home

In this episode of comfort blankets I want to explore our attachment to the home, to the place we live, the house we live in, the apartment.

For many people moving home is one of the most stressful things they experience in life, and this stress is an indication of the level of attachment that often forms to one’s home. Of course, there are many elements to this attachment. The home is a familiar place, we spend a lot of time there,. And with anything that we become familiar with, an attachment can easily arise. There is a great comfort in familiarity. It doesn’t challenge us. We can relax. We know it. But the home has other aspects to it as well which also lead us to become attached.

Firstly, it is the place where we can feel safe, secure, for most of us anyway, unless we are living with an abusive partner or violent parents. But assuming a fairly harmonious household, the home is a place of safety. We can relax and not be on our guard. We can lock the door, close the windows, and we have shut off the threats of the outside world. In England, it is said that an Englishman’s home is his castle, and that is often the attitude: a defensive position where outsiders may be invited in, but otherwise are totally unwelcome. The home is a retreat. It is as if we have those castle walls around us and a moat as well. So that aspect of security leads to a great feeling of attachment and we feel unnerved at the thought of leaving home, leaving that place of security.

Another factor in our attachment to home is that we tend to accumulate things, and those things are kept in the home. Given an empty house, most of us will soon fill it with bric-a-brac, with furniture, with mementos. It becomes a sort of museum for our life: memories existing as objects and pictures. And so, this memory aspect helps to underpin our sense of our identity, which is largely made up of our history, our memories. And the ego loves this sort of thing: to have a story to tell. That is what the ego is – a story, and a storyteller.

So these are a few of the aspects that lead us to become very attached to the home. But for the spiritual journey this can become a huge obstacle. A seeker, a sannyasin, does not have a home. He cannot rest until he has found god. He cannot be in peace until the truth is living within him. And nothing else can be a substitute, least of all a home. And this is why, in India, the sadhus wander homeless. They have no fixed abode. And that is the feeling of a seeker: there is no fixed abode. One will go to the ends of the Earth if necessary to find the truth. There is no resting place until one has arrived at that ultimate destination.

But for many people, living a life of no fixed abode is an immense challenge. In practical terms, one has to dispose of all those things that have accumulated around one in the home. Can you imagine moving house, with no house to move to? Instead of packing your things into boxes and unpacking them a few hours later, you have to get rid of it all: take it to the tip, throw it away, give it away, burn it. It is as if you are burning your history, your life story. And that is the attitude that’s needed every day, if we are seeking.

And then to wander homeless, no longer on a little holiday from which you will soon return to your familiar abode. No, your home becomes where you are: walking, sleeping on a park bench, wherever you are is home. But to have no fixed abode one cannot put down roots anywhere. Tomorrow is always a new day, with new adventures, new places, new people. And no fixed abode.