The illusion of attachment is a motif in the story. One of the obstacles to the kind of trust and connection described above is attachment to the physical world - to things, to clothes and habits and relationships and beliefs that distract the human soul from its questing relationship with the spiritual world. In this and other similar narratives, that attachment is systematically, and sometimes violently, destroyed, with the aim of removing that distraction, purifying the traveler's intent, simplifying his/her ways, and opening those ways to connection to that which exists beyond, and yet within, the physical.