Search results for: "Attachment"
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- Against the Grain… This goes against your old ways of eating and your old ways of thinking around the eating—and your old ways of justifying, making excuses for the way you feed and your attachment to the way you feed. So when the Buddha says to indulge in the pleasure of concentration, he really means it. Learn to take that as your source of food, your …
- A Stranger to Your Thoughts… But if you’re not attached to the trees or the mountains, then their inconstancy doesn’t really mean anything. It’s not the issue. It’s where you’re trying to find your pleasure, where you’re attached: That’s what you want to analyze in these terms. Because again, those ways of analysis make you a stranger to your thoughts, which is …
- Fabrication… And then, of course, you’re getting attached to the new level you reach, but it’s a good attachment. Otherwise, you’d go floating off to other worlds. This attachment here, at least, keeps you in the present moment where things can begin to open up. And instead of elaborating on it, you keep applying the teachings of the four noble truths and …
- The Path Requires Effort… I don’t want to be attached to it.” You’ve got to be attached. You’ve got to have a desire for the concentration. You’ve got to respect for concentration if you really want to get results out of your path. So when so the mind wanders off, you bring it right back. Wanders off again, bring it back again. If it …
- Rooted in Desire… The Buddha said the main reason we’re so attached to it is that we don’t see any other escape from pain. When pain comes along, we rush for something to relieve the pain, and sensual pleasure seems to be just the thing. What we need is another alternative. That’s what right concentration is for, learning to develop a sense of ease …
- What Is One… To be a being, you have to be clinging to something, attached to something. But arahants have no attachments, no clinging, so they’re not even defined as beings. When they pass away, you can’t even define them as existing, non-existing, both, or neither. But as for us, we’re still feeding because we’re still beings. We’re beings on the …
- The Pursuit of Pleasure… Sometimes you hear about the horrors of getting attached to concentration, or being attached to jhana. There is no passage in the Canon at all where the Buddha talks of jhana as something to be afraid of. It’s something to be developed, something to be indulged in. You settle in, and he actually says that you indulge in the sense of well-being …
- Life in the Buddha’s Hospital… That’s basically a reminder of his medicines for dealing with attachment to your own body and lust for the bodies of others. The chant on the four sublime attitudes: That’s for dealing with not only anger but also with resentment, jealousy, any cruel intentions in your mind. Many times you can get worked up about things totally beyond your control: That’s …
- Overcoming Complacency… But with other things—such as learning how to hold on to what you should hold on to, what your sense of “I” should be, where your attachments should be—you have to learn how to be more skillful in your attachments. Learn how to latch onto mindfulness, latch onto concentration, latch onto the sense of the breath and the deeper states of concentration …
- Fangs in the Static… If it’s a really good world, you get really attached. Think about the devas living comfortably: All they have to do is think, and whatever they want appears. Can you imagine how spoiled they’re going to be? And how hard it will be for them when they fall? And when you take on any world, what is it made out of? It …
- The Buddha’s Map… If they didn’t have their pleasant side, we wouldn’t be attached to them. But for the sake of letting them go, you don’t focus on what you like about them. You focus primarily on what their drawbacks are—and in particular, the drawbacks of getting attached to them—and that’s where you bring in the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and …
- Control… Then that teaching works inward, inward, inward until ultimately you can give up your attachment to your body. You give up your attachment to your feelings, thought constructs, perceptions, consciousness. Ajaan Maha Boowa once said that when you finally get to the end of the path, you look back and you see that it was the same principle all the way down the line …
- Worldly Effort… We all come with our attachments, we all come with our preconceived notions, hoping that we can hold on to this, hold on to that, so that we can have our cake and eat it, too. But it’s the nature of life, it’s the nature of causality, that you can’t find perfection within the causal system. Take the practice of concentration …
- Bringing Right resolve… He realizes that it’s not so much that we’re attached to sensory objects or sensory contact, as we are attached to our fascination with thinking about these things, planning these things, and then going over the sensual pleasures after they’re over. The mind can spend days, weeks, months, years, commenting to itself on this kind of stuff, whereas the pleasures themselves …
- Mud Houses… Wherever there’s attachment, there’s going to be a being. Attachment to what? The five aggregates: form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. He illustrated his point with an analogy. He said it’s like little kids playing with mud houses. You might think of kids playing with sand castles. As long as the little kids are fascinated with the little mud houses, they …
- Investigative Work… Where is the step where the clinging comes in in a thought? How do you recognize it? It doesn’t come with labels attached. You have to notice: When this particular kind of thought comes in, what’s the response in the mind? When **that **kind of thought comes in, what’s the response in the mind? You have to be able to separate …
- To Go Where You’ve Never Gone Before… So we try to feed the mind well; strengthen it, so that it can look into its attachments, look into its clingings and cravings, and figure out how to let them go. This goes very much against the grain, which is why we hold to the four noble truths as our guide, because they tell us: There is a cause for suffering, but it …
- Transparent Becoming… Some people say, “You want to practice concentration? Well, try not to have craving, try not to be attached.” But you’ve got to have craving; you’ve got to be attached if you’re going to have that focal point where the mind is going to stay, and be willing to stay, be happy to stay, to get pleasure out of staying. So …
- Two Kinds of Middle… You can get attached to it, but it’s putting you in a position where you can see the attachment clearly and learn to let go. But notice that it’s off the continuum. It’s not halfway between sensual pleasure and sensual pain. It’s something of a different order entirely. And the way you relate to it is different as well. This …
- Serial Clinging Is Still Clinging… It’s not so much attached to the objects as it is to the planning, the fantasizing. And even there, the plans and the fantasies may change. Clinging to sensuality doesn’t mean that you hold permanently to one fantasy or one plan. It means you hold on to this or that activity long enough to feed on it. Then you go looking for …
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