what we want, we are always afraid and worried we might lose what we do have. And the fact remains that our mortal lives have losses over and over again. Does this mean we are supposed to become cold and uncaring? I don’t think so. In fact, I have known people who have come through devastating losses and emerged from them with a depth of graciousness, compassion, peace, and even joy that wasn’t there before the losses. They are able to offer love freely and to enjoy love freely without clinging and with very little stress. The thought that it is impossible to be happy without a particular thing or without a particular person is very common, but it can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I expect the people who discover that it is possible for them to be happy again after the loss of a particular thing or a particular person, are those who are open to the idea that it is possible, and so they do find happiness again.
De Mello talks about how to go about that: “There is only one way to win the battle of attachments. Drop them. Contrary to popular belief, dropping attachments is easy. All you have to do is see, but really see, the following truths. First truth: you are holding on to a false belief, namely, the belief that without this particular person or thing you will not be happy. Take your attachments one at a time and see the falseness of this belief. You may encounter resistance from your heart, but the moment you do see, there will be an immediate emotional result. At that very instant the attachment loses its force. Second truth: If you just enjoy things, refusing to let yourself be attached to them, that is, refusing to hold the false belief that you will not be happy without them, you are spared all the struggle and emotional strain of protecting them and guarding them for yourself. Has it occurred to you that you can keep all the objects of your attachments without giving them up, without renouncing a single one of them and you can enjoy them even more on a nonattachment, a nonclinging basis, because you are peaceful now and relaxed and unthreatened in your enjoyment of them? The third and final truth: If you learn to enjoy the scent of a thousand flowers you will not cling to one or suffer when you cannot get it. If you have a thousand favorite dishes, the loss of one will go unnoticed and leave your happiness unimpaired. But it is precisely your attachments that prevent you from developing a wider and more varied taste for things and people.”
De Mello provides this conclusion: “In the light of these three truths no attachment can survive. But the light must shine uninterruptedly if it is to be effective. Attachments can only thrive in the darkness of illusion. The rich man cannot enter the kingdom of joy not because he wants to be bad but because he chooses to be blind.”
So now we have come to the final sermon in our sermon series on things Jesus says you don’t have to do. We thought we had to be attached to things and to people. We have been clinging to our attachments so strongly and for so many years that we did not know there was any other way of living. Then Jesus shows up and says, “No, you don’t have to. You don’t have to be attached to things. You don’t even have to be attached to any of your own possessions. You don’t have to be attached to people. You don’t even have to be attached to father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself.” You don’t have to cling to any of those things, you don’t have to cling to any of those people, you don’t have to cling to your life. You can be nonattached to all those things and still be just fine, better than fine; you can be free, joyful, loving, ready to follow me into the kingdom of God. It sounds at first like a tough gospel passage. Until we consider that maybe it’s our worries and our stresses and our miseries about our losses and our fears about the future that are the tough part, and what Jesus is offering us is liberation and joy.
