According to the Buddhist creed, attachment is the cause of all suffering.
They believe this attachment is borne out of ignorance — a denial of the temporary nature of our existence, a denial of our finite bodies subject to constant change.
Interestingly, the love of Dunya (the word for “world” in Arabic), is also the central obstacle to connecting with God in the Islamic tradition.
In the words of the towering Islamic thinker, Iman Al-Ghazali,
“Those who take delight in this world can take no delight in God, Glorified is He, nor in communion with Him.”
But why does our attachment to the world impede us from perceiving greater truths?
From the macro to the micro, everything in this world is in a state of constant flux.
Nature is an orchestral display of decay, growth, and transformation.
The cold withers away the plants and trees, only for the warmth to come and replenish them.
Our bodies, too, evolve in the backdrop of the changing landscape.
And they will continue to evolve amid the ensuing tide of technological change.
A predicted consequence is declining memories.
In the past, retaining information served an important function, but today it has lost importance since we have accessibility to an ocean of information finger taps away.
In the social world, we cannot find a better example than Covid’19 to demonstrate its sheer unpredictability.
Covid’19 has single-handedly disrupted massive industries.
It has disrupted all our grand plans and aspirations to travel or succeed in the world.
It has literally and metaphorically chained us to particular spaces and activities.
And this too, despite our current age of great technological pride.
Only in the unpredictable and ephemeral nature of the outside world, we can understand why attachment prevents us from looking beyond the ever-changing world.
Yet, it isn’t solely the outside world that is constantly changing.
Our inner world is also a landscape of changing thoughts, emotions, feelings, and sensations.
It is often within our inner world that we become dangerously attached to exaggerated ideals.
These ideals take the shape of celebrities we adore, or fashion trends we surrender to, or worst of all, an ideal of our own self-image.
An ideal fueled by external validation, especially relevant to social media. Likes and comments have become metrics of judging our worth.
We also become attached to feelings of pleasure, leading us into a vicious cycle of abuse.
Esteemed Islamic Scholar Abdul Hakim Murad explains this gratification-seeking dimension within us,
“There is the nafs which is gravitational, animalistic, wants to go down… interested in every possible way that the endorphin circuits might be tickled… like a dog that looks excitedly in the direction of anything that smells good.
“That’s us.”
The world constantly tempts us to indulge.
The culture of consumerism breathes down our neck, urging us to buy that new jacket to impress our friends, explore darker sides of the internet, and immerse ourselves into ubiquitous sources of pleasure in this world.
But, in the words of Hakim Abdul Murad, we also have another dimension within us with a starkly different objective,
“… there is also this, Ruh, the spirit, which is from the divine breathing in… but unlike the Nafs that goes anywhere it finds pleasure, the Ruh craves to embark on Istiqama, the straight path”
Muslims pray five times a day to be guided on the straight path — a path that leads directly to their source of origin, a path of reunion with their Lord.
And in a Buddhist context, taming the Ego and finding peace in a world that never will cease to change means following the noble eightfold path.
In the current epoch, Dunya dominates our cultural, moral, economic, and political sphere.
Hence, Buddhist and Islamic teachings are a gateway to a lasting source of peace and equanimity — a Source that transcends our temporary materialistic desires.
