Even if loss is inevitable, maybe the attachment is just a hope, a prayer, to delay that final goodbye… to stretch those moments of togetherness to the very edge of time.
Yes, attachment and care are not necessarily a negative movement. They are indeed a form of Sattwic love, which is certainly higher than the gross rajasic pride and attachment that wants things and people only for one’s advantage and benefits.
But if you look closely, you will be able to see the presence of egoism there. After all, we love certain people because either we are linked to them physically by birth and circumstance (a tamasic attachment) or by the sense of duty (a sattwic attachment). We may go to a great extent to take pains for them and their well-being but one does expect some kind of return, a subtle return of acknowledgement if nothing else. Besides, we want them to be near us because something in our emotional being draws some kind of a nourishment from them. We need them, true, but isn’t it more important to know what their soul needs? Perhaps it feels the need of transiting to another body and other circumstances more conducive to a new kind of experience needed for its growth. That is why it is said that the greatest act of love is to set one free.
But even beyond it there is a greater love, a Divine Love that leans over the world pain to heal it, it looks for the true and radical remedies for the human problem rather than temporary measures and having found them shares it with all, the love that sacrifices itself completely to fulfil the Divine Will upon earth which is indeed the best thing for mankind. Such a person opens new possibilities for the Earth. Take, for instance, a man who dies defending the nation or a creative writer who influences a generation by his writings or a leader who inspires others. Or a yogi who becomes a living proof that God exists. All of them have undertaken some kind of sacrifice, which is an act of love.
So while sattwic love and care are no doubt good, but one must know that there are higher forms of love that exist, which often go unnoticed by the general mass of humanity because there is no show in it. Those who want to express these higher forms of love need to abandon the lower and lesser forms. One who wants to be an instrument of the Divine Love has to get rid of all attachments, including family and social duties, which are one kind of sattwic illusion, a subtle egoism which passes off as selflessness.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
