The heart of non-attachment - Michael Stone

True non-attachment is an intimacy with life. Buddhist teacher and yogi Michael Stone shares his perspective on how to live an engaged life.

Shot & edited by Ian MacKenzie http://ianmack.com

Michael Stone leader of Centre of Gravity, is a psychotherapist, Yoga teacher, author and activist, committed to the integration of traditional teachings with contemporary psychological and philosophical understanding. The components of his practice include Yoga postures, breathing technique, meditation and textual study. Over the years, his goal has been to cultivate long-term relationships with people who want to deepen their understanding of Yoga and Buddhist teachings and practice. He also maintains a dedicated workshop and retreat schedule in communities in Canada and abroad. Michael is a father and lives in Toronto with his partner Carina Lof and his 9 year old son Arlyn. These days you can find him working on a documentary film called "Reactor," a new book of the same title, teaching, and also giving talks at conferences and in community.

http://centreofgravity.org

The heart of a temporary spiritual practice is being totally engaged with or lives, forests, rivers, poluted city's, they don't care about you're enlightenment, what they care about is you're aliveness to present experience ,your actions in the world and the effects of you're actions

and one of the terms of spiritual practice that is so misleading,is this idee of non-attachement,so many times people hear the word of non-attachement and they think of kind of dissociation ;I'm not gonna be attach to how things are,nothing moves me ,and then ,you know you walk arround like a zombie and in a way

I came to spiritual practice at a time of really turbulent emotion in my life and i really thout that practice and meditation aspecially would become a way to kind of you now get out of feeling but actualy things don't really work that way and non attachment doesn't mean just not being attached to you're bycicle or you're appartment or you're bankaccount euh..non attachment means not clinging to fixed ideas not clinging to the way you think things should be but actually opening to the way things really are

so I would translate non attachment as engagement non attachment is a deep intimaciatual to see that everything leeds into everything else

to wake up into the inherant interconnection to all things but to do it in a way that is non attached

so not to open up to the interconnectedness of things and say;oh this is the interconnectedness of things right there you've lost it but how do we become intimed with the way things are underneed language underneed our concepts of how we think things should be

this is really the heart of non attachment is this kind of deep engagement and it comes from this term yoga witch is a sanscrit term witch comes from the root yo'dge witch mean to unite but tak'n out of the verbal form yoga means union

and I like to translate the term yoga as intimacy as it's not something you do you don't do intimacy infact intimacy is the byproduct of giving up fixed used of the way things are

euh ..you now fixed and ridged ideas are really the enemy of intimacy and it's really what shuts down relationships

and because we living at a time where we don't need anymore ideology and filosofy what we really need is a way to let go and to drop in you now to the truth of how things are economically emotionally ecologically socially and that includes both what's beautifull and also what's devastating

it means opening up to the fact that this world is stunningly beautifull and also a total catastrofy and how to hold both how to hold both and how to open up to the Joyce of being a live and also to the suffering that is inherent to being in a body

and being in a body that is aging and being in a world right now that really needs our help so i think we really need to re imegin this idea of non attachment as a practise of not clinging to fixed ideas so that we can be engaged with the world

the world needs us and our actions make a diffrence so how do we re-think spiritual practice not as trying to transcent not as being disassociated not as withnessing our lives but as being totally immursed in live