Search results for: "Attachment"
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- 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 …
- A Pure Happiness… So we use these teachings on stress and inconstancy and not-self as ways of watching and judging our actions, and peeling away our attachments to things that get in the way of nibbana. And it’s usually not horrible things that get in the way. It’s our satisfaction with lesser forms of happiness. Those are the big obstacles. Now there are some …
- Neither Here nor There… This seems to be his approach when people are still attached to sensuality. The classic example, of course, is the Buddha’s brother, Ven. Nanda, who, after he was ordained, pined for a woman who, as he was leaving home, said, “Come back.” That’s all he could think about: the way that she gazed at him. So the Buddha takes Nanda up to …
- Samvega vs. Dispassion… The people who have reached that point would never ever want to go back to their old attachments. There’s no nostalgia at all. Resignation has nostalgia, but this doesn’t. So you can take heart in the fact that this path really leads to a good place. It may be difficult and there may be times when it goes directly against the grain …
- Ugly Body, Happy Mind… He talks about what he calls renunciation gladness, when you see that all the things in the senses—sight, sounds, smells, taste, and tactile sensations—are inconstant and not worthy of attachment. The fact that you’re able to lift your mind above those things can make you glad. So when you find that the meditation is down and you’re feeling discouraged, think …
- The Noble Search Makes Us Human… In the monastery they taught detachment, whereas being human, of course, is all about being attached, entangled. Now that view places a very limited, very domestic view on what it means to be a human being. Our desire for true happiness is what makes us human – with an emphasis on the true. We’ve looked for pleasures in all kinds of things. And as …
- Success by Approximation… But don’t get waylaid by the type of thinking that criticizes you for being awfully passionate about your practice, or awfully attached to concentration, or awfully negative about a person you don’t want to associate with. Well, if you realize that associating with that kind of person is going to take you off the path, you’ve got to be careful. Heedfulness …
- Swept Downstream… So what’s the obstacle? This is a question each of us has to ask ourselves, because what you are—this “being” that you are, which you’ve taken on as your identity—is made out of a lot of clingings and attachments to things, like the grass on the side of the river bank. The Buddha lists five kinds of grass corresponding to …
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