Tragic wisdom, comic folly

The Dalai Lama’s comments about sex, inevitably, grabbed the headlines. But I found something else he said at a Lagos press conference the other day more arresting: “Too much attachment towards your children, towards your partner,” is “one of the obstacle or hindrance of peace of mind.”

It’s ancient wisdom. Augustine knew this wisdom, when he chided himself for weeping over a dead friend. It’s a wisdom acquainted with death. Death is going to take your children, and your partner, and you. Before they die, you’ll worry yourself sick wondering when it’s going to happen.

Better to keep your distance. No attachment means no sorrow, no lament, no worries. No wonder the supremely detached Dalai Lama seems so placid.

Yet we keep attaching ourselves, and mourning our loss, and worrying about death. That all might be nothing more than the grandest of human delusions. On the other hand, all that clinging and all those tears might reveal a wisdom beyond tragedy somehow embedded in our souls – the insane hope for resurrection, the mad faith in a God who attaches Himself to us, the foolish expectation that love is stronger than death.