When a loved one is hurt, we feel disturbed, but not so much when someone unknown is hurt – is this attachment?

Answer Podcast

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
So how do we know the difference between attachment and love? Say, if my grandfather dies, I’m attached to him. That’s why I feel distress.
But then if someone or another old man dies, I’m just quite nonchalant. Everybody has to die one day. Old people die.
There’s a difference between emotional investment and the purpose for emotional investment. Because we are finite beings, we cannot be emotionally invested in infinite people or even a large number of people. So yes, if I hear about somebody dying somewhere, if I get emotionally invested in everything around me, I’ll just be in a perpetual emotional storm.
So we are not meant to be hard hearted. If we see somebody unknown also being hurt before us or in trouble, naturally we’ll help. But because we are finite beings, we have to focus.
So if I hear a news of some natural calamity in some part of the world, it’ll be distressing for me. But I can’t keep that thought all the time in my mind. If it’s somewhere next to me, I’ll get over it.
So all of us have been, by our past karma, by our destiny, given a particular kshetra. Kshetra is our area of influence, our area of connection, our area where we can do something. So I am born in a particular family.
That I can see by my past karma. And that is where I can make a difference. Now if I can make a difference somewhere else, that’s good.
But if I can’t make a difference there, my getting worried about it, my getting distressed about it doesn’t do anything constructive. So to be concerned about our family members and to feel distressed when something bad happens to them, that’s just natural. Because that is our kshetra, that’s where we are emotionally invested.
That is where we are having some capacity to do something. So being emotionally invested in a finite number or in a limited number of people, that is not necessarily selfishness or attachment. It’s more of intelligent investment of our emotions, where we get emotionally invested, where we can make a difference.
Going further, if we consider why am I emotionally invested in that person. In every relationship there is a reciprocation. I do something for that person, that person does something for me.
But in some relationships the contribution is more, in some relationships the expectation is more. So we call a relationship selfish when a person is ready to do very little and demands too much. So somebody’s grandfather is dying and then they never talk about their grandfather.
But when you know they’ve got an inheritance, then they go there. Then there is very little contribution and there is a lot of demand, not an expectation, almost like a demand. So then that is what we call a selfish.
So a relationship involves, can we say, being attached when that relationship makes us do something wrong. Or in that relationship that other person is doing something wrong and we don’t stop them because of the fear of losing them. So I’ll give an example.
In the Mahabharata, there is a character of Dhritarashtra and Duryodhana. Dhritarashtra is a father who is attached to his evil son Duryodhana and Duryodhana is vicious. Duryodhana is like the active villain and Dhritarashtra is more like a passive villain.
Now he has some, definitely has much more understanding of Dharma, of morality, of ethics than his son. But his attachment to his son makes him do three things. First is, he doesn’t stop his son from doing anything wrong.
Whatever he wants to do, he lets him do that. Sometimes he protests a little bit and even when he wants to burn his own cousins, burn them alive. Secondly, he himself starts doing wrong.
Doesn’t stop him from doing wrong, he himself starts doing wrong. When Draupadi is gambled, Dhritarashtra, he tries to normally wear a mask of neutrality. But at that time his mask flips down and he is asking, has Gandhari won? Is Panchali won? Is Panchali won? So there is a glee which is unlimited at that time.
So he himself starts doing bad things. Third is that he becomes desensitized to the bad that is happening to others to whom also he is meant to care. The Pandavas are his nephews.
And because they don’t have a father, he is like their surrogate father. So he is meant to take care of them also. But he becomes completely desensitized to them.
So much so that not only does he not stop them from being hurt, but he himself becomes a part of the party that is hurting them. So when does that emotional investment become an attachment? It’s when that person is doing bad, we don’t stop. That person makes us do bad.
And that person makes us desensitized while in our relationship with others where we are meant to do the right thing. So that’s when we can say that it is attachment and it is destructive. Does that answer your question?