Detachment with compassion seems the ideal middle path

Egon touches on an interesting problem at the end of his letter on Buddhism. Attachment is denigrated as an obstacle to enlightenment in both Buddhism and Hinduism. But attachment is the basis of a number of human virtues like love, empathy, and affection. 

The Indian faiths often consider ideal to be the jnani, the knower, the sage who rises above the world and its problems, sees everything from a cosmic perspective, and regards it all with Olympian detachment. 

This is a cold and bloodless ideal which can lead to indifference to the suffering of living beings. 

In Buddhism, it is mitigated by the Buddha’s insistence on compassion. Modern Hinduism has adopted this insistence. When Swami Vivekananda grieved over the death of his sister, a bystander objected that, as a monk, the swami ought to be more detached. Vivekananda retorted that a monk was not supposed to be an unfeeling brute. It was his sympathy for the suffering masses of India that inspired him to start the Ramakrishna Mission, an organisation dedicated to uplifting them.

Detachment with compassion (including acts of compassion that relieve suffering) seems to be the desirable ideal here, even though it sounds like a self-contradiction. It constitutes a middle way between indifferent, detachment and obsessive clinging. As such, it ought to commend itself to Buddhists, Hindus, and everybody else.

William Page