Does attachment lead to suffering and ultimately the dark side?

I have experienced temptation to work against the common good of a group to strengthen my connection with a friend of loved one. And in this I have seen that while love and attachment can provide amazing happiness in the short term; however upon losing this person or relationship one faces deep longing to belong and pain when that need is not met. Is it possible that Master Yoda had more wisdom in this than many give him credit for. Not only in terms of Star Wars Canon, but also philosophically. I would love to hear more eloquent and wiser people weigh in on this.

Attachment is seriously a bad thing, but it isn't what most people think it is. Attachment isn't having friends, or loving things, or owning stuff. Attachment is the refusal to accept the temporary nature of all things and allowing a thing (or relationship, or idea, or what-have-you) to control and own you. That is the kind of attachment that leads to suffering, because when we allow things to control us, we are at their mercy, and when they (as everything) prove to be temporary, we are devastated.

Building from Steam's excellent comment,


Your situation involves you wanting to love somebody deeper to the detriment of a group dynamic, is that correct? If so, then you have to decide which is more important to you. Do not feel obligated to the group just because they are a group. You must know, internally, what will fulfill you. And, it is not the group's job to cater to that need or block you from attaining it.

Once that is decided, you should heed Steam's words. Love is a wonderful, painful, powerful, disorienting emotional direction. It guides our senses and our decision-making such that we sometimes do things that do not make logical sense. When love transforms from a healthy, unconditional love to a deeply co-dependent, abusive dynamic, you know that you have entered into a space where love cannot follow. In that way, love can actually be quite dangerous.

When my first love broke up with me, I was devastated. I did creepy things that nobody should do.. like, I used to walk around her neighborhood (not bothering her, of course) just to remember those times I was with her. Love had turned into co-dependence; I could not live without her, and it was horrifying. I was lucky that I headed off to college soon after, which was a great antidote. She had compassion for me in that way, I think.

As for Yoda, I think you are right. If you have seen Clone Wars Season 6, you know that Yoda learned to embrace his darkness before he faced Palpatine in Episode 3. So, when Yoda went into hiding, he was letting go of his arrogance that HIS Jedi could defeat the Sith. He accepted failure and went to wait for the New Hope. He developed that Wisdom on those strange planets.

Any kind of attachment will come a slew of potential problems: the frenzy of obsessing with something (usually before you actually have it - I absolutely must have this and nothing else!), the fear of loss (once you have it - crap, what if it breaks or someone steals it?), the loss of interest (once you have it - it's actually not that great, perhaps I should buy the newer model).

All of this revolves around another core issue: not having enough focus and as a consequence, letting external factors (both people and things) dominate your thought processes and keep you from finding a peaceful state.

In Buddhist philosophy, external attachment is called the near enemy to developing inner peace. It's considered especially treacherous as attachment can give you temporary pleasure (whereas other "enemies", such as hatred, usually don't). As such, it's more difficult to overcome. Most people will agree that hatred is bad for your mental state. Attachment, however, is much more controversial - it's the basis of our economic system, after all. Everything around us is about attachment. We're conditioned from birth that having stuff is good and not having stuff is bad.

So the problem, in my opinion, isn't that we have things (even if they're expensive). The problem is how we view things and what our relationship to things and other external factors (including people) is. Once we realise that lasting peace and happiness can't come from factors that constantly change (and they change at an increasingly fast pace, if you consider it), the issues connected with attachment lose their bite. This involves a fundamental change of attitude, however. Things are there to serve us, not the other way round. When buying something, we should carefully consider its purpose in our lives and its impact. Do we want a smartwatch, that will constantly distract us from other things that we value? Do we want to buy a fancy but cheap tool that will break quickly and cause us sorrow or should we stick with our old one until we have the funds to purchase a more lasting solution? Once we have decided to buy something, we should do so in the full knowledge that what we're buying is a tool, a toy, or whatever purpose it serves and that the pleasure we get from it is temporary. Knowing this will keep us from becoming disappointed.

With people, things are more complicated - but carefully considering our relationships with others will also help us avoid situations that we later might regret and that will keep us from thinking clearly.

Attachment is a difficult subject... I personally would enjoy the life of a Jedi, as attachment can cloud the mind and quite possible lead to the dark side, but The life I currently have with my wife and yes even my dog leads to roads of more enlightenment and I have been a lot more healthier, mentally and physically. It is quite difficult but the truth is attachment leads to, great things as well as hurdles, and as a Jedi we must find the balance between those two. Life is a balance and we must try our best to keep it there.

Attachment is not really a problem until you have to end it.

Loving something or someone is great, and that is not (what I believe) the caution is against - It is about being able to move through the grieving process and get on with things once that item or person or idea has gone from your grasp (in the case of death* or fire, easier to do, if the item or person or sense of your identity still exists, just not with you, it can be much harder)


As for the OP - That desire to have "more" than you have. Ambition if you will - Could serve you well (arguably at someone else's expense, but ethics is not an easy thing, and the answer is not necessarily always "what is best for others" you must count yourself in the assessment...)

Or you could burn a lot of bridges getting to a grassy hill that, up close, ain't so green.

There's no hard and fast answer mate - if there was a way to predict all possible outcomes, I'd be at the roulette table.



*Edit, because I'm thinking about Space Wizards - Most (eh) people can accept a parent's death. We don't expect them to outlive us, and while we obviously grieve when it happens, it is a part of the world.
A child's death is far more confronting.
In any case - If it wasn't for his belief that he could learn magic that could prevent death, poor Ani might have had half a chance of coming to grips with this reality.

"Attachment leads to the Dark Side" is just a sombre old git way of saying "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" (Enjoy what you have) "YOLO" (Don't waste your life wishing for another one) or "Carpe Diem" (Use the now) or whatever that turtle said about the present being a gift.

Attachment, in the way Yoda describes it, has more to do with the fear of loss. We suffer when we lose the people and things we love, so we should try to avoid becoming too attached to them in the first place. In our own lives, often our attachment causes suffering due to our materialism. We're never happy with what we have. We always want more. This causes us suffering because we never enjoy what we have in the moment, but instead are always looking forward to the next prize.

One of my favorite comedians, George Carlin, put modern materialism into perspective for me. “We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life, not life to years.” In essence, he's saying we suffer because we have made ourselves slaves to the grind.

If you'd like a more spiritual outlook on it, here's one of my favorite verses from the Tao Te Ching: