When we die, we necessarily let go of all attachments. Naturally. Inevitably. To this regard, the quest for spiritual enlightenment, peace of mind, or “the meaning of life,” has often been described as “letting go of the Ego.”
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It requires to detach from everything that is connected with the Ego (personality) — materially, emotionally, and spiritually — and finally from the Ego itself. It stands for “dying alive.” For “… being in the world, but not from the world.”
Nevertheless, the classical problem has always been the paradoxical nature of an attempt to “kill the Ego” with help of the Ego. Because it’s the Ego “that wants and desires,” and that’s exactly the thing we want to get rid off.
The Buddha claimed that “… it’s desire which is the root of all suffering,” but “the desire not to desire” is of course still a desire. A special one indeed, but it won’t solve the paradox.
We cannot “want not to want.” Deeply realizing this, understanding the paradox thoroughly, is the only “method” of dissolving the whole issue. We can not “detach from attachment by attachment to detachment.”
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The great sages told us that spiritual insight, real seeing, transcends and thereby dissolves the Ego. Something like “the seer and that-what-is-seen sublimate in the powerful flame of insight.” To say — deep insight in what-is-the-case burns the forest of ignorance, including the Ego.
In the Bible, Genesis opens with: “God saw the Darkness of the World and said: ‘Let there be Light!’ And He created the Sun and the Moon. The Sun for the day and the Moon for the night.”
That might seem clever, but we should remember that God doesn’t want. He doesn’t wish. He doesn’t think.
He cannot want, because he doesn’t need anything and therefore — He has no attachments at all. He just expresses himself naturally — unknowingly.
