Search results for: "Attachment"
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- How to Use the Three Perceptions… So you say, “Okay, this hasn’t passed the test.” Even when you do run into the unfabricated, this is where the teaching that sabbe dhammā anattā—all phenomena are not self, not just fabricated things but also the unfabricated—there tends to be an attachment where you say, “Oh, this must be it, this is it, I’ve got it.” There’s a …
- Death Is All Around… You get more and more attached to these things, and then when death comes, it’s going to deprive you of them. Just thinking about death is enough to scare you. The pleasures you had, the body you hold on to: It’s not going to be yours anymore. That’s trying to get the wrong things out of the body. But if you …
- Objectivity… So even though the mind tends to be partial, you can find common ground among all your desires, and use that common ground as a basis for becoming more impartial, more objective, more clear-seeing, so that you can bring yourself to the point where you let go of the last attachment, the last bit of ignorance that stands in the way of total …
- A Cocoon of Energy… We’re so attached to our bodies. Even when our thoughts go into great abstractions, they’re rooted right here. If anything happens to the body, it immediately pulls you right back. And as they’ve shown, a lot of our nerve-endings are down in the stomach, and they determine our moods. So, we have this pull inside the body. When we face …
- A Doctor’s Strategies… So even though we’re practicing to get the mind beyond attachment to comfort, you have to make the breath comfortable to get it to settle down. We try to get the mind to a point where it can be beyond all thought, but you have to use your thinking to get it there. We try to get it beyond desire, but you have …
- The Guarantee of Concentration… A little bit of concentration develops and they’re told, “Let it go, don’t get attached to it.” Well, that’s not what the Buddha taught. Concentration is part of the path, and the path is something to be developed, maintained, nurtured, a place you want to stay. Then, when you’re there, you’re really in a position where you can evaluate …
- Karma & Not-self… If you chase things down in dependent co-arising, starting with ignorance, you hit intention—which is karma—way before you hit attachment to self. You have intentions that lead to actions, the actions then condition your experience at the senses, and then around experiences you develop clinging. And part of that clinging is clinging to self. You identify certain things as yourself in …
- Borrowed Wealth… That way, the mind gets lighter and lighter as you begin to peel away all of its attachments. You’ve got a genuine profit there: something, as they say in Thai, that if it falls in the water it doesn’t float away, if it falls into fire it doesn’t burn. Something that doesn’t have to depend on the senses at all …
- Gaining the Dhamma Eye… that you’re going to try to get beyond all of your attachments to your emotions, all your attachments to everything that colors the mind, that obscures the mind. You’re going to focus on the purity of your own mind as your main goal, because that’s ultimately what dispassion means. You’re not going to let your mind get clouded by its …
- Clinging & Feeding… The Buddha talks about how the person who gains the first stage of awakening, where attachment to habits and practices is abandoned, is still virtuous. When you’re no longer attached to your habits, it’s not that you’ll do anything at all. You realize the harm that comes from breaking the precepts, but the precepts don’t become part of your identity …
- Dwelling in Emptiness… got to learn how to comprehend—meaning, that’s what you have go to learn how to untangle so that you can let it go—because there are all kinds of attachments hidden in there. The comprehension means that you see them for what they are and you can let them go. The simpler and more basic you keep these things, the simpler it …
- Settling In… We’re really attached. And once you’re in a place like this, you’re open to all the changes that can happen to this place. So you want to look into it to see if this is where you really want to be. This is not a question of saying, “I don’t like here. I would really like to be over someplace …
- Equanimity as a Factor of Awakening… Eventually you have to get to the point where you realize that there is a subtle attachment to the equanimity and you’ll have to let that go as well. But in the meantime, you want to use it as your foundation. So hold on for the time being. It’s like the image of the raft. You have to hold on as long …
- The Cost of Happiness… Is there still any change? Is there any stress? If there is, then it’s something not worthy of your attachment. You might want to stay there for a while to get settled and still so that you can look and see. He’s not telling you to drop states of concentration as soon as they come up. He’s actually encouraging to develop …
- Pushing the Three Characteristics… As he once pointed out, if there were no pleasure to be found in the aggregates, we wouldn’t be attached to them. We wouldn’t cling to them. There is some pleasure here. But there are different kinds of pleasure. What he wants us to do is to drop some of the sensual pleasure that we try to find in the aggregates, and …
- Truths That Are Noble… You’re willing to admit that some things you’re very attached to—literally, in the case of the first noble truth—constitute suffering. You’re not going to blame other people. You’re not going to blame society at large. You realize that these are things you’ve been doing, things you’ve chosen to do. That’s taking a noble attitude toward …
- The World Is Aflame… And if you get attached to the good things you’ve created, they burn you, too. It’s as if it were a dirty trick. We work hard to be skillful and then the rewards, when they come, are rewards we can’t really hold on to. If we hold on to them, we suffer. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try …
- Seclusion… How many times have you heard, “Don’t let yourself get attached to the concentration; don’t let yourself get involved in it. If states of ease or concentration arise, just note them and let them go.” Well, the Buddha never said that. He said that if these states arise, nourish them, develop them, bring them to consummation. That means giving them time. Just …
- Honesty… You’re looking both for the allure of whatever attachment you have and also the drawbacks. Aside from our honesty, we really have no other guarantee for our well-being. After all, the Buddha isn’t sitting here right now to tell you Yes or Vo. We look at the texts, but how do we know that the texts were accurately handed down? And …
- Staying Grounded… Wherever there’s the attachment of a being, then the being has to feed in order to keep that identification going. And where you feed, either in terms of physical food or mental food, other people are also trying to feed. It’s as if we’re all on the beach with our hoops making bubbles. If the bubbles interact, they tend to burst …
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