Search results for: "Attachment"

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  2. Mountains Moving In
     … So he tried to eradicate all attachment to pleasure in his mind by tormenting himself, but that didn’t work. Then he had the great insight that it wasn’t so much the search for pleasure that was wrong, it was simply that he was looking in the wrong places for happiness. He was looking in the wrong way, in a very shortsighted way … 
  3. Mange in the Mind
     … Then the question is, what are you going to do with this functioning body? You could get attached to it, but that creates suffering. This is why we have the chant on the 32 parts, to remind ourselves not to get too obsessed with the body, not to think that the body in and of itself is going to provide you with true happiness … 
  4. A Master of Your Thoughts
     … We’re attached to our thoughts because they have meaning. It has its uses, the act of giving meaning to these little impulses that go to the brain. That’s an important part of functioning in the world. But we have to see how that functioning is not always good, not always skillful, not always necessary. There are times we’re better off when … 
  5. Friendship Leading to Seclusion
     … bodily seclusion, mental seclusion, and then seclusion from your attachments. Bodily seclusion is when you’re away from other people, as when you go off and sit in your hut, sit in your tent, sit under the trees, and there’s nobody around except for you and the animals. But you can be secluded in that way and still have lots and lots of … 
  6. A Sense of Adventure
     … So how are you going to know the signposts for one, two, and three? Well, you guess for the time being and you attach a few notes here, a few notes there. And have the confidence that when you find something more certain, you’re going to be in a position to rearrange the notes if need be. The sense of adventure also means … 
  7. True Values
     … The more you can let go of your attachments, the more you can let go of your cravings and clingings, then the higher the level of your mind. The more you can bring the mind to concentration, the higher its level will be. Even more so, when you can reach the levels of the noble attainments. That kind of status is genuine, and again … 
  8. The Problem Is Birth
     … Notice that when he was asked, “What happens when a being goes from one body to another?” he didn’t say, “There’s no such thing as a being.” He said that wherever there’s attachment to the aggregates—form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, consciousness—there is a being. It’s in taking on that identity as a being: That’s why we keep on … 
  9. Mindful to Be Skillful
     … It very easily turns into attachment to habits and practices, thinking, “As long as I follow the rules, I’m okay. That’s all I need to do.” But that’s not what the Buddha wants to encourage. It’s a fetter. He wants you to practice the precepts, work on concentration, work on discernment specifically for the sake of discernment, the kind of … 
  10. Clinging
     … So you’re putting yourself together out of verbs, and you want to see that, because that gives you a way of loosening up your attachments to unskillful parts of yourself, the ones that say, “Well, I’ve been this way since who knows when. You’re not going to teach old dogs new tricks.” But you look at your aggregates. They’re not … 
  11. Measuring Progress
     … But the possibility of its really developing and also being an influence on the rest of your life depends on your alertness right now, your sensitivity right now, your ability to catch little things going on that might pull you away, and your ability to cut through any ties or any attachments that may develop. That’s what makes the meditation progress. And you … 
  12. Positive Capability
     … And he gives us the tools for examining where our attachments are—the things that keep us imprisoned. That’s the big irony. This is one of the reasons why early Buddhists used fire as an image many times. They believed that fire was an element that existed in all things. When you provoked it, it would latch on to fuel and start burning … 
  13. Solidly Established
     … You keep on adjusting the rate of breathing, even if there’s just a little bit of discomfort attached to the breath, whether you’re tensing up as you breathe in or holding on to tension as you breathe out. Try to be sensitive to that and then let the tension go. Those are the three qualities we’re trying to develop: mindfulness, alertness … 
  14. Space for Sustained Contemplation
     … Whatever the attachment is, whatever the craving is, you realize it has to be made out of these things. That’s what you want to look for. This is work that requires a lot of sustained attention and sustained focus, which is why, as we’re living together, we want to give one another space to do that kind of sustained work. We don … 
  15. Awaken to Your Potentials
     … He said that if they didn’t have their pleasures, we wouldn’t be attached to them. But the pleasures can go only so far. Most people will say, “Well, that’s the best we can find in the world, that’s as far as it goes, so we might as well content ourselves with them as they are.” But the Buddha found that … 
  16. Consciousness, Name, & Form
     … When there’s that sense of well-being, then the mind can look at its old attachments, its old ways of handling its thoughts, and realize, “Okay, that way of dealing with things actually causes stress and I don’t have to do it.” When you realize that it’s stressful, and that it’s unnecessary, why would you hold on? You don’t … 
  17. A Generosity of Spirit
     … And particularly as you give up things—and generosity doesn’t mean just giving up things, but also giving up your attachment to, say, your knowledge, wanting to hold it back from other people, or wanting to hold back your energy from other people—when you learn how to overcome that resistance, you develop generosity of spirit. This is probably one of the most … 
  18. Four Noble Truths to One
     … But as the factors of the path get more solid, and your attachments to things aside from the path get weaker, that’s when you can actually turn this analysis on the path itself. You turn right view on itself. Right view looks at views, looks at all mental activities, in terms of action and result: “What is the act of holding to a … 
  19. No-Tech Meditation
     … If you get attached to that place, you’re trapped in the parameters of how space and time relate to that place. It’s all because of your actions. So, meditation is something you do and something you watch for yourself. The commitment in the doing and the sensitivity in the reflection will allow you to see the things that will open up new … 
  20. Look after Your Baby
     … And when that feeler attaches to something, it goes, like a spider casting its web filament to see if it will catch something. So watch out for the filament. Watch out for the feeler. The mind may be with the breath, or part of the mind is with the breath, but it’s not the whole thing. Something else is already sneaking off to … 
  21. Where Your Mind Gravitates
     … But in particular, you release it from whatever its attachments may be. Then you go back to that step of being sensitive again. It goes around and around and around. All too often you deal with a problem once and it’s not really dealt with. It’s going to have another angle the next time around. The mind’s like a little child … 
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