The Thirst for Attachment (the truth of Tanha)

2014.03.21 thirst for attachment

From my lecture this week:

• Buddha articulated the second noble truth, the truth of Tanha (thirst, craving, unsatisfied longing, the will to live).
• Buddhists often use the analogy of a flame to describe the burning desire of Tanha.
•  Tanha is also a thirst for attachment, ideals, views, opinions, theories, conceptions, beliefs

I am sitting at FIU taking a short break. I realize that my date with a very nice person last week caused me to open a little window of hope in my heart for a romantic attachment, and it quickly released an emotional floodgate, ultimately resulting in depression. It has been a rough week. Now I have to put the genie back into the bottle = let go of any attachment to outcomes and embrace being alone again, or non-attachment.

I have already gone through an excruciating process of letting go of my attachment to “ideals, views, opinions, theories, conceptions, beliefs” as well as ministry and mission. What else? My own personal “hero myth”? …. The Christian missionary action figure who saves the world …. (sigh …smh).

I have to let the thirst for attachment die in me …. How can I reprocess that? How can I change my focus?

This is good, I never thought that Buddhism could be so helpful for me on a personal level.

This reminds me of the conversation between Jesus and a Samaritan woman in the gospel of John, chapter 4

¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

¹¹ “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

¹³ Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Maybe there is more I need to learn about the living water which should, theoretically, be springing up within me.