Student and Teacher

On Fear and Attachment

Student: I've been working on attachment for quite a while, especially with regard to my family. Last night I received word that my daughter and grandson were in a serious car accident but that they were okay. Even still, it activated in me very strong feelings of fear and attachment, and I was not able to be in the natural state.

Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche: First of all, I'm very happy that they are okay and all is good and everybody is safe.

We all experience difficult moments and situations where we are losing or have lost something. Looking at these difficult situations, we can always see that we feel fear; we feel hopeless; we feel attachment.

Situations like the one you experienced remind us of how much we really value our loved ones' presence, how precious they are. Life—it's so unpredictable, yet we often don't realize it until something bad comes very close to happening. These moments are great reminders for us that the things like our little family conflicts or even the big stories—none of those is important. Every story dissolves at the moment of an accident, right? What shines through: I love you. There are no stories there. So recognize. Let those stories go. And recognize the value of connecting deeper or more often.

It seems we have the tendency sometimes to focus on the dark side in situations of loss, and at other times we have the tendency to focus on the light side. Why do some focus on the light side, on what they can find within that loss? It's a very different view of things, isn't it? These experiences of pain have to give us something positive. What that positive thing is, and what it changes in us and how we see people close to us and how we come to spend our time—I think that is very, very important.

Each of the events such as yours should remind us to connect deeper with others in our life, you know? And when you are focused on connecting deeper with others, then you also connect deeper to yourself. You cannot connect deeper with someone unless you connect deeper with yourself. It's quite beautiful, then, what comes out of that.