"I Don't Care"

Followers of spiritual traditions often seek equanimity. We train ourselves not to feel disturbing emotions, or at the very least not to be swayed by them. We may believe that such feelings have their source in the egoic mind or the physical body and that they are distractions that can lead us astray from our spiritual paths. We may envision our life’s goal as the attainment of perfect detachment, subsiding ultimately into a state of pure awareness that is as undisturbed as a still unruffled pool. There are dangers in this approach, however. Detachment should not properly be regarded as an end in itself, but is at most an attitude that may be useful in attaining a more perfect sense of unity with all that is. Avoiding superficial distractions may help us to focus on our fundamental oneness with the Universe, but we must not detach ourselves from Spirit.

The single-minded pursuit of detachment may actually represent a form of egoism. An individual may wind up so withdrawn into himself, in an effort to avoid disturbing influences, that he walls himself off not only from other people but from the Universe itself. The ego is fed by the implicit belief that all things outside oneself are unimportant, perhaps even illusory. Detachment of this sort does not lead to unity, but to separation. Within his protective shell the individual grows more and more focused on his own identity to the exclusion of others. He withdraws from emotional contact with others and, ultimately, with Spirit. He loses his place in the Universe by denying its existence.

Other people may seek detachment to protect themselves from painful contact with turbulent emotions, either their own or others’. Detachment for them becomes a form of denial. This may occur not because they do not care about themselves or others, but because they care so deeply that the intensity of feeling is intolerable. This can be particularly true when the feeling is painful. An individual may feel his own pain, or others’, so strongly that he retreats into detachment in self defense. For him, “I don’t care” is a mantra he chants to drown out the cries for help that reverberate in his consciousness. He may feel helpless and hopeless, drowning in a sea of human suffering that he is powerless to alleviate.

The sense of despair at one’s inability to wipe out all human suffering is itself a form of suffering. Detachment from that suffering does not mean to wall it out, but to allow it to pass by and to be unaffected by it. The same is true of other negative emotions. Rather than try to shield ourselves from them, we must learn to feel their full force while denying them power over us. Oneness with Spirit in meditation facilitates this process. It also enables us to realize that we and others like us do indeed have the ability to reduce human suffering by our actions in the material world as well as on a spiritual level. Every kind act we perform in the world shifts the balance measurably in the direction of Joy and away from pain. In the aggregate, those acts have immense power. At the same time, through compassionate meditation we can lighten the hearts of all beings by sending our Joy into the Universal Spirit in which all share at a subtle level.