Search results for: "Attachment"

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  2. Your Committee of Addicts
     … Others are very attached to their views about the world. Others are very attached to ideas of what should and shouldn’t be done. This includes people who say, “Well, there are no shoulds,” or “There shouldn’t be any shoulds. People should be free to do whatever they want.” We have members like that in the mind. Then there are all the various … 
  3. Purity of Heart
     … Technically, you can’t even call them beings anymore, because a being, as the Buddha said, is defined by where it’s attached, where it’s tied down, what it clings to. When there’s no attachment, when there’s no clinging, what’s left can’t be defined. That’s another way in which the path of arahants can’t be traced. It … 
  4. The Will to Awaken
     … There are a lot of things that are really pleasurable, that society actually encourages you to look for, But the Buddha says, look, you’ve got to give them up as they lead to unhealthy attachments down the line. Your attachment to sensual pleasures and sensual desires: that’s the big one. Your attachment to thoughts about, plans about sensual pleasures. That’s what … 
  5. Death Without Drama
     … your attachment to planning for sensual pleasures, which leads to fear that you’ll be deprived of the pleasures you’ve enjoyed. When we practice meditation, we’re learning how not to fall for these attachments. Regard them simply as hindrances coming up in the mind. No matter how insistent they may seem—that you really want a particular pleasure, that this is something … 
  6. The Mind's Immune System
     … There is attachment to that state, but it’s not quite the same as the obsession you have for sensual objects. It actually builds up your resistance to those obsessions. As for the desire for Awakening, she says, “Even though it may be unpleasant to think about how far you have to go, or how much you want to be awakened and you’re … 
  7. The Importance of Being Truthful
     … But it’s a useful place to be stuck, it’s a useful way to be attached—because if you’re not attached to this, you find yourself going back to your old habits. It’s like having new food to eat. There’s no way you’re going to give up your junk food unless you’ve got better food to eat. So … 
  8. Observe Your Concentration
     … He analyzes that attachment to what seems to be deathless. Even though you have actually had an experience of the deathless, you cover it over with some very subtle, subtle levels of aggregates. So it may have been the case that the question, “Are the aggregates worthy of being called self?” was an option for people to become arahants simply because they could see … 
  9. Fear
     … One is because they’re attached to the body. Another is because they’re attached to sensual pleasures. A third is that they don’t really understand the Dhamma, they haven’t resolved their doubts about the Dhamma. These are three things that can be cured only through meditation. The other reason for fearing death is when you know that you’ve harmed other … 
  10. Dethinking Thinking
     … where your attachments are, why you’re attached. Think of those five steps the Buddha lays out for us to figure out: What’s the origination of the problem—where does it come from within the mind? How does the problem stop? How does it start up again? And why do you dig it up again—what’s the allure? Can you see the … 
  11. Customs of the Noble Ones
     … You use your material things, alive to the dangers of getting attached to them, but also alive to the dangers of exalting yourself over not being attached—a very circumspect attitude. Knowing the four requisites, you might think that the fourth custom of the noble ones would have to do with medicines, but it doesn’t. The first three have to do with contentment … 
  12. A Complete Training
     … As you get attached to them, you realize you’re getting attached to very subtle levels of stress. You want something better. And we’re fortunate that we have the Buddha’s teachings on the four noble truths to remind us that when you let go, it can bring the end of suffering. That way, you’re more willing to let go. This is … 
  13. The Right Time at the Right Place
     … But if you’re coming with a sense of well-being—a sense of really belonging here, so that you have a sense of awareness that’s not necessarily tied down to a lot of its other attachments—then you can look at those attachments and realize they’re pretty dumb. You knew better but you went for them anyhow. But now you’ve … 
  14. Don’t Stop with Awareness Itself
     … But then this attachment to your awareness, you’d have to do something about that. As Ajaan Fuang would say, you have to turn around and look at this awareness and see that it, too, is fabricated. It, too, has its drawbacks. It’s not the case that everything you look at is inconstant, stressful, and not-self, whereas this awareness is constant and … 
  15. The Challenge
     … There are many gradations of pleasure, many types of pleasure, and many things we are really attached to that we have to learn how to give up. The unfortunate thing is we don’t have the same certainty as someone who’s already gained awakening. Those who have actually gotten on the noble path see that, Yes, what the Buddha said is true. As … 
  16. Anti-slacker Dhamma
     … In terms of virtue, if you find that your attachment to your relatives or your wealth or your health would prevent you from observing the precepts, you’ve got to let go of that attachment. So you apply the three perceptions to your wealth or your relatives or your health. In terms of concentration, anything that comes up in the mind that’s going … 
  17. Secluded from Sensuality
     … You have to really see that your attachment to sensuality is definitely a problem. It’s holding you down, holding you back. We tend to think of it as opening up possibilities, but it’s really closing off a lot of better things. We have to honor that principle that some pleasures in life are preventing pleasures that are much greater. There’s that … 
  18. Thinking About Your Fears
     … Yet here we are, attached to it. Of course, a lot of attachment has to do not with the parts of the body, but with what we can do with the human body. This is why it’s good to be able to get the mind into a state where you can focus on the sense of space, realizing that the mind can be … 
  19. Together but Separate
     … Another animal comes tomorrow—which means that the work of discernment is going to require a fair amount of patience and ingenuity as you try to figure out, “Well, what’s the assumption, what’s the attachment today? How am I defining myself with regard to the pain? Or what aggregate am I identifying with that the pain seems to be attacking?” You learn … 
  20. Strong & Heedful
     … Discernment protects your conviction, persistence, mindfulness, and concentration, and makes them even more solid, so that the dangers posed by the mind, its inclinations for delusion, craving, attachment—which, when you come right down to it, are weakness in the mind, things you have to watch out for—can be replaced with strengths. The reason these weaknesses have control is because we tend to … 
  21. Disenchantment
     … It’s an antidote to our strong attachment to feeding on things. That attachment, the Buddha said, is the essence of suffering. The word upadana, which means clinging, also means the act of eating, of taking sustenance. He says that upadana lies at the essence of suffering and stress. So what we need to learn is how to look at the things we feed … 
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