Dear Leo:

The answer for me is quite simple: you let go of your attachment to your family by not practicing certain behaviors that are motivated by such attachment. Trying to reject and expel your emotional attachment will not work. Choosing to not behave certain ways will work.

For example: you have a desirable job opportunity far away from your family: moving away from your family and taking the job is a non-attachment behavior on your part.

Another example: you are interested in a life partner that your parents dislike but you believe is good for you: having that person as your life partner anyway is non-attachment behavior.

Choosing your career, choosing your friends, choosing your life according to your values, needs, wants and not according to your family’s is how you let go of your attachment to your family.

Key point: examine your values and wants to see that indeed… they are yours!

anita

Hi Leo,
I am 23, and detached from my family, or at least I have been practicing detachment. I haven’t held a conversation with my parents in 6 months, even though I have regular contact with my sister, and I plan on continuing that pattern. Hows that for them being strangers!? This isn’t at all by choice, but out of necessity. An unhealthy family system hijacks the lives of its individuals and entirely suppresses spirituality and love, I have found. I’ve been reading “Healing the Shame that Binds You” by John Bradshaw, which isn’t written in the Buddhist tradition, but it may as well be – given all of the parallels I can draw. A key theme of the book is the role that families CAN play in the denial of our basic goodness and perpetuation of Samsara.
All of that said about me and where I am coming from, I have two pieces of advice:
If I were you I would practice gratitude for your family. In that way, you will not take them for granted. Your family does not sound like the kind you need to run away from and turn into strangers. Where would we be if we rejected the love that flows freely to us? Does it make sense to dull our appreciation for life by “detachment”? We all suffer, but much of my path of suffering is built by my parents (and not maliciously, but mostly out of ignorance and the shame that their parents passed onto them). I treat my parents the way I do because I have learned that they have and will continue to sew wounds into me. They see me in the same dim light that they see themselves, and while I am busy relating with my own pain, they will generate more for those around them until they don’t (and hopefully they learn at some point in their lives).
My second piece of advice would be to be very skeptical of your desire to be like a monk. Why do you want to be like a monk? Will you escape pain that way? Why do monks want to be like monks? I have experienced firsthand the struggle for an ego enrichment that seems “correct” because it has a spiritual label. Wanting to be like a monk sounds very fishy to me.
ANYWAYS,
Good luck!

“I just

feel

like it’s time for me to get a different perspective on live. My motive is

not emotional

, it’s just logical.”
You contradict yourself here. If it is a feeling, where is the logic?
And I think it’s quite alright to contradict yourself, but better if you know you are doing it.
In my experience, logic itself is circumstantial. It is a tool of consistency that people use, but people can use it for different things. Something that I think about is that there is nothing that is not circumstantial (Non-independent origination, Heart Sutra).

Talking about your uncle:
“I asked if he was sad when his parents died and he said that he wasn’t sad, because everybody dies. He also said that when you see the world with total objectivity, you will be at peace even if there’s a war going on outside.”
It seems as though you are saying “I should be objective, so I can be at peace”. That itself is a desire. It’s one thing to tell the truth, that you are not sad, like your uncle did. It is another thing to want the truth, to want not to be sad. One is unmotivated. The other is motivated, moving in a direction; from here, towards there.
In my view, it is not a wrong thing: “to want”, to be motivated. But I think it is confusing to say that your motivator is logical, and without circumstance. Some psychologists say there is no such thing as motivation without affect (without emotion).
To finish: If circumstantial means “not real”, then nothing is real….Just like the Buddha always knew, that life is a dream.

A few observations

It seems the attachment to your family is troubling you. Else why would you want to letgo of your attachment. You say that you know that the love of your family is circumstantial. If you would have really known you would have long lost your attachment. But since you havent, this circumstantial love only seems to be your rationalisation. You also say that monks are not attached to anything. Take away their spiritual life and you will see how much they are attached to that way of life.

And why you have chosen only family for attachment. Why not give up attachment to everything. Why cant you give up your attachment to your thoughts, your feelings and your own self. Because that too may not be real.