Spirituality 3: Detachment

This is part 3 of a longer essay about spirituality, which I'm be posting here in installments. I recommend reading the parts in order. Read Part 2 Here.

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DETACHMENT IS HARDER TO WRITE ABOUT THAN DENIAL. This is because when we detach, we enter a dimension that the tools of language and logic weren’t made for.

Language and logic have helped us immensely. But they are also just another part of the conditional realm that detachment steps above or under (or both at the same time). Language and logic do not contain detachment. Detachment contains language and logic.[1]

This means detachment can’t be fully understood using only language and logic. Trying to do this is like trying to squeeze three dimensions into two. We’ll always encounter paradoxical statements.[2]

This often tempts intellectuals to dismiss spirituality as nonsense. But there’s really nothing strange about the situation.[3] Language and logic are simply not reality itself. Rather, they are elements within reality. How then could they be adequate tools for describing the whole of reality? The study of a gear in a clock wouldn’t allow us to understand the whole clock. The contemplation of a line in a drawing wouldn’t allow us to appreciate the whole drawing. [4]  Using only language and logic guarantees we are not describing reality as a whole. To speak about the greatest possible reality with the greatest possible accuracy, logic itself tells us that we have to sometimes speak nonlogically.[5] Non-sense is necessary. Or at least the kind of nonsense that points to something real. We could call this “serious nonsense.”[6]  

The serious nonsense necessary in spiritual discourse doesn’t only tempt intellectuals to dismiss the subject as beneath consideration. It also tempts theologians and mystics to elevate the subject as above consideration. Religious or spiritual traditions often emphasize their own lofty, mysterious jargon as if some supreme effort or obscure secret were required to get into their club. The cartoon image of the guru sitting on the mountaintop symbolizes this notion that some form of strenuous upward climbing is required to become spiritual. Whatever “wisdom” or “truth” or “salvation” may be, they are accessible only to those who have scaled some metaphorical heights. We must gain some special knowledge, go through some special initiation, or achieve some special moral purity.[7]

But spirituality is neither anti-intellectual nor esoteric—neither below us nor above us.[8] The simple truth is that it just can’t be fully appreciated through discussion. No discussion can stand outside of detachment to offer comment on it. No words, logic, or concepts can capture it. This doesn’t mean it’s silly or superhuman. It just means it’s not an abstraction. It’s an experience. Spirituality is a participatory sport.

But isn’t this true of all worthwhile and enjoyable things? You can’t know what chocolate tastes like by reading about it in a book, no matter how big. You can’t learn how to play soccer by discussing it with a coach, no matter how knowledgeable. Experience is what we’re all after, not commentary on experience.

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Next Up: Thoughts - The Little Room We Never Leave

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Footnotes

[1] Kurt Gödel and other thinkers have used logic itself to demonstrate the limits of logic, thus pointing to a greater reality which contains rational thought. In the East, the yin-yang symbol of Taosim is an attempt to depict that larger reality: black and white—logically thought of as opposites—interpenetrate and harmonize in a greater circular wholeness.

[2] One of the founders of quantum physics, Niels Bohr, once said that the opposite of a superficial truth is a falsehood. But the opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.  

[3] In fact, paradox is at the heart of modern physics: both light and all matter sometimes act as if they were waves, and sometimes as if they were particles. Or, that’s how we humans see them. What they ultimately are, then, must be something that appears paradoxical. Physicists accept this about their discipline, but are sometimes reluctant to accept the same principle in a larger arena.

[4] This is similar to mathematician Kurt Gödel’s proof that “broke math.” Gödel proved that no logical system can prove all the truths that that system implies. In other words, in any mathematical system, there will always be true statements that are impossible to prove from within the system.   

[5] Niels Bohr, who along with Einstein was one of the central figures in the founding of modern physics, said, “The fact that religions through the ages have spoken in images, parables, and paradoxes means simply that there are no other ways of grasping the reality to which they refer. But that does not mean that it is not a genuine reality.”

[6] Zen koans are serious nonsense meant to help students break through past limitations. 

[7] The degree of emphasis on this sort of spiritual elitism varies depending on the tradition and the particular personalities we encounter in the tradition.

[8] Spirituality doesn’t belong in any hierarchy. There is a kind of innocence in the spiritual impulse—an attraction to an attitude like those of our brothers and sisters in the natural world, who don’t care who’s wearing what uniform or who has what degree or what amount of money.