Path of the Jedi Episode #8 – Attachment in the Star Wars Universe Part 2

In this episode, we continue our discussion on attachment and the Jedi Order. So much of the conversation around the fall of the Jedi Order lays blame on the Code being too strict and rigid. But a the code is just words on a page in a book. I think it’s how one chooses to interpret and then follow and then enforce the code that has greater impact on the outcome.

The Heartbreak of Ahsoka

There are few things more heartbreaking in Star Wars than the exile of Ahsoka from Star Wars: The Clone Wars. What makes it even more heartbreaking was that the exile was self-imposed.

This serves as perhaps ultimate lesson in attachment in (and for) the Jedi Order. Ahsoka is willing to walk away from the only life she knew, the only family she had because of the Order’s blind “attachment” to it’s Code.

She was willing to let go of all the attachments she ever knew, her attachments to the Jedi Order and in doing so becomes more of a Jedi than perhaps anyone else on the Council.

The irony is that in leaving the Jedi Order, Ahsoka became more of a true Jedi than the Council Members themselves.

She wasn’t actually the one who strayed from the Code. With all their pomp and bureaucracy and rules and rigidity, it was the Jedi Order that, albeit unkowingly, lost site of and therefore deviated from the Code. Attachment indeed.

We continue this discussion in Episode 8. You can listen to the full episode and read the full transcript below.

Transcript: Path of the Jedi – Where Star Wars meets Personal Development

Episode #8 – Attachment in the Star Wars Universe Part 2

Originally released October 6, 2021

(Intro soundbite) If a guiding principle for the Jedi is non-attachment, a driving principal for the Sith is attachment.

(Intro music/main podcast) All right! Welcome to Path of the Jedi Episode 8! Finally home actually. It’s crazy that the last three out of four episodes I had to record while traveling. So it’s nice to be back home in the quote-unquote home studio. A little bit more controlled environment, better equipment, so hopefully this thing will turn out a little bit better quality than the past episodes. I do appreciate all your guys patience with any inconsistencies in the audio quality of the last couple of episodes.

But here we are. We’re back home again. It was an incredibly busy September but things are going well for the podcast. We’ve been able to keep it up! So yeah, here we go. Let’s just kick it off again with news and updates!

The first piece of news: Facebook now has the capability of playing podcast. Well at least on the mobile version. I’m not sure about the the web version yet, but on the mobile version it’s definitely available. So now you can listen to Path of the Jedi directly from our Facebook page. If you go to the top of the page where all the tabs are, you’ll see “podcast” listed there. Then once you click on that you can see all our episodes are now available through that app. Well, at least when Facebook isn’t broken right?

If you haven’t liked our page yet, go to facebook.com/potjpodcast and you can listen directly from the Facebook app.

Next update and this is something I’m incredibly excited about and also completely stressing over. We now have a blog! We now have a blog… well it’s not live yet. I started working on this blog a week ago and I’m building it from the ground up. I’m really super excited about it. I wanted to give you guys another resource to tap into where it expands some of the topics that we talked about here on the podcast. It gives you the show notes. You can also find transcripts there as well. Again to just really flesh out all the… to give you guys more resources around Path of the Jedi.

Now I did set a target, a really ambitious target of having that ready by the time this episode releases. I don’t know. At this point if I’m going to be able to do that… yeah I really probably bit off way more than I could chew given that I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to building a blog. It’s just something completely completely out of my lane.

So if you’re listening to this and the blog is not ready yet, I will definitely make announcements [our] Twitter and on [our] Facebook. Just stay tuned [and] keep tabs on both of those feeds, whichever one you happen to keep tabs on and look out for the announcement. Because yeah… well I mean it’s just again another resource to expand the Path of the Jedi Universe. So be on the lookout for that – PathoftheJedi.com, our blog and expanded resources.

And now it’s time for the shout out!

This week’s shout out goes to a group of individuals called the TBDT Crew! That’s right, TBDT. Hastag TBDT! I love these guys. I had the fortunate privilege and honor of guiding and coaching them through a program I put together called the Network Marketing Success Operating System.

It was a pilot program. They were the first group, really the guinea pigs for the program. Seeing their progress, seeing what’s they’ve been able to do, watching their growth process has been has been amazing. I’m super super proud of all of them especially given that the program was really just a super, super rough draft… Just watching their growth and seeing how their perspectives have changed and expanded to the course of that program. I can’t say enough how proud I am of each and every one of them that went through that program.

So again TBDT Crew, thank you so much. Congratulations on completion of the program. You guys are the best. On to bigger and better things.

If you learn more about the Network Marketing Success Operating Systems program, go ahead and send me an email to info@pathoftheJedi.com and let me know that you’re interested. I’ll tell you more about it. Or you can hit me up on Twitter @potjpodcast or even on the Facebook… facebook.com… slash POTJpodcast… sorry I got to remember all my social media…

The program is going through major revisions right now and and it’s going to get some major, major upgrades. I don’t have a timeline regarding when any of it is going to be ready, when it’s going to be launched and released. So just stay tuned for that. I’ll make announcements as we get closer and closer to release date for the Network Marketing Success Operating System. But as I said, I’m happy to talk about it with you and let you know what the program or at least the intention and the goal of the program is all about. Reach out to me and in the meantime stay tuned.

If there’s anybody that you would like to give a shout out to would love to do that for you here on Path of the Jedi. Hit me up at info@pathoftheJedi.cpm with “Shout Out” in the subject heading and let me know number one: who you’re giving the shout out to and number two: what your message is. Or if you’re brave enough, just record an MP3 and send it to again: info@pathofthejedi.com

And for our final update today… well it’s not actually an update. I wanted to share this resource with you guys. It’s a book called the Dharma of Star Wars by Matthew Bortolin. I read this book a handful of years ago and I absolutely love it. And I wanted to share it with you guys today because the stuff it talks about, the principles to talks about are very much in alignment with what we’ve been talking about, especially regarding attachment in the last two episdoes here at Path of the Jedi.

So let me just read the product description:

“The Dharma of Star Wars uses George Jucas’ beloved modern saga and the wise words of the Buddha to illuminate each other in a playful and unexpectedly rewarding ways. Matthew Bortolin writes an inspiring and totally new take on this timeless saga, from A New Hope through Revenge of the Sith and the television’s Clone Wars. Great fun for any Star Wars fan.”

So yeah, I absolutely love this book. It fills the need for Star Wars right. And when it comes to personal development, you can never go wrong with Buddhist principles. Again, the book is called the Dharma of Star Wars by Matthew Bortolin. You can find the link to that in the show notes of this episode.

[You can also find the Dharma of Star Wars at our Recommended Reading list HERE]

(Soundbite from Star Wars: Attack of the Clones) Anakin: “Attachment is forbidden. Possession is forbidden.”

Attachment in the Starwars Universe Part 2. That is what we are going to attempt to cover today.

All right, in a full transparency it’s been one of those days for me. I have found it incredibly, incredibly challenging to focus on anything. I’ve actually been sitting in front of my computer screen for hours now trying to just get this topic started. Add to that the fact that this theme of attachment is so ubiquitous and it’s so omnipresent in the Star Wars Universe, it just felt like a monumental task trying to tackle this for the podcast… because I want to do it justice obviously. I want to cover the topic clearly, concisely and really examine it to its full depth.

So if I wanted to get this done, I finally decided to just change the narrative, change the story I was telling myself about this episode. Number one, I realized that I don’t have to get it all into this episode, and I can actually revisit this theme and any other themes or topics that I talked about in the past. There is no right or wrong around the situation. A year down the road my perspective might be different, it might be changed and so of course it’s natural to want to revisit themes and topics. So I don’t have to get it all done and it’s not ever 100% permanent.

Number two, I just told myself take it one small step at a time. Keep things simple. Put one foot in front of the other and pretty soon before you know it you’ll be at the finish line. So that’s what I’m going to do here with you guys today. Again I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hopefully it makes sense but understand I have been experiencing some challenge in recording this… mental challenges in recording this today so in the off chance that it goes completely off the rails, you guys will know why.

Okay we we talked about attachment in regards to meanings and definitions especially in the context of things that we can or cannot control. And attachments when it comes to outcomes, things that we want to achieve things that we want to create. I wanted to cover that in the last episode because attachment to those things… attachment to meanings and definitions, attachment to control, to outcomes or to even wanting to control outcomes, attachment to those things… potentially we run the risk of getting more and more anchored into this physical realm. And so in this episode I want to really connect the dots and draw a line that illustrates why that may not be the most ideal path.

Let’s use that scene between Padme and Anakin when Anakin was describing the Jedi Order to her. Let’s use that as our jumping-off point. Now, in that scene Anakin tells Padme that the Jedi Code forbids attachment and it forbids possession. Possession makes complete sense for a Jedi. Their’s is a life of service and it’s a state of being so what use do they have for possession, for material things and material gains and the potential status assigned to those material things. That seems pretty straightforward.

However, when we take a closer look at it there’s definitely some contradictions. The Jedi Order, [their] main HQ so to speak, the main headquarters is on Coruscant. It’s this massive temple, the Jedi Temple. You might argue that, “That’s okay. I mean, the Jedi need an HQ. They need a base of operations. But when you see this temple and anytime this temple is described, it’s pretty massive – number one – it’s pretty ornate. It’s not just there purely for functionality. I mean it’s pretty grandiose.

Beyond that, there’s also the hierarchy within the order. There’s definitely a pecking order, there’s definitely a bureaucracy. And with bureaucracy comes status. So in a sense there there is a level of possession, there is a level of “having things” within the Jedi Order.

So I mean, what is it? Is it forbidden? Or is it maybe more of a gray area?

Clearly it’s a gray area and another principle of for the Jedi Order is that there are no absolutes. In fact Obi-Wan tells this to Anakin in Revenge of the Sith… that only the Sith deal in absolutes. So dealing absolutes could potentially lead you to the Dark Side. This rule about possession… gray area… the thing is, if there are rules, then who gets to decide what’s gray area and what’s not gray area? If it’s flexible, if it’s adaptive, then who gets to make a call? I mean, if a rule can be bent is it really even a rule?

But anyways, more on that later. Back to possession.

We can certainly draw a lot of parallels between the Jedi Order and a lot of the established religions we have here in this world, especially the ones where the participants take a vow of poverty. We can see in many of those religions where that’s the case that it really again is very much a gray area, and that those rules around proverty and possession really have been bent. Again, if a rule can be bent, is it really even rule?

One might argue that well, “No one Jedi owns a thing or possesses the Jedi Temple. It belongs to the entire order.” Well yeah I get that. No one priest really necessarily “owns” anything or possess is anything. But the Catholic Church or does own a lot. And you don’t even necessarily have to visit the Vatican to see this.

This rule about possession is really a lot more nuanced than it might appear on the surface.

Okay, so if the rule on possession is actually a lot more complex than we thought, what about the rule on attachment?

Now within the stories, all conversations and discussions about attachment revolve primarily around relationships and the bonds within those relationships. Again massive, massive inconsistencies with this rule because you can see just within the the order itself, they thrive on those relationships. They thrive on those bonds. There wouldn’t be a Jedi Order, it wouldn’t be able to operate without those things. The Padawan-Master relationship is essential to to how the Jedi Order works.

So is it just a matter of semantics? Is it just a matter of bending the rules to suit one’s needs? Can a Jedi have love, have relationships? Is attachment forbidden or not? Which is it?

To answer this question let’s go to the maker himself, Mr. George Lucas. George Lucas has gone on record in stating that the Jedi are actually allowed to love. He says in fact, and I quote, “They should love everybody. They should love their enemies. They should love the Sith. But they can’t form attachments.”

With this one statement it becomes pretty clear to me that the Jedi Order’s interpretation of this rule on attachment has completed completely missed the mark. Or if it hasn’t missed the mark, at the very least it’s fallen pretty short. And that’s the problem I have with the Jedi Code. The code is defined as “a set of rules to govern behavior” and that’s not really my issue. The code itself isn’t my issue.

My issue is number one: the interpretation and then therefore the strict adherence to that interpretation. The fixed nature of this interpretation then becoming dogma, then becoming fundamentalism… I’ve talked about that in past episodes. Number two: these shouldn’t be looked at as rules in the first place. They should be principal because principal comes with guidance, principal comes with wisdom. Rules [are] just for governance and without guidance and without wisdom, rules become and feel very very arbitrary.

For any sentient and rational being it’s only natural to question anything that’s arbitrary. And when you have somebody as emotional as Anakin, he’s not only going to question it but he’s going to be downright challenged it. And of course it’s these doubts about the Jedi order, these doubts about the Jedi Code that amplify Anakin’s susceptibility to manipulation… or to being manipulated by Palpatine and eventually being lured to the Dark Side.

So we figured out why the Jedi Order fell apart. It was their interpretation and used, or I should say misuse of these principles as rules. And it was the rigidity in which they adheres to these rules – dare I say in dealing with absolutes regarding these rules. Which is all well and good. But now what? What is the actual wisdom behind a rule that forbids attachment?

I think since we’ve come to the conclusion that the word attachment is not synonymous with love or the bonds created in a relationship, that this particular principal or Jedi code is alluding to the nature of impermanence. There’s nothing inherently wrong or inherently bad with having feelings or having relationships, having bonds with another human being.

The problem arises in coveting these things. To covet these things is to ignore the fact that they will someday be gone and ignore at your own risk because doing so only creates more anguish, creates more suffering, creates more fear in your life. And all these things are the path to the Dark Side.

If a guiding principle for the Jedi is non-attachment, a driving principal for the Sith is attachment. This delusion drives an insatiable thirst for more. More possession, more control, more power… to the point where they are not only willing to modify their own bodies with machinery and computers to extend their lives, but to make the promises that they can actually with the Dark Side of the Force prevent death.

But then, what would be the use?

To live forever in an endless pursuit of more would eventually lose all meaning. Ignoring the inevitability of change, the inevitability of impermanence is delusion. It’s delusion that will only create more anguish, create more suffering. The wisdom in the Jedi code forbidding attachment is in letting  go and accepting the beauty of impermanent because it is within that impermanence that we can ultimately find meaning.

And I’m just going to wrap it up there. Hopefully this made sense, guys. What do you think? Did I hit the mark or did I fall short? Let me know. Hit me up. Send me an email to info@pathofthejedi.com with the episode number and title in the subject heading. And yeah just unload. Let me know what your thoughts are. This is again a huge, huge, rich, dense topic and there is no doubt in my mind that we’re going to be revisiting this again in a future episode.

You can also send your questions or comments to our Twitter or Facebook page. Again our Twitter handle is @potjpodcast and our Facebook is facebook.com/potjpodcast

I’ve had a really great time today exploring this topic with you. I promised next week won’t be as heavy but in the meantime thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing your time with me here today on this episode. Until next time, be well, be safe and as always, may the Force be with you. 

Read: Attachment in the Star Wars Universe Part 1