Attachment and suffering

Here's what I remember being taught about the Buddhist view of suffering and attachment. The Buddha came to realise that all suffering is born of attachment. We clutch onto people and things as if they are ours to possess, and are heartbroken when they disappoint or slip away. This is not only unhelpful, the Buddha said, but false. The Buddha taught the interconnectedness of all things and the illusory nature of the independent "I". He advocated simply being in the present moment, observing 'good' and 'bad' without judgment. A life lived this way will be open to experiencing happiness and will be without cause for suffering.

The first thing to understand about the Christian take on these things is that it begins from a very different place. Christianity is not founded on a desire to avoid suffering, but starts with the simple reality of the Creator God. This Creator God is separate from his creation. He made individual people who, while designed to live in harmonious community, will remain individuals even to eternity. This means that from the Christian perspective, there are indeed real people to whom it is possible to become attached. This is no illusion. Yet our relationship with God is always superior to relationship with other people.

Some of God's teaching about suffering and attachment sounds almost Buddist:

What I mean, brothers and sisters, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they do not; those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away. (1 Corinthians 7:29-31)

However, this 'holding loosely' comes not from an eschewal of suffering, but from the larger reality of the passing away of this world.

Nor does Christian teaching end here. Indeed God himself is no avoider of suffering. In the Christian Scripture, he depicts himself as a jealous husband; Jesus wept over his friend's death and over the people's refusal to come to him; and his apostles and prophets were often anxious and sorrowful men. God the Son went to the cross because of his attachment - an attachment freely chosen.

And like our Lord Jesus, Christians are to be so attached to the people around us that we will happily die to ourselves that they might live. One day this world will pass away, but its people will remain.