That line from Fight Club: that it’s only when we lose everything that we’re free to do anything. Is this true? I don’t know, but there is much truth in it.
I think that most people, including myself, instinctively (or, out of fear, if we are to be honest with ourselves) think that, well, you don’t have to lose everything; but maybe that is precisely where we are failing ourselves.
Another way of expressing that idea is to say that you have to really let go before you can be free. You have to really let go, of everything that you are holding onto, everything that you are clinging to so hard. Truly, it is not so much that we need to dispose of every (material) thing, as much as we need to let go (“lose”) our beliefs and assumptions; if one truly does this, then those material/emotional things will be able to be let go of without them necessarily being lost, for how can you lose something you never really had? (But, again, if you try to let go as a way of holding on (to whatever), then, well, that obviously won’t work, will it? There’s a perfection here.)
Most often, we don’t even realize just how hard we are clinging to so much. Only when we are challenged, or it is brought out into the light a bit, does it start to reveal just how much we are clinging. Most people, including myself, let go of some stuff, and it feels great when we do (though it is also scary), and then we feel like we have let go of what we needed to, and that’s all we need to do. But this is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and we are not being as brave and open as we thought. We are letting go of something, but not of all we need to let go of. This is why Fight Club is actually pretty brilliant, because it is about letting go of everything, of hitting bottom before you can really start to live.
The idea is not that it is better to live free as opposed to unfree (which is an obvious truth), but that one cannot start really living until he or she is first free.
As much as many smart people would like to criticize that idea, I think that it is right. Hitting bottom, letting go, does not have to mean falling into a life of sleaze, drugs, and violence. Unfortunately, it often does mean this, because not only is it so hard to let go, but, in this society, when one does go through this, there is no emotional/spiritual support for them from others, for those who “love” him/her are still clingy children themselves, and while they might fancy that they want to be there for the person, the fact is that they can’t, just as a 10-year-old cannot truly be there for a parent who is going through a divorce, no matter how much that child might want to be there for his/her parent.
And so when we do let go, we are so alone and so lost, that things suck us in, for there is no place for a true seeker of enlightenment within this society—one must move off to the fringes, or be nudged out by the contextual circumstance of the whole thing. But that idea of letting everything go is exactly what the Buddha was really teaching. They are the same. (And they are equally done in a half-assed manner by most people who think about and try to implement them.)
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From my personal notes, 6/15/00
