When did you last laugh without a care, when did you not bother what life brought your way, when did you last trust that you would be taken care of irrespective of what you do? There is an innocence – implicit trust in people & things around us when we are children. We lose the same in the process of growing up. Some learn it the hard way and some simply observe the parents, family and surroundings and make up their response to life – which is mostly based on distrust.
They say if a mirror is shattered it cannot reflect a normal image again. Thats what is done to our trust by us and others around us. The question is how do you get back this trust. The answer is never, it was good till it lasted. It has been lost and the process of losing is called experience which when acted upon gets to be wisdom at some stage and makes us worldly wise which is essential for survival. We go out in the world with this broken mirror of ours and the images we see are obviously distorted and so then is our response and then we wonder what is going wrong with our lives. Unfortunately we know no better, so this cycle perpetuates and distrust, as a value, gets deeply ingrained instead of trust which is the foundation of love and faith.
So how do we proceed in such a situation where it is essential to be worldly wise for survival in this world but it is essential to have trust in relations which cannot otherwise blossom. The answer lies in first making yourself independent – as in remove all dependencies (attachments) you have of the world around you. Now you may say that this is actually deepening the distrust but in detachment lies the answer. Detachment means that you are not dependent on any person, thing, event to bring you joy, you choose to be joyful and loving anyways. In detachment is the path towards realising that there was no mirror in the first place and that you and the existence are One. Like it or not thats the process: from dependence you practice independence whilst sharing love & joy with everyone around you and then you move on to interdependence.
The fad of minimalistic living which is catching up these days is based on this concept of detachment and is actually pratyahara in the yogic terminology. Try it, perhaps you may smile again like the children in the picture, without worries or cares and experience return to innocence….
Bodhisattva 