The intellect that dallies with some sensible thing clearly is attached to it by some passion, such as desire, irritation, anger or rancour; and unless it becomes detached from that thing it will not be able to free itself from the passion affecting it. (Maximos the Confessor)

Attachment and detachment, we tend to think of these as a Buddhist concerns. They are, however, recurring issues in phenomenology and spiritual realism across cultures and faiths. Given the centrality of the issues to Buddhism we may find there some particular insight.

A Zen Master, John Daido Loori, teaches, "According to the Buddhist point of view, nonattachment is exactly the opposite of separation. You need two things in order to have attachment: the thing you’re attaching to, and the person who’s attaching. In nonattachment, on the other hand, there’s unity. There’s unity because there’s nothing to attach to. If you have unified with the whole universe, there’s nothing outside of you, so the notion of attachment becomes absurd. Who will attach to what?"

In order to better understand, Aristotle taught the value of separating and categorizing sensible things. I perceive Maximos is - probably unawares - following the Aristotelian path and trying to separate the universe into God and non-God. But how is this possible if God is creator of all things?

Maximos dallies over issues of separation when he - and we - might be opening ourselves more and more to the love of God.