Note: I’ll be heading out on vacation next week, but then will traveling off and on for a couple of weeks after that, all while continuing to build and grow my philosophical counseling practice. I may be able to get a brief entry or two up at some point, but regular entries will most likely return on May 26th.
One of the most attractive aspects of Buddhist philosophy for me has always been the idea of “letting go.” I often brought this teaching to my eastern philosophy students by pointing out that for infants, the grasping reflex is just that: a reflex. If you put your finger next to newborn’s hand, they will reflexively grasp. What the infant eventually has to learn is to let go. So, when the toddler in the high chair is picking up something and then haphazardly winging it through the air to the dismay (or delight) of the family dog, they’re hitting a very important stage in their physiological, psychological, and even spiritual development. They are literally learning how to let go.
“Letting go,” however, becomes a more challenging ability as our identities begin to solidify and we eventually acquire more experiences — and stuff — that continually reinforce our capacity to “grasp.” We look for all kinds of things to define us: labels, social and peer groups, religions, ideologies, and the ever-present algorithm. Psychologically and emotionally, our thoughts can easily convince us to grasp tightly onto ideas about ourselves and habits that no longer serve us, or push away things that we believe are painful. Notice that pushing away is a very different action than “letting go.” If we’re meditating and a disturbing thought or painful emotion or memory arises, we can feel tempted to shut down, and/or push away and avoid what we’re experiencing, rather than simply allowing it to arise, release our grasp of it, and then let it dissipate on its own.
Often in Buddhist texts, we see the term “abandon” or “abandonment” when it comes to attachment or simply just desire itself. But due to translation issues, there tends to be an all-or-nothing implication to abandoning attachments, kind of like we have to go cold-turkey and let things go forever. That’s why I like to replace the terms “abandoning” or “letting go” with “setting aside.” This, to me, is a much more accurate (and ultimately practical) way to think about the realities of overcoming attachments in contemporary culture. I also think it reflects a much more accurate way to align ourselves with Buddhist practices in everyday life on a daily basis. Setting aside implies that there are certain attachments that aren’t necessarily bad in and of themselves, and are a fact of being human (especially if we’re not living the monastic life). Family, loved ones, and basic self-care; these are aspects of our lives that we can’t necessarily abandon without consequences that cause more harm than good.
Beyond those, however, there are so many distracting things which are necessary for us to function in contemporary culture. Of course, our phones and internet access are major aspects of this, and we become accustomed to the connectivity they seem to promise. In many ways, that connectivity is useful and attractive, and most definitely has its place. But it also conditions us into feeling that constant availability is akin to safety and, ultimately, being seen.
The flip side to this is that when we do feel the need to have a little time to ourselves, and even disconnect, we can experience a sense of guilt or even anxiety. Yet we know that simply having some time to ourselves, literally “setting aside” the time, allows us to refocus and recenter, and recalibrate our social batteries. It can be hard to set aside time from families and loved ones so that we can meditate or just have a little time to ourselves; but we also know that doing so will make us better partners, parents, and friends.
When we “set aside,” it means that we can pick things up again after we’ve set the down, and, hopefully with a little mindfulness, see the difference that putting it down for a little while has made. It also makes us appreciate that thing that much more, and hopefully use it more consciously, and more mindfully. In this way, we can understand what exactly is important, or even necessary, to us in our lives and what is not.
“Setting aside” is extremely hard because we have been enculturated — especially within the past few decades — to put nothing down. We are encouraged and even rewarded to embrace connectivity and availability. In the US especially, employers often define our value by how available and connected we remain. The same holds true for multitasking. Does anyone have a colleague who was (or still is) a multitasking evangelist, taking absolute pride in their (very-self proclaimed and dubious) ability to multi-task; whether it was making business calls from the car or while at the gym, or answering emails while in a meeting, or even just walking on a treadmill while they’re trying to navigate an excel sheet?
We all know that particular colleague already has (or soon will be) burnt out; and that they don’t do ANY of those things particularly well.
We’ve been enculturated to believe that NOTHING can be set aside, and that we can’t take a break from anything. FOMO has become an ethic that is more destructive than vaccine denial, election fraud conspiracy theories, and the entire “manosphere” combined. We have been conditioned by and trained in ephemera, with the idea that things will disappear in the scroll unless we constantly attend to it, and that unless the algorithm is fed with our updates and statuses, that we will disappear. This is the crux of a much deeper, much more insidious and complex unsustainability. We have built entire careers, economies, and professions around the idea that we can never, ever, set anything aside for fear of losing our value, and our efficacy.
Relearning how to “set aside” takes some time and a little practice, especially when we have been grasping at so many things for so long. The first step isn’t necessarily locking your phone in a drawer (although that can work for some), it’s instead noticing what it is that you’re actually grasping onto. Yes, before we can understand how to let go or set aside, we actually have to learn how to notice what things we’re holding onto and how we’re holding onto them. What, exactly, are we afraid we’ll miss if we don’t continue to scroll? If we have a fear of missing out, what exactly are we afraid that we might miss? And what are we clinging to as a means to make sure we don’t? How are these fears defining us? What scenarios are we building around those fears?
It makes sense that this is so hard to do, because we can build some very convincing narratives based on those scenarios, scenarios in which we are inevitably implicated and which become so layered and complex that it’s hard to see where those stories about ourselves end and where our actual selves begin. We can build those narratives about who we are based on our careers, our role in our families, or even just our own pasts.
“Setting aside” is a not just a way to take a temporary pause from the things we’re grasping, it is also a way to set ourselves aside to rediscover who we actually are.
See you in a few weeks!