This has been a hard year for many of us. A year marked by losses that arrived in different ways and at different volumes. Some were dramatic and unmistakable. Others were quieter, unfolding slowly, almost invisibly. Loss of people. Loss of health. Loss of roles we once inhabited without thinking. Loss of animals who were family. Loss of a basic sense that things are stable.
When we talk about attachment from inside a year like this, it doesn’t feel theoretical. It feels intimate. Close to the bone.
When loss is near, the Buddhist teaching on attachment can land painfully. It can sound like an accusation, as though loving deeply was the mistake, as though care itself was the problem. That misunderstanding can create a kind of spiritual confusion, especially when grief is fresh. It can feel as if the teachings are asking us to harden or withdraw, to become less human in the name of wisdom.
For a long time, both Buddhism and Western psychology used the same word—attachment—while pointing to very different experiences. That once felt like a flaw in translation. Now it feels more like an invitation to look more carefully. There is a clearer distinction emerging between attachment that is healthy and functional, and attachment that becomes constricted or dysfunctional. Still, in lived experience, the line between them can be subtle and difficult to feel.
Attachment is often described in stark terms: clinging, craving, grasping. But those words don’t tell the whole story. They miss something essential. They miss the way we naturally orient toward what matters. The way care arises. The way connection forms. The way interest and responsiveness draw us into relationship with people, places, practices, and lives we love.
There is a form of attachment that includes care, responsiveness, and presence. It is the way we take up what matters in this life. Without it, life would be thin and abstract. To care is to be attached in this sense. To love is to allow ourselves to be moved.
And yet, there are moments when attachment tightens. When care turns into grasping. When we cling to what we love, not ready or not willing to let go as change arrives. In a year filled with loss, learning to distinguish between these textures of attachment feels necessary. Not to judge ourselves, but to understand what is happening inside the heart.
There is a long-standing emphasis in Dharma practice on radical self-reliance. “Be a lamp unto yourself.” Find your own path. While this teaching has value, it has sometimes been interpreted in a way that sidelines relationship. As if needing others, caring deeply, or being relational were distractions from the path. Women, in particular, have often been labeled as too attached, too relational, as though care itself were a spiritual weakness.
Caring deeply does carry burdens. Loss hurts precisely because love was present. But the middle way is not indifference. It is not a retreat from relationship. It is not not caring.
It feels fortunate to be practicing in a time when the Dharma is being expressed in more relational ways. Not softened, but translated differently. Cultural assumptions are being questioned. Language has widened. A more secular expression has emerged alongside traditional forms. And the teaching that spiritual friendship is the whole of the path is no longer marginal. It sits at the center.
Reflective meditation points us toward a truth that is both simple and difficult: to be attached is to know that it will end. Attachment and loss are inseparable. To love is to accept impermanence, even when the heart resists.
This truth came close very recently with the loss of a beloved cat. A constant home companion. A familiar presence during work sessions, often curled into a lap, interrupting keyboards, curious and alive. The kind of bond that doesn’t fade with time or distance. The kind that picks up right where it left off.
To love an animal is often to know, from the beginning, that we will likely outlive them. That knowledge doesn’t protect us from grief. It lives alongside the love. When the goodbye comes, the loss is real. The mourning begins. Rituals help mark the passage. The bond doesn’t disappear simply because the body is gone.
We all carry many attachments. To people. To animals. To places. To ways of living. This is not a mistake. It is part of being alive. Loss and separation arrive because love was there first.
Practice does not ask us to deny this. It asks us to stay present with it. To learn how we hold what we love. To notice when care is spacious and when it tightens. To allow grief its place without turning it into a verdict against love.
The path does not lead away from relationship. It leads deeper into understanding how to be in relationship—with clarity, tenderness, and the willingness to let change do what it always does.
