Search results for: "Attachment"
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- Deep Time… It’s good to adopt this perspective because it makes it a lot easier to live in the world without a lot of nostalgia, without a lot of attachment. Most of the issues that seem so big when you take the view of just one lifetime become very small when you think about eons and eons of lifetimes. Think about the Buddha as he …
- The Role of the Observer… We’re the ones who are attached to the food. If there’s a plate of rice and we don’t eat it, the rice doesn’t cry. We’re the ones who cry when there’s nothing to eat. So there’s an internal battle, and that’s not won simply by watching, although watching may be one of the steps. After all …
- Issues… You know how beings are defined—they’re defined by their attachments. And they have to feed. This applies to other beings; this applies to us—as long as we take on the identity of a being. Which means that there are going to be conflicts. And there are a lot of conflicts that, the more you get involved with them, the more they …
- The Middle Way… Otherwise, when you come down hard on your attachment to sensual pleasures but you don’t have anything better to offer yourself, then either it’s a grudging abandoning of the pleasure, which means you don’t abandon it for long, or it’s just an act of self-punishment, which is not only not lasting, but also not especially healthy. So it’s …
- Doing, Maintaining, Using… This is how the mind begins to gain insight into its attachments. Because it sees the component factors, it’s learned how to use them in a way that it’s really on familiar terms with them, and it’s changed its relationship to them. They now become tools rather than things that you would identify with or things that you are constantly chewing …
- Right Resolve… Some of them involve being attached to sensual desires—because, as the Buddha once said, even if it rained gold coins, we wouldn’t have enough for our sensual desires. If that’s where we’re looking for happiness, there’s no end to it. And how many showers of gold coins have you seen? And how many showers would we need to satisfy …
- Selfing & Not-selfing… The Buddha doesn’t have a term for that, but he does talk about noticing how you’re attached to sensuality and how many unskillful things you can do based on that attachment. You can replace the pleasure of sensuality with the pleasure that comes from concentration. The fifth healthy ego function is humor. We don’t think of the Pali Canon as a …
- Serenity… It’s normal that, as you’re working on this and you find that you are getting results, there will be a certain amount of attachment, there will be a certain amount of clinging. That’s all part of developing the skill. It’s what keeps you interested in this, working at it, allowing it to capture your imagination. As with so many other …
- Sensitivity Through Generosity… So even though it may seem like we’re attached to our things because we take care of them so carefully, it’s actually an application of the Dhamma principle of being unburdensome, one of the principles in the list that the Buddha taught to Gotami. There are other protocols for how to help other people: how to look after people who are sick …
- Your Sketches vs. the Buddha’s… But if you focus on that, what happens? You get attached to these things, whereas if you look at them as being inconstant, stressful, and not-self, you have to arrive at the value judgment: It’s not worth it. So as a way of prying yourself loose from your old way of looking at things, the Buddha first has you look at the …
- No Arrows, Nothing… This is how we begin to learn how not to shoot ourselves because of our attachment to things, our clinging to things, our sense of possession—this is mine, that’s mine—both inside and out. We accumulate all these things, and then they bury us. The Buddha talks about the mind that’s awakened as a mind with nothing. It doesn’t need …
- Disenchantment… Learn to become a connoisseur of your breathing, so that you can pry yourself loose from your other attachments, the things you used to feed on. We choose this feeding, the feeding on concentration, because it’s relatively innocent. A lot of other feeding depends on feeding on other people—emotionally, mentally. As long as the mind is in the feeding mode, then even …
- Three Weapons… They really attach to it. The really serious cases think they’ve gained awakening, one way or another. Or at least not full awakening, but they say, “Okay, maybe just stream entry, maybe just once returning.” But they’re crazy. I knew a group of students that Ajaan Fuang had. They came to see him as a group and when he wasn’t in …
- Unchanged by Loss… When things that we’ve been dependent on, things that we’re attached to, suddenly stop, when conditions change, how much are we going to change? Do we have the stability inside that even when things start falling apart—outside or in—our virtue doesn’t fall apart, our concentration, discernment—the things that are really important—stay solid? In the beginning, we have …
- Victory in Battle… When you don’t let all of your narratives and attachments get in the way, it’s a lot easier to see. So look at this practice as a kind of victory, starting inside and then moving outside, but with the main emphasis being on the inside. There are a lot of things in the world you can’t change. You can say the …
- The Five Faculties Confirmed… Now, that fivefold analysis is something the Buddha usually reserves for dealing with unskillful things, or objects of attachment, objects of clinging, but here he’s applying it to the path. It’s interesting that the Commentary, which likes to explain everything down to the last little word in the suttas, doesn’t explain anything in that particular sutta at all. What the sutta …
- Intoxication… Do you want to get attached to that person? Because that’s where it’s all going to go. When you look at material things, they go to aging, illness, and death as well. Think of all the unskillful things that people do just for material things—killing, stealing, cheating—and what do they get? They end up with just the dregs of the …
- Balance & Release… That’s when it’s a lot easier to release it from its attachments. Otherwise, the release is just aversion, dislike. You’re trying to run away from something. You don’t like this; you don’t like that. You push yourself away. But the pushing becomes another type of becoming. As the Buddha said, craving for non-becoming leads to more becoming. The …
- Skillful Fear… The only drawback you might have was that you might get attached to it, not wanting to go on to the higher levels of discernment and insight. But compared with sensuality, it’s much less damaging. Nobody kills, steals, cheats over jhana. And even though they have jhana wars, they’re just wars where ink is spilled. No blood is spilled. So nurture that …
- Perception… We use the perceptions of inconstancy, stress, not-self, of seeing what is ugly in what we tend to view as beautiful, i.e., the human body, so that we can loosen up our attachments to a lot of our old unskillful perceptions. Then we let those more skillful perceptions fall away as well. But don’t drop them until they’ve done their …
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