Attachment, Pride, and Selfishness
Just as Fear and Anger are the main emotional disturbances associated with the Vajra family, Pride and Attachment are the main emotional disturbances associated with the Ratna Family. Vajra energies have to do with the differences between actual reality and our idea of it, or our idea of how actual reality relates to our goals and values. Ratna energy has to do with our relationship to stability and strength. All Ratna Neuroses are mishandling this energy through grasping, clinging or being overwhelmed by the energy behind our sense of wealth, stability, and strength.
If you look at the remaining body/mind components (perceptions, intention, and consciousness), you will see that they are more formless. Ratna energy is the beginning of connecting to form and has to do with our immediate reaction to contact with the world around us and the textures that we experience from this contact. That is why Feelings are the body/mind component associated with Ratna.
The formless part of the mind can be very flighty and unstable, so it's Ratna energy that provides that stability. Unfortunately, we misunderstand how it works. We don't believe that we can have stability and impermanence at the same time and that's our biggest mistake. Once we experience that solidity and stableness, we become afraid to lose it. My favourite example is that we are like a toddler trying to walk by holding on to everything, unaware that they can walk without holding on at all (Interestingly - they can walk without grasping onto things once they discover their sense of balance (the Ratna wisdom)).
The result of this struggle for stability is attachment or posessiveness. The example usually given is that we are like someone who is blindfolded on a balance beam that's lying on the ground. Because of our perceived position, we're afraid to fall off and so we become emotionally disturbed. What we don't realize is that the balance beam is actually on the ground, so that we can't really fall. The fear of not regaining stability causes us to be attached to parts of our world that seem to be stable and strong or that we think will provide us with that stability and strength.
So stinginess and possessiveness come from this desire to maintain our position in the world and fear of losing our current place or circumstances. Of course, this is trying to deny the impermanence of all situations and so a lot of effort and strain is involved in trying to maintain our position and circumstances against any sign of disappearance. We can fight, lie, steal, hoard, belittle, and insult all in an effort to hold on to our possessions. We can also do these actions in order to take from someone else what we think we need, because we feel that it's too difficult to get what we need any other way. There can be a lot of worry and fear about losing what we have and the more vulnerable we feel our situation is, the more attached we become and the more posessive we get.
A lot of sadness and lamenting comes from losing the things that we're attached to. Much of this comes from trying to deny that maintaining situations and circumstances depends on creating and maintaining the proper causes and conditions. If conditions change, then we have no choice but to adjust our circumstances or adjust our reactions, if we want to maintain our situation. Conditions may change so much, however, that we have to abandon our circumstances, no matter how desirable.
Part of the difficulty also comes from fear of never getting a desirable circumstance again. This comes from viewing reality as fixed and unalterable. It comes from thinking that our happiness and satisfaction will only be fulfilled under certain specific circumstances or in a specific situation. "If only I won the lottery, then I'd be happy". "Without this person, I'd be lost."
We often fail to remember that feelings are temporary. "If I don't get to play golf, I'll be miserable." Actually, the feeling of misery will arise and pass away, and then we have to think of the missed golf game again in order to get the miserable feeling back again and thus keep ourselves feeling sad. What if we just allowed the miserableness to arise and pass away and then went on to something else? This is an example of how we choose to stay miserable by going over and over and over an idea or the memory of a situation in order to maintain our miserableness. This is an ultimate example of attachment. We're so attached to an object, sentient being, or idea that we're willing to stay miserable for the sake of our attachment.
Another way that we can react is, once we have some stability, wealth, or strength, then we flaunt it, show it off, become proud of our possessions. We recognize all that we have and we take all of the credit for the fact that we have it. We can even exaggerate the qualities of what we have, in order for it to appear to others to be even stronger, richer, more stable than theirs. We end up with a lot of bravado or arrogance, but ultimately it's a sign of holding on tightly to what we have, wanting to appear strong, and fearing losing it. We want people to know "this is mine", "don't touch", "Having this means that I'm good, accomplished, strong, stable and worthy". We avoid or try to avoid showing any sign of weakness or vulnerability.
The other side of Ratna energy is nourishment. Reality always arises to support the mind-states of sentient beings. When we feel a need for support and sustenance, the world has the capacity to provide that support. If we do not perceive this truth, or if we forget about or try to avoid the need to create the proper conditions, then we can end up in a state of neediness and hunger. Sometimes we then become preoccupied with the feeling of neediness to the point where we don't even recognize when we're already getting the support that we need. We become so focussed on the feeling of neediness that we become insatiable. We latch on to friends or people or situations that try to give us what we need and try to own them. We become angry if our friends pay too much attention to someone or something else. We become overly dependent on the other person.
This insatiableness leads to many types of addictions. It's almost like the Padma energy of consuming, except it relates more to attempting to gain nourishment, strength, support and stability. We try to resolve our difficulties with the world by obliterating the difficulties from our minds or by finding a nice, easy, warm, and fuzzy, comforting and supporting place to take refuge in and hide. Hiding and avoiding then causes other problems and then we feel compelled to retreat to our addiction again, until we get to the point where we feel it's no longer safe to come out of our addiction at all or we're too embarassed by our weaknesses to leave the addiction behind.
We can also look on nourishment as a possession. When this happens, we develop a sense of entitlement. We feel that we deserve to be supported by the outside world, or we feel that we should be able to get what we want or need without any effort or contribution on our part.
Finally, when we are overwhelmed by the whole process of Ratna energy, we end up trying to ignore it, or hide from it. The result is that we can become very belligerent and very arrogant. We become like a porcupine, rolling itself into a ball and putting out all of its quills in defense. We become like Ebaniser Scrooge, miserly, isolated, proud, entitled, and unable to connect to the feelings and suffering of others. In fact, these people have trouble connecting to their own feelings or showing any sort of vulnerableness or interconnection. All of their achievements are their own doing, and showing vulnerability or weakness or sharing their problems or abundance with others is out of the question.
Because of the Earth energy of the Ratna family, although we can experience strength and stability from it, it can also go too far and become a tendency to be complacent, fixed, or solid. We can become unmoving, sedentery, and inert. We end up feeling like we're in a rut. To get us out of this extreme, we need the openness, creativity, motion, activity, and ambition of Karma family energy.
Another large part of the solution to these neuroses is to learn to develop satisfaction outside of worldly posessions and circumstances. This comes from recognizing the impermanence of worldly circumstances and recognizing the impermanence of the feelings generated by them. We need to understand that we don't have to tie our sense of satisfaction to such temporary things.
Another part of the solution is to recognize the contribution of others to our wealth and qualities, and to recognize the possibility of the future contribution of others to our welfare. Recognizing our interconnection and interdependence helps us to develop openness and a sense of gratitude for the help of others. We can then learn that we also need to share and help others as part of the fair and balanced exchange of support and nourishment that automatically takes place in our reality.
