Temperate and Sacrificial Detachment
Part 1: A Comparative illumination of Detachment: Buddha and Christ
Part 2: Temperate Detachment
Part 3: Sacrificial Detachment
Part 4: Teleological Analysis: Detachment and Love: The Process of Reattachment
Introduction
The purpose of this treatise is to explore the proper use and end of “Christan detachment” as a virtue. We will begin in the first part by comparing and contrasting how detachment is properly employed according to Buddha and according to Christ. This will include both practical and cosmological considerations. The end result of the analysis will demonstrate that Buddha’s sense of detachment is a passive escape from suffering, whereas Christ’s is an active recalibration toward Love. In the next two parts, we distinguish two forms or methodologies of detachment, the first will be temperate detachment the second is sacrificial detachment. The last part will draw out the conclusions of Christain detachment as a virtue that passes away as it is fulfilled. This part will discuss detachment’s end result, a well ordered and prioritized reattachment as a loving relationship.
A Comparative Illumination on the Nature of Christain Detachment: Buddha and Christ
The treatise The Three Tiered Integration of Self discussed the two reasons why a Catholic should study the world religions.
When I teach the world religions class I answer a very important question right up front, Why should one study the world religions in a Catholic school as part of a religion class? Why not in history, or literature, or anthropology, or sociology? There are two reasons, one more conservative and one more progressive. The more conservative reason is that study of other traditions is useful because it is necessary for effective evangelization. Why would one not want to know how to discourse on one’s target’s own level? This was certainly Saint Paul’s strategy, “all things to all people.” If one is completely unaware of the target religion, one can waste hours of time with a practitioner talking past one another. But if one has a good grasp of the target religion, meaningful and effective evangelization can begin immediately.
The legitimate fear concerning learning another religion is that one will be led astray by seductive teachings. But with a firm foundation in the faith and proper direction, study of the world religions can be useful and edifying. Thus, the progressive answer to why study the world religions as part of a religion class is where one moves from “useful” (for evangelization) to “edifying” (for one’s own spiritual journey). When studying theology in college one of the ways my understanding of the faith greatly increased was when I studied the early heresies of the Church. It is by being exposed to these, again, after I had a firm faith, that I began to be able to see a fuller picture of how and why we believe what we do as Catholics. The same is true of the world religions. By studying them, one can certainly come into contact with many things that we do not believe. One also comes into contact with many things that we do, but explained in differing ways, lastly one can come into contact with things that are not the same but compatible, which allows for expansion of practice.
Proper study of other traditions can enrich one’s faith in many unexpected ways and lead to a more beautiful understanding, exercise, and devotion in one’s own faith. Examples of such appropriate synchronicity would be Saint Paul himself and Greco-Roman synchronization of Christianity, Saint Augustine and Platonism, Saint Thomas Aquinas and Aristotelianism, St. Teresa of Calcutta’s effective use of the caste system to demonstrate true Christianity, Thomas Merton’s utilization of Eastern prayer techniques in his life as a trappist, or all of the original evangelizers of the Roman empire, whose effective evangelization by means of Roman culture gives us the Roman Rite.
Our aim in this treatise is to cover ground that may help both of those ends, but our focus will be on an analysis that helps the reader better understand proper Christain use of detachment. In this first section our aim is to illuminate the dangerous extreme of detachment by making a comparative analysis of how the concept is used in the teaching of the Buddha and by the tradition of Catholicism.
There is a certain type of Christan who sees apollinarian detachment as an ultimate “manly” virtue. Transcendence is a typically, masculine balance to feminine immanence. But detachment differs from transcendence. As we shall see, it can be useful but. as a virtue, it is not in and of itself noble in any way. It is only useful in a context and to an end, at which it would vanish. To get a sense of the danger of isolated detachment, absent love, we will look to the teachings of the Buddha for a comparative lens. The hope is that this will give us a better understanding of our own Christian relationship to detachment. Our foray into the Buddha's teaching will be minimal and cursory. It will mainly involve a little cosmology and an analysis of the Four Noble Truths.
Buddha famously teaches in the Four Noble Truths that life is suffering, suffering is caused by desire, to get rid of suffering get rid of desire, and to get rid of desire, follow the Eightfold Path. The cosmology of the Four Noble Truths places a completely negative evaluation on the phenomenological world. They analyze with an assumption of an end. That end is suffering. This is the exact opposite of Christian teleology, that as Saint Paul states, “All things work together for good”. Each religion strives to make sense of the experiences of joy and anguish, of pleasure and suffering. Each ultimately reduces these opposing experiences to a function of the other with each cosmology skewing to the opposite end of the other.
The differences in cosmology are plainly at work. From the Eastern perspective, the world, as we experience it, is an illusion. The cosmological difference in Hinduism and Buddhism is the difference as to whether that illusion was undergird by some stability as Hinduism believes (Sat, Brahman, atman) or all was maya and illusion as Buddhism believes. The lack of belief is a stable ultimate transcendence is what leads to the first noble truth, all is suffering. With the experience of Moksha, the brahmanical Hindu is seeking to merge with ultimate transcendence. This mergence certainly annihilates any sense of “self”, yet it provides a framework for an existing stasis of peace for the individual. Buddhism sees liberation as nirvana, that is, extinction. The distinction comes from the Buddhist concept of Sunyata, the emptiness of all beings. This emptiness requires an absolute detachment of the subject, even from “subjectness”. These teachings are clearly laid out in Buddha’s famous “Fire Sermon”.
The Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus. "Bhikkhus, all is burning. And what is all that is burning?
"The eye is burning, forms are burning, eye-consciousness is burning, eye-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.
"The ear is burning, sounds are burning…
"The nose is burning, odors are burning…
"The tongue is burning, flavors are burning…
"The body is burning, tangibles are burning…
"The mind is burning, ideas are burning, mind-consciousness is burning, mind-contact is burning, also whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with mind-contact for its indispensable condition, that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of lust, with the fire of hate, with the fire of delusion. I say it is burning with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, with lamentations, with pains, with griefs, with despairs.
"Bhikkhus, when a noble follower who has heard (the truth) sees thus, he finds estrangement in the eye, finds estrangement in forms, finds estrangement in eye-consciousness, finds estrangement in eye-contact, and whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful- nor-pleasant that arises with eye-contact for its indispensable condition, in that too he finds estrangement.
"He finds estrangement in the ear... in sounds…
"He finds estrangement in the nose... in odors…
"He finds estrangement in the tongue... in flavors…
"He finds estrangement in the body... in tangibles…
"He finds estrangement in the mind, finds estrangement in ideas, finds estrangement in mind-consciousness, finds estrangement in mind-contact, and whatever is felt as pleasant or painful or neither-painful-nor-pleasant that arises with mind-contact for its indispensable condition, in that too he finds estrangement.
"When he finds estrangement, passion fades out. With the fading of passion, he is liberated. When liberated, there is knowledge that he is liberated. He understands: 'Birth is exhausted, the holy life has been lived out, what can be done is done, of this there is no more beyond.'"
The Buddha's teaching in the fire sermon, delivered soon after his enlightenment is a commentary on suffering caused by desire. The cure, which is detachment. This desire is as far reaching as the obsession of the Brahmins and Sanyasin on the nature of Brahman/Sat. To desire liberation as a goal, or more importantly as a “thing” (Sat) fosters attachment via desire, which ultimately leads to more suffering. Therefore the necessary maneuver is to detach even from the desire for moksha.
One can imagine that this was Sidhartha’s experience as he searched for liberation via the traditional exercises. Sidhartha’s dissatisfaction with his life of ultimate pleasure and desire for something more led to a life of severe asceticism. This would have been the sanyasin/yogic quest for moksha, mergence of the atman with Sat/ Brahman. Such a quest would have involved meditation utilizing Jana Yoga, which uses knowledge of the structure of the cosmos to shed karma and detach from impermanent maya. But if it is desire that attaches karma to the atman, there is the classic question, doesn’t desire for liberation cause karmic attachment? If so then one must detach even from the desire for liberation, detachment from detachment. Such a cascade could have been what led Buddha to his conclusion of anatman. It may not be so much that he adamantly rejected atman. It’s just that his focus was on the phenomenological world, and atman, as well as all its philosophical counterparts, such as essence and nature, are beyond experience.
Once one realizes that, whatever moksa could mean concerning mergence of atman with brahman, it cannot be conceived, thus contemplation of it is pointless. Such contemplation has a point of view and is therefore conditioned in contrast to the very nature of moksha. From Buddha’s point of view, there is no reason to even worry about the nature of Sat or atman. One may as well treat it as if it does not exist. Hence buddha's response to the monk Malunkyaputta when he questions him on the nature of the cosmos via the “Fourteen Unanswerable questions.” After assuring Malunkyaputta that he never guaranteed any to answer any metaphysical questions, Buddha responds with the famous “Parable of the Arrow”.
It's just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison. His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me... until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short... until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored... until I know his home village, town, or city... until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow... until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated... until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird... until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.' He would say, 'I won't have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.' The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.
Buddha’s pragmatism concerning the nature of suffering and liberation keeps him from worrying about the ultimate nature of reality. His simple methodology is absolute detachment from all experiences that would bind one by desire, including metaphysical speculation.
Detachment as a virtue in Buddhism is not without compassion. The interpersonal moral underpinning of Mahayana Buddhism is compassion (fellow suffering), but compassion is an auxiliary to detachment, which is the ultimate end as a virtue because it is what will lead to secession of suffering.
Christ also comes with teaching on detachment which is severe and seemingly unyielding. The gospel of Luke relays,
Great crowds were traveling with Jesus,
and he turned and addressed them,
“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,
wife and children, brothers and sisters,
and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.
He even gives a version of a fire sermon, with notable differences from Buddha,
I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! There is a baptism with which I must be baptized, and how great is my anguish until it is accomplished! Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. From now on a household of five will be divided, three against two and two against three; a father will be divided against his son and a son against his father, a mother against her daughter and a daughter against her mother, a mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.
Each of these passages from Luke notes how Jesus demands not only detachment but antagonism toward those that seem to be the most intimate to a person. But the fire and suffering in these passages are not a given of the static cosmic order. Rather they are assumed as part of a process grounded in a reality beyond subjective phenomenological experience. An important difference is that Christ only references interpersonal relationships. In Buddhist cosmology, the suffering is evenly applied to objects and persons, such that, typical of a subjective stance, persons seem to become objects.
In Christ’s teaching, only intimate familial relationships are noted. These mutually regarding relationships come with a built in attachment that is mutually regarding. Anyone invested in these structures probably experiences both good and bad from the relationships mentioned. It is understandable that one would want to hold on to the good and reject the bad. But Jesus’ advice in the passage seems to be an ultimate rejection, not dissimilar to The First Noble Truth’s rejection of “Life”. The differences begin with the fact that Christ is the catalyst for the division and suffering rather than a static cosmic order. Buddha certainly does not “come to make all life suffering”. It is in this one difference that the cosmological differences between Buddha and Christ can be seen.
Eastern thought sees reality as a static cosmic order. All sentience is subject to cosmic law (karma), even the most supreme personality, the godhead. Christain cosmology is an unfolding of the relationship between the personal godhead (conceived as a self relational trinity) and the created order. This unfolding is conceived in many different ways, salvation history, sin and redemption, we have called it the cosmological paradox. Under any interpretation, the foundational order is one of interpersonal love, with all else being secondary or instrumental.
The difference between Buddha's starting point and Christs’ is the difference between static order and teleology. This difference can also be seen between the first and second stories of creation in Gen 1-2. But even there, the story of cosmic static order culminates with a series of loving relationships between God, man, and woman that is supported by the entire structure. The second story of creation, which segways into the narrative of scripture, is more developmentally geared. Its teleological thrust is the same as the first story, relationships of love, and its end is the eschaton.
A major distinction between Buddha’s notion of detachment and Jesus’ is this teleological trajectory. In a static cosmos run by an eternal law (karma), there is no true teleology, just cosmic operation. The cosmos is a mechanism that sentence is a byproduct of. The result is the sentient desire for liberation. In Christianity, the cosmological structure implies that law and material reality are a support structure for loving relationships. Current suffering is not the status of existence, but rather a process, pedagogical and/or purifying, toward love.
In short, for Buddha one detaches in order to extinguish. In Christianity, one detaches in order to reattach appropriately. This is why Jesus is the catalyst for the fire. The fire is purgative, not all consuming or static suffering. After disinvesting the crowd of deep relationships and commanding them to take up their cross in order to die to self (extinction?) Jesus immediately relates two parables with fundamental teleological messages,
Which of you wishing to construct a tower
does not first sit down and calculate the cost
to see if there is enough for its completion?
Otherwise, after laying the foundation
and finding himself unable to finish the work
the onlookers should laugh at him and say,
‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.’
Or what king marching into battle would not first sit down
and decide whether with ten thousand troops
he can successfully oppose another king
advancing upon him with twenty thousand troops?
But if not, while he is still far away,
he will send a delegation to ask for peace terms.
In the same way,
everyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.”
The detachment that Christ preaches is instrumental to the reattachment, much like preparing materials or counting troops. It cannot be an end to itself. Christ and Buddha call for the same thing, absolute detachment, and renunciation of what they experience as “real”. But Christ’s detachment is strategic to the goal of interpersonal love. Buddha renounces quickly beyond love and even beyond the goal of self-extinction “as a goal”, which itself is a form of attachment. The Christian is called to abide in a paradox of detachment and attachment, of disenchantment and enchantment. Navigating this paradox takes a teleological calibration, the goal of which is perfect attachment, also known as love. It now stands to analyze that spectrum as a useful tool and then illuminate the nature of the goal.
Temperate Detachment
There are two basic methodologies that we can pursue to practice detachment. The first is temperate detachment the second is sacrificial detachment. But before we delve into the difference it may be worth asking, is the Christian exercise of detachment a virtue? It certainly seems so when we position it at the one end of a spectrum of detachment and attachment. In Catholic parlance, attachment comes with negative connotations. But connotative frames matter and clever sculpting can easily reverse the spectrum. To frame attachment as a virtue one would more likely use words such as communion or unity to round out a virtuous spectrum. In this case, detachment becomes estrangement or alienation, the root of sin. Once one is at either extreme one can be in a position of danger. All spectral paradoxes have dangerous extremes. It is the avoidance of these extremes that will introduce us to temperance and the introspective contempt of temperate detachment. As with any virtue, isolated exercise absent love is severely damaging and no longer virtuous. Healthy love is what orders the attachment or detachment to good effect. Hence if one loves God above all else and loves one’s neighbor as one’s self, one will be attached enough to a material object to use it in the service of both, but not so attached that one loves it more than either.
Virtuous spectra are to paradoxically abide within the subject simultaneously. The treatise Paradoxes and Disorders pointed out that the spectral approach to paradox operates differently than the substantial or process approaches to paradox. The spectral approach is less object-oriented and focuses more on the relationship. One generally approaches intangible paradoxes in spectral ways. By defining the extremes of these intangibles one comes to a categorization of “object”. The flow of the spectrum is the gradation or quality of the relationship that binds the extremes together. A spectrum of virtue is particularly dangerous because one can be doing great harm to one’s self or others while easily convincing one’self that one is practicing virtue.
The Buddha understood this as well and conceived of “The Middle Way” as a balance that would allow one detachment from not only the detrimental extreme of any virtue but also, if perfectly balanced, any sense of virtue itself. If one can perfectly balance spectrally opposed virtues, one can perfectly detach and act without investment. But virtues as Christians understand them, are goods that are to be invested in and purposely exhibited. For Buddhism, detachment is “The” virtue. But again, for Christianity is it a virtue? One question that may help to approach is whether the postlapsarian virtue of detachment is one that will remain active in the Eschaton or is it a postlapsarian virtue that functions via calculations of maintenance morality? Detachment, as a useful moral skill, is definitely a result of the Fall. In Eden, where the first parents were naked and knew no shame, there was perfect communion between God and humans and between the humans themselves. Union and Communion are orders of creation according to both ends of the cosmological paradox, Eden and the Eschaton. It seems that detachment is less an abiding virtue and more a temporary skill set the Christian exercises as a process. Its usefulness will fade as the Christian grows stronger in, orders, prioritizes, and perfects love (which necessitates communion, not detachment). Given this, it is reasonable to assume that any sense of “virtuous detachment” will vanish in the Eschaton.
This points to the danger of clinging to any virtue at an extreme of a spectral paradox, but especially detachment, which is only a temporary skill to begin with. But, as we abide in postlapsarian reality, detachment is a useful skill. The trick to exercising that skill is the ability to use it in its proper place ordered to its proper end.
With that understanding, we can proceed to the first type of detachment, temperate detachment. It involves the virtue of temperance as it is active in one’s psycho-spiritual life. This type is introspective and involves the practice of temperance along a spectrum of identity and personal function. The Catechism defines temperance as “ Temperance moderates the attraction of the pleasures of the senses and provides balance in the use of created goods.” This definition is no doubt working off of the way Saint Thomas Aquinas discusses temperance in The Summa P2 Q141 A3. Saint Thomas Aquinas very narrowly defines temperance as a balance of one aspect of the psycho-spiritual self, passion. He sees a spectrum of inflamed passions and the reasonable use of passions.
As stated above (Q[123], A[12]; Q[136], A[1]), [temperance] belongs to moral virtue to safeguard the good of reason against the passions that rebel against reason. Now the movement of the soul's passions is twofold, as stated above (FS, Q[23], A[2]), when we were treating of the passions: the one, whereby the sensitive appetite pursues sensible and bodily goods, the other whereby it flies from sensible and bodily evils.
The first of these movements of the sensitive appetite rebels against reason chiefly by lack of moderation. Because sensible and bodily goods, considered in their species, are not in opposition to reason, but are subject to it as instruments which reason employs in order to attain its proper end: and that they are opposed to reason is owing to the fact that the sensitive appetite fails to tend towards them in accord with the mode of reason. Hence it belongs properly to moral virtue to moderate those passions which denote a pursuit of the good.
On the other hand, the movement of the sensitive appetite in flying from sensible evil is mostly in opposition to reason, not through being immoderate, but chiefly in respect of its flight: because, when a man flies from sensible and bodily evils, which sometimes accompany the good of reason, the result is that he flies from the good of reason. Hence it belongs to moral virtue to make man while flying from evil to remain firm in the good of reason.
In Aquinas’ view, the fulcrum that deploys the balance of temperance is reason, which often uses detachment (objectivity) as an instrument. Again, this seems like a narrow disposition of an extremely widely applicable virtue.
One can see in Saint Thomas Aquinas’ reflection there is a serious bias to passivity regarding passions and tendency to amplify reason. This relates perfectly to the Buddha’s teaching of passion or desire being the cause of suffering. This resonation is tempered by Aquinas’ scholastic trust in reason above all else. Buddha would say that desire to exercise reason is yet another source of suffering. The Christian answer to that accusation should be, “possibly”. Since our cosmology is foundationally good, then reasonable capacities, appetites, and desires are created good. Since our phenomenological experience is postlapsarian reason, appetites, and passion have the possibility to be corrupted (disordered or incomplete) thus causing evil and/or suffering. However, the cosmological difference illuminates how expansive application of Buddha is preferable to the narrow duality of Aquinas.
Inner psycho-dynamics to be tempered could better be perceived classically as passions and appetites. Classically these would be hierarchically structured according to Plato and Saint Augustine, with reason controlling passions and subordinating appetites. But a psycho-spiritual analysis that takes a cosmology that is foundational good into account would regard all aspects balancing each other in a harmony of universal unity that is driven by love. One can go on to add to this the balance of how one applies those dispositions in the world. Aquinas’ narrow view here is legitimate in hyper contextualized scenarios. But, it extremely underplays the complexity of temperance as it applies to one’s inner life. Using reason as the fulcrum between inordinate passion and well used passion is subsidiary to the summative temperament fulcrum, which is operational love.
One can expand Aquinas’ application immediately by drawing out by one degree. When considering temperance, a lack of moderation concerning intellect is just as prone to danger as a lack of moderation of the passions. To use reason dishonestly or cruelly can cause both great evil and great sin. Thus, if passions and intellect are conceived of as a spectral paradox within a person, then temperance is not just how to use intellect to rule the passions, it is also how to allow passions to intuitively guide and temper intellect. Once one moves to this depth, one pictures the spectral line now running between intellect and passion, the more proper matrix becomes loving application or loving self definition.
The completeness of love (Eros, Philia and Agape) is the calibration factor that allows one to see at what depth to stabilize a psycho-spiritual spectrum and where they need to move on the spectrum to achieve a balance that best serves the actual circumstance. So for example, if one found that one was over apollinarian to the detriment of loving relationships, one would need to temper their exercise of reason. The next step would be to identify a spectral balance. That could be “passions” but it could also be an aesthetic sense, an enjoyment of exercise of appetites, exercises of obedience beyond one’s syllogistic understanding etc. depending on the particular situation at hand. The skill of practicing temperance is contextualized by how and why one exercises the attribute that is off balanced. To complicate this, one may not even be wholly conscious of how or why one over corrects. Therefore the array of possible balancing attributes will be vast, but the array of successful balancing disciplines may be limited and require some experimentation.
In any event, a circumstance of concupiscent intensity on either end of the spectrum detachment from one’s inflammation may be necessary in order to properly attune its use. This detachment is not a jettisoning or negation of a part of one’s self. Rather it is a detachment proper, a mitigation of attachment, such that the aspect of one’s self may remain operable, but one is not invested. Such personal imbalance is usually the result of over attachment or identification with the offending aspect of one’s self. So this detachment happens in order to rebalance a necessary aspect of one’s self. After such psycho-spiritual detachment, balance can be restored to one’s inner life. This entire set of complex spiritual motion is temperance. Temperance is necessary for passion and reason, each of which is dangerous when left bereft of a balancing temperance. It is necessary for inner-personal gender dynamics, personal volitional and dispositional practices, such as the balance of social engagement and personal time etc., factors of personal identity (family, job, religious aesthetic, etc), and all aspects of one’s self or identity. Detachment here is not Buddhist detachment in order to destroy self. Temperate detachment requires a balancing fulcrum of healthy actualized self. The fulcrum itself is loving holistic application that corrects over identification with the part. Any employment of detachment is a psycho-spiritual holding pattern exercised in order to facilitate fulfillment of its target.
Sacrificial Detachment
The difference between temperate detachment and sacrificial detachment is fundamentally the difference between introspection and interface as well as the difference between reappropriation and extrication. Sacrifice implies that the target of detachment is no longer operable in the subject’s life. For temperate detachment, to detach from one’s passions in a sacrificial way is impossible. The passions will remain a part of one’s personality regardless. What is “sacrificed”, or extricated, is one’s attachment to the passions. The entire maneuver is psycho-spiritual and employed in order to rebalance the self toward being an agent of love. In this case, one is seeking to maintain a temperate balance on a spectrum of dispositions that abide within one’s being. Sacrificial detachment operates in an objective rather than spectral way. The “object” one sacrifices are not seen as “one’s self” and needs to be extricated rather than balanced. We have commented on the nature of sacrifice in various previous treatises, most recently summarized in the treatise The Spiritual Sacrifice of the Incarnation,
The treatise Sacramental Cosmology laid out the importance of sacrifice as a pan-human ritual archetype,
How do I show love to God? For my fellow humans I can show love by helping them, teaching them, giving them gifts, bringing them joy. But God does not need help, he already owns anything we could give him, we can teach him nothing and he possesses perfect joy. How does one honor God?
The answer is that one cannot “do” anything for God, but one can show love by taking valuable things, especially things one may be tempted to value over and above God, and releasing them from one’s ownership. The most absolute way of doing this is by some form of destruction. By releasing these object from our grasp it shows that we do not value anything we own more than we value God. In its purest form as part of a system of calculated ritual, this is the way we can show love for God and God alone.
We pointed out in that treatise that sacrifice is particular to postlapsarian reality. It is a communication system between God and humanity set up to foster Aquinas’ third variety of perfection, removing obstacles to love. We first encounter it in the Cain and Abel story, where the two are trying to come into communion with God, with poor results. It is only in postlapsarian reality that we would need to demonstrate our rejection of concupiscence by such destruction. Such pattern of sacrifice were discussed in the treatise Toward Appropriate Thanatosian Piety,
There is a pattern of sacrifice in the Old Testament where the unlikely hero of a story must give up something precious to him, often because the coveted thing is causing problems. When it is returned the hero is better able to utilize or appreciate the offering, and when it is returned it is returned with more than is expected.
Temperament detachment cannot completely let go of the “object” of detachment, because the goal is an active balancing effect of two good aspects of one’s self. Christian sacrificial detachment assumes the world is created good and that though the relationships are disordered, there is a way to redeem and lovingly invest in the totality of the cosmos. But the nature of sacrifice requires a “destruction”, that is at least spiritual if not physical. The sacrificial destruction breaks interfacing attachment to the object and mitigates desire.
Given the nature of Christian hope, there is always a danger that the sacrificial detachment will not be complete. This danger is valid because one’s original attachment is in some way disordered and thus one must completely let go of the object and any relation one has with it in order to reinvest appropriately. This danger is the danger the Buddha seeks to address when he develops his doctrine nirvana via anatman and sunyata. As we noted, this is an absolute detachment. For a successful Christian sacrificial detachment to operate, this same absolute rejection must exist. But Buddha's strategy of absolute rejection cannot be the methodology. It is a hard path to walk to acknowledge the possible goodness of an object of desire, yet detach from it completely. To do this one must admit self fault, that one’s own relation to the object is the malfunction. One must be willing to let go in order to allow a recalibration according to God’s plan and providence not one’s own. The reader will notice that temperate detachment is a virtue operable by the human, but sacrifice leaves the outcome completely in God’s hands.
A summative scriptural example of this is Abraham's obsession with his progeny. Abraham does not trust that God can bring him children and once God does, Abraham clings to them more than to his trust in God’s promise of descendants. His first child, Ishmael, is the result of that lack of trust. Both Ishmael and Isaac are “sacrificed” by Abraham, Ishmael by being sent to the desert, Isaac by being taken to Mount Moriah. The contrast between God’s plan and our rebellion can be seen in each child respectively. Isaac is God’s plan. Ishmael is our rebellion, Sara’s taking matters into her own hand without trusting God’s power. But God keeps all his promises to Abraham regarding his progeny via both Ishmael and Isaac because Abraham’s ultimate willingness to let go is what justifies him in God’s sight.
The curious success of Ishmael lends itself to Christian cosmology and the belief that God is so powerful that he can turn all our misdeeds and rebellion to his own good devices. Here again, is the difficulty of applied detachment for a Christan. A Christian knows God brings goodness, but they must have the wherewithal of Abraham to trust the process of detachment as it plays through.
With true sacrifice, whether one receives the object “back” or not is irrelevant if true detachment has been attained. In the case of Abraham one son is retained, one never returns and is only accessible by faith and hope in God’s promise. The detachment is the endpoint of the sacrifice. This is what sets aside a sacrificial system that is divinely inspired for anthro-pedagogy and a sacrificial system that seeks to manipulate principalities and powers through coercion. The latter believes that sacrifices please deities and thus the deity can be negotiated with. But The Lord is quite clear that sacrifice, as laid out in sacred scriptures, benefits humans not The Lord himself. The purpose of true sacrificial action is laid out in Psalm 51
Lord, you will open my lips;
and my mouth will proclaim your praise.
For you do not desire sacrifice or I would give it;
a burnt offering you would not accept.
My sacrifice, O God, is a contrite spirit;
a contrite, humbled heart, O God, you will not scorn.
And again in Hosea, “For it is loyalty that I desire, not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.” Thus much like Buddhist detachment, it must be absolute, even apart from what one may consider the “ultimate reward”. In the Christian case, the “ultimate reward” is justification and salvation, proper relationship with God. This ultimate detachment for Christians plays out in the notion that justification and salvation come from the grace of God and do not belong to us, thus we can detach even from this. But, again, the end result is justification, a proper relationship. This end demonstrates the radical difference in cosmology between the two religions and the temporary nature of detachment as a “virtue” in the Christain religion.
Needless to say, the same cutting away is necessary beyond objects even to psycho-spiritual realities. These extractions are what Saint John of the Cross distinguishes as the Night of the senses and the night of the spirits. Such psycho-spiritual realities could be skills or virtues one has overcompensated with and thus one has begun to take inordinate pride in. Or they could be ideas and perceptions that one has that do not line up well with reality in the way they operate within one. For example one could be too attached to a piety, or to knowledge, one feels one must attain to be a “good Christian”. Such an attachment becomes inordinate if it causes one to lose charity toward neighbor, disrespecting the image likeness of God. In this case, such virtues can become their own idols and, just as Abraham’s children were for him.
Any external object that one becomes inordinately attached to may need to be sacrificed. This is obviously true of the most common such idols, “love of money is the root of all evil”. Money, status, power, and pleasure are obvious idols that most people would do well to detach from via sacrifice in appropriate ways. But as with psycho-spiritual temperate detachment, sometimes things that seem “good” can be objects that need to be sacrificed. Remember any “object” that is real is created good in as much as it exists. It is often the subject’s disorder attachment to it that makes it unhealthy. So for example food is good, but the glutton has an unhealthy relationship with it and would do well to practice spiritually focused fasting as a sacrificial exercise in detachment. The concept of “salvation” can have the same danger for the Christian that Buddha saw in the atman’s moksha into Sat for the Hindu. One can become so attached to their personal concept of progress toward it that they lose charity toward their neighbor regarding how they may need to make progress. This is often witnessed when a “rule based” notion of salvation takes the forefront, which is then used to mercilessly oppress others.
At times “The Church” itself becomes an idol for people. They have a concept of “the church” that operates a particular way or expresses in a certain fashion, and they become so fixed on this particular vision that they lash out at co-members of the body of Christ in ways that do not reflect Christian love. Or lastly, someone’s vision of God may be in breach of the third commandment. They have sculpted verbal concepts of God that are not accurate. As we noted in Christian Ontology
Just as we cannot make graven images of God that accurately reflect who God is so to with our language. The first three commandments require the believer to take an apophatic stance. The second commandment forbids total investment in physical representations of God. The third commandment forbids total investment in any verbal representations of God. Taking the name of the Lord in vain was an offence punishable by death according to levitical law, and the seriousness attached to it revolved around the question of use. Are you going to presume to know the proper way to use God’s name? To use God’s name assumes the speaker has some power over God, that the speaker understands God in such a way as to be able to speak for him. To name something gives one power over it, the ability to shape the idea of what it is in other people's consciousness and the ability to call it or command it.
The spiritual exercise of detachment here would not be to “stop loving God” because one’s vision of God is not who God truly is. In this case, one has a false concept of God. That, in and of itself is no great wrong. No one has a perfect concept of God. It is one’s attachment to their vision as “the correct one” and possible subsequent use of that concept uncharitable that may require detachment by means of a via negativa style exercise.
In the ultimate case, a vital letting go, may come in the form of physical martyrdom, but more likely one must operate as object oriented inner sacrifices such that one can become a living sacrifice, absolute detachment from life while remaining alive as a servant of Christ. In yogic exercise, this is detachment operating as bhakti (devotion), which is the
In order to achieve the goal of ultimate detachment for a Christan, one relinquishes even aspects of their inner life as an “object”. This psycho-spiritual detachment that is not temperament, but sacrificial. The “cutting away process” that this requires was discuss in detail in the treatise Toward Appropriate Thanatosian Piety,
One learns that “flesh” is Paul’s way of talking about some power that has a modicum of control the human will. “The Flesh” seems to be all our less desirable spiritual dispositions as Christians. “The Flesh” obviously does not directly correlate to physical flesh, and “The Spirit” must interact with our human corporeal human aspects in order to make proper morality happen. So why call these spiritual dispositions “The Flesh”, it seems overly confusing and easily misunderstood, tending toward a docetic view of anti-corporeality.
Our position is that Saint Paul is playing off Greek assumptions about the body and spirit, coupled with the assumption of Christ as King over his servant Holy Death to make a point about morality and life in Christ. In the popular Greek consciousness the body is the prison of the spirit. The body is dissoluble and subject to death, whereas the spirit is immortal and everlasting. The greek view is definitely a stable immortality of the soul, there is no destruction of the spirit and utter destruction of “evil” flesh. This was not the traditional Jewish view, nor was it the view of emergent Christianity. But the forces of hellenization are strong, and Saint Paul is a master at taking the good of a culture and using it to his advantage.
Saint Paul seems to take the idea of a human part that suffers dissolution and a human part that maintains, and completely spiritualize it. He plays in the greek biases of “evil flesh” and “good spirit” and uses these categories to highlight the not so good aspects of the spirit. Paul sometimes comes off as physically antinomian, what you do with your body is less important what power your spirit operates under and how you cooperate with that power. In Galatians 5 he states, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” It is not that there are no moral actions, it is that there is an interface between the body and the spirit that once reconciled through Christ, operates with calculations that are more complex than simple empirical objectivity.
What Paul is getting at with “The Flesh” is the idea that there are parts of the spirit which are not healthy and need to die. The body is not the problem, but that it dies and rots seems to be an indicator for the greeks that the body is somehow evil. So Paul labels aspects of the human soul, “The Flesh” to give the greek minds an adverse reaction, and an awareness that these things need to come under the power of Holy Death, they need to dissolve into nothingness. “The Spirit” is the aspects of the human soul that needs to live. The humans build sin “The Flesh” on top of “The Spirit”. Holy Death, under the direction of Christ, destroys “The Flesh” and “The Spirit” remains. When one is baptized into Christ’s death, one is putting oneself under the power of Christ and “his death” meaning Holy Death, whom he controls for your benefit. You are conformed by baptism to utilize the grace, by means of your cooperative will, to allow Christ to direct Holy Death appropriately within your very soul. In a complete reversal of Paul’s analogy, for our materialistically minded culture, baptism amounts to the spiritual version of a release form, to allow a surgeon to a laser surgery that zaps a growing cancer. Or one may use St. Paul’s more uncomfortable image of “circumcision of the heart”. His spiritualization of this “cutting off of flesh” as a sacrificial act illustrates our point perfectly.
This ability to detach from aspects of the self is the beginning of the dizzying quest for atman (the eternal self) in the Eastern Hindu tradition. That quest endeavors to detach from and jettison all aspects of the self that are transitory. What is left is imperceptible. It is this quest that the Buddha ultimately rejects as “wrong focused” in that it is centered on an object of desire and therefore impractical.
For the Christian, however, our detachment can never be complete. First, our cosmology is not stagnant, but a product of process and relationship. First how the first parents related to God and each other in the Garden, then how humanity develops through the cosmological paradox of salvation history, and lastly how humanity relates to God and interrelates in the Eschaton. For the Eastern Eternal cosmology, such dynamism is the illusion cyclically dancing across the top of the static and eternal [atman or “nothing”]. In our current situation, as living sacrifices, we must function in society as the pilgrim church and mystical body of Christ. To use aspects of the self as a scapegoat to be destroyed is useful as a transitional maneuver, but it cannot be the ultimate end of our spirituality, because our spirituality is not grounded in self, rather it is grounded in Christ.
Teleological Analysis: Detachment and Love: The Process of Reattachment
The Christan life requires detachment, but it also requires an appropriate reattachment to this reality that is created good. According to the first two chapters of Genesis, the human role in creation is to consciously interface with God and with the rest of reality in a loving relationship that glorifies both God and Creation. The means by which they are able to perform this function is “personhood”.
Personhood is a vague term, nearly impossible to nail down. Fundamentally it connotes relatability at a certain level of communion. This communion is not by physical forces such as gravity or organic synchronicity. Rather it seems to involve regard, will, and something more that is elusive. The treatise Christian Ontology endeavor to supply a basic framework for a “conscious self” and apply it analogically in order to understand how the dogma of the trinity relates God as a community of persons that is the one personal God. In that treatise, we noted that Christan ontology sees reality as simple and manifold at the same time because it regards objects and relationships as equally real. Personhood was described analogously in these terms, the “objects” being the two aspects of self regard, “the perceiver and the perceived” abiding in the relationship of awareness. That same analogy was applied to the Godhead in that “God is Love” and the self awareness of God in a self loving relationship forms the basis for the three persons of the trinity.
The Trinity is the self love of God, because a loving relationship needs a Lover and an Object of Love to exist. Without at least two in a relationship the relationship cannot exist. Each person of the Trinity is necessary if you want to use John’s definition of God, “God is Love.” If the Spirit is not there they are not one and there is no love. If either the Father or the Son are not there the Spirit could not spirate, to use Thomas Aquinas’ term. The dogma of the Trinity states that God self loves from all eternity; in that God begets himself and loves himself. Those are not illusory distinctions, or the Love itself would be an illusion, they are real distinctions. The Father and the Son are truly distinct. They are just bound into one by the relationship of Love that is the Spirit, making God one. Remember of course that objects and relationships are equally real, thus the Spirit is also truly distinct and truly real. But all are one God.
The human person is meant to be swept up perfectly in this relationship of love, and into the divine self. This relationship is also meant to extend outward to fellow humans as interpersonal love and to create reality in a relationship of regarded glorification. True relationships bind the entire cosmos together as one, especially through personhood. But the breakdown of postlapsarian reality displays a dysfunction in this regard.
The current situation has the human person poorly attached to objects (even other persons as “objects”) and to self. Both Buddhism and Christianity see the dysfunction in the relational attachments. Buddhism sees the self as a series of illusory relationships; illusory because relationships are dynamic as opposed to static. In such an anthropology there is no “object” of stasis to relate to. The goal is to quiet these relationships to stillness. At their base, these relationships are attachments that cause suffering. This anthropology does not allow for a spectrum of virtue because there is only one, detachment. Compassion, the moral impetus of Buddhism, is only auxiliary and serves under the hierarchy of ultimate detachment.
Since Christian anthropology is founded on active love, which attaches, a spectrum of how one attaches appropriately is not only possible, it is almost necessary. In the end, Christan detachment can only be a series of attachment maneuvers, either by dropping attachments (sacrifice) in order to reattach or reorienting them (temperate detachment). But in order to detach, the person (a being constructed for relationships) must attach otherwise. This is the Christian call to communion and union. It comes through purgation, illumination, and union. These three motions are the progress of restoration of human purpose. The first involves detachment, the second involves reorientation and the third involves ordered attachment. From here the reader can see that the spectrum of virtues in play runs between detachment and love, but the end goal is love with detachment playing a transitory role. Detachment as a virtue fades with each instance of successful exercise.
Consider the progress of the woman in the parable of the lost coin. Luke places this parable amidst a series of parables about lost and found dynamics. Ostensively these parables are about those lost who God seeks. But there are always multiple correct ways to interpret parables. There is possible benefit if one interprets loss as “detachment”, especially concerning the coin.
What woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’ In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.
Coin as a symbol of mammon is a red flag in the gospels. It can so easily draw worship to inappropriate places. The times when the coin is seen as a good thing are the times when it is relinquished. Examples would be when one gives to Caesar what is Caesar’s, the case of the widow’s mite, the dishonest steward, or the case of the talents.
In the parable of the lost coin, the woman involved is distraught because she has lost something she sees as valuable. Her disordered attachment causes her suffering, just as Buddha suggests. At the point of loss the woman is in the purgative phase of the parable. She is physically detached and unable to locate it. But in this parable, she finds the coin and experiences joy at the finding. The ostensive point of the parable is that God and the celestial beings rejoice when a human is recovered by justification. It seems like this could be the end of the story. But the parable does not end there. It is most curious that she experiences such joy that she must share that joy as an interpersonal reality. This interpersonal sharing is the climax of the story and displays a hierarchy of attachment. The coin represents the external world as impersonal and objective. The coin is access to all that can be bought and sold. But the joy there is subservient to the joy of interpersonal communion. The reunion or reattachment is incomplete without this interpersonal aspect.
This is the difference between liberation that the Buddha offers and the liberation of Christ. Buddha offers “liberation from”, but Christ offers “liberation for”. Buddha’s detachment offers a peace that is passive. But Christ’s detachment offers a peace that is invested, the peace of well ordered and effective engagement. And finally, when a Buddha offers love it is compassionate love, not attached love. Love comes through peace, a passivity that allows compassionate action. When Christ offers love, it is peace that comes from the love offered because perfect love is the relationship that brings peace.
Conclusion
The purpose of this treatise was to explore the proper use and end of “Christan detachment” as a virtue. We began in the first part by comparing and contrasting how detachment is properly employed according to Buddha and according to Christ. This included both practical and cosmological considerations. The end result of the analysis hopefully demonstrated that Buddha’s sense of detachment is a passive escape from suffering, whereas Christ’s is an active recalibration toward love. In the next two parts, we distinguished two forms or methodologies of detachment, the first was temperate detachment the second was sacrificial detachment. The last part brought to a conclusion “Christain detachment” as a virtue that passes away as it is fulfilled. This part discussed detachment’s end result, a well ordered and prioritized reattachment as a loving relationship.
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