Sankharas: I only Love Myself- a lesson in Attachment

The beginning stages of love can be a real bitch. I’m gonna be a little blunt here, but I’ll back it up with spiritual science. I just got off a 12 day Vipassana Meditation here at my house and I noticed something really interesting.

Om.....

I did the 12 days in the back part of the house, separate from the other roommates. But we did have to share the common kitchen area, near my meditation area. Twice during this meditation a full day would go by with a massive wave of Attachment Energy that would arise to the surface of my Mind and become this wall of negativity. It was so over-powering. 

This wall of Attachment would try to make me attach to anything and everything it could to make me get really pissed about something. Heck, that’s the Program of ego-energy! It makes you attach to things. It's all the same, whether you call it Ego, negative energy, metal impurities, or Programs (for all you guys in Personal Development-Land).

Anyways, my roommates would come downstairs and obviously have to use the kitchen to cook from time to time, and I would hear it through the door. Sometimes one of them would cackle on the phone to a friend or make coffee all day long, wake up late, or practice some form of spirituality that I ‘knew’ was not the form they should be practicing for their unique life-challenges. And this wave of Attachment would over-power me and make me place all my hatred and anger onto this poor roommate of mine.

It wasn’t that they were doing anything wrong. They were just living. But attachment is attachment, and when it’s chissled away from the depths of the mind and allowed to come up to the surface (that’s how it works in sensation-based Vipassana), then you gotta fight really hard to remain equanimous and balanced through this wave of Ego that arises.

Gotama Buddha

What is this Attachment?

Buddha called them ‘Sankharas’, or mental volitions. They are the mental reaction patterns of the mind when we go unconscious and react towards something. Whether we react with tension, anger, jealousy, happiness, depression, etc, attachment is attachment, and these Sankharas build up in the Mind Energy and over time solidify as a habit-pattern that makes us react a particular way again and again until we vow to change that pattern. 

Wow, that's mouthful. Did you get that?

So it wasn’t my roommate at all! It was that I had awakened all these Sankharas, and now, due to past conditioning of my mind, my roommates became the object of my attachment and judgment. A full day would go by and then my roommate would do something very special, like buy me food and leave it in the fridge for my lunch. I would almost start crying, because I’d realize how poisoned my mind was and what an asshole I was for wanting to cut her head off just one day before.

So where am I going with this?

Well 2,500 years ago, Gotama Buddha was teaching Vipassana Meditation to millions across northern India. One day, a king and queen were meditating in their castle, when the King received some insight. He realized he only loved himself. So he asked his Queen, his wife.

“Whom do you love the most?”

The Queen answered, “Well, I received the same insight during my meditation, and I realized I too only love myself!”

Both King and Queen told the Buddha of their experience, and the Buddha smiled in approval.

What had happened was that the King and Queen had 'cut through' all of their Attachment (their sankharas) during their meditation to see clearly their love for one another. And in this state free from attachment, they realized they only loved themselves, because saying, “I love you,” meant that you wanted something of another person. It was love with Attachment, rather than love free from attachment (one-way traffic love)!

In other words, there was no Attachment Energy left in their minds to feel attached to each other. It was detached and joyful love, which is ultimately the highest kind of love. In this state, one Gives to the other without needing something in return. No lust, no passion. And that only comes when you fully love yourself and are free from fear or free from this Attachment energy that makes us grip to anything around us for existence. 

a sweet meditation cabin i found on google images :)

So I’m almost to the point of this article....

I’ve come to realize that the beginning states of Love (the infatuation stage) are only a wave of over-powering passion-filled Attachment Energy that arises from the bowels of our minds and surfaces as an explosive craving to be with the object of our attachment (ie: the chick we totally dig!). It doesn’t matter who it is!

I must have fallen for about 4 women in the past 2 years, and in each case, there was a massive wave of attachment energy that would cause me to think incessantly about that person and dwell on the ‘what ifs’ and future that hadn’t even happened. It was all illusion! And maybe only 1 of those girls were actually Mrs. Right.

In each case, within a week, the object of my attachment (the woman) would move on and I'd be stuck with this attachment in the form of Love Desire.

So....
After that 12-day vipassana self-course meditation and watching my mind grip towards my roommate for doing something trivial, and me focusing all my mind’s attention on it until I’d almost burn a hole right through her (figuratively speaking), I see how this is the exact same Energy that arises in my mind when the object becomes a potential future lover.

And Fuck that sucks!

(as I clear my non-enlightened throat).

So I find that my BIGGEST recent challenge has been when I am anticipating a new lover coming into my life. Soon after this anticipation (the Buddha called this, "Clinging"), attachment begins to arise ("Craving"), as I imagine myself with almost every girl I meet. Then finally, my attention focuses like a laser on One Particular Person as the object of my desire. 

For all I know, maybe she’s the farthest thing from the person I actually need in my life. But my mind has fixated on it, so I’m lost in the over-powering, swift, perverted current of the river called attachment.

Sure enough, just as fast as the attachment for a lady comes, it goes! Just like it did with my roommates in the kitchen as I sat meditating 12 days for 10 hours a day. Attachment would arise, find something to fixate on, grab onto it, try to over-power me, then dissolve sometime later. 

It was always up to me to keep my mind equanimously focused on the meditation. This would fully dissolve those sankharas within 24 hours. (What's scientifically happening with these “Sankharas”, or old habit patterns of the mind, is that these unnatural energy vibrations of the mind are being re-written with healthier energy vibrations in each vipassana meditation.)

So it’s the same story for my infatuations. I have to remain as balanced as possible through the arising of the attachment and subsequent fixation. If she’s the right one for me, then I know that she’ll still be there after the Attachment storm has passed.

And when it passes, again I’ll be left with the Truth that both King and Queen had during that meditation 2,500 years ago; the realization that “I only love myself.”

Look, Ma, no attachment!

May you all be happy, healthy, Peaceful, and liberated. 

Love your partner without Attachment. Do things for them without needing anything in return. Remember, at the depths of the Mind, you only love yourself, because you are the only one you're accountable for.

Jan Tijmes

The John Positive Company

Walkabout Liberation

c2011

A website about one’s travels to purify the Mind of all Attachment, for Awakening and Liberation.
Vipassana is a form of meditation that allows for a person to release tension, fear, and judgment energies from one's mind at very fast and deep levels.