Search results for: "Attachment"
- Page 21
- Respecting Death… The second is that we’re going to have to abandon the body that we’re so attached to. The third is, if we’ve done anything cruel in life, there’s always a possibility that we’re going to have to suffer the consequences of that cruelty. And the fourth is being uncertain about the true Dhamma. This is the important one. If …
- Older than the Cosmos… Even in just one lifetime, there are a lot of things you do, there are a lot of things that you’re attached to, and they just slip from your fingers. I know a lot of people have been commenting on how living in the pandemic, living in constrained circumstances, has gotten them thinking a lot about the past: the things they miss from …
- Stop Weaving… If the action was skillful, you often get attached to the result. You want it to keep on going. Either way, you give rise to defilements in the mind, and that’s the third cycle. Then, under the power that defilement, you act again, and the cycle just keeps going around. Now, you can’t cut the cycle between the action and the result …
- Hope… When you finally cut your attachments, the mind will head toward peace. That’s what you want, that’s what you hope for. It’s not an empty hope, because you’ve been working in that direction—inclining the mind toward peace, toward the direction you want. So don’t think that you’re stuck where you are or that you have to stay …
- A Goal Without Limits… It’s just that because you have no attachments when you’re fully awakened you can’t be defined. When you can’t be defined, you can’t be described as existing or non-existing or both or neither or anything else. There are some people who advocate the idea that you’re basically nothing after gaining awakening and passing away, saying that when …
- Obsessive Thinking… That’s where you use your discernment to peel away your attachments. You may not be able to uproot them entirely, but as long as you can step back from them and stop feeding them—because we do feed them with our attention: When there’s a sense that they’re not really interesting anymore, they don’t really serve a purpose, that’s …
- True for What Purpose?… No matter how much you’ve been attached to it, no matter how large a role it has played in your life so far, you have to learn how to take it apart in line with the Buddha’s grammar, so that you can see which aspects of the lessons you’ve learned from your life are actually going to be helpful in the …
- At Home in Jhana… These are all the raw materials you need to understand to see where your attachments are. As the Buddha said, the knowledge that puts an end to what they call mental fermentation or mental effluents—the things that darken the mind, that trouble the mind: The knowledge of putting an end to these things comes from being in one of these states of jhana …
- Responsible for Your Actions… If you don’t believe that, then you don’t really care. “Why would I bother being responsible? Or responsible to the extent that I didn’t want to harm anybody at all?” Conviction is what gives you the strength to carry through with the persistence that’s needed to keep at this process of sorting through your thoughts, sorting through your attachments, and …
- Mindful & Grateful for Lessons in Freedom… You’re free from your attachment. You’re able to rise above these things. You get a sense of your worth as a person and that there’s a higher level of happiness that comes when you don’t simply give in to your appetites. You see the benefits of sharing, and you realize you’re free to make that choice. Similarly with the …
- Seclusion… So you’d be better to drop your attachment to them. Again, the Buddha’s not saying that our quest for happiness is wrong. He’s saying simply that we’re doing it in the wrong way, we’re doing it unskillfully, and the skills that really work are things we wouldn’t anticipate. Often, they’re counterintuitive. We each look for my happiness …
- Cause & Effect Right Now… It’s in using your powers of observation in getting the mind to settle down that you develop the discernment that you’re going to use in order to drop any of your attachments, clingings, ignorance, cravings—whatever it is that’s contributing to that burden of stress that you keep churning out for yourself. So when the Buddha taught that causal principle, he …
- Fires of the Mind… It was freed from its attachment to its fuel, freed from its clinging, freed from its agitation. Because a real surprise as you get the mind quiet like this is that there’s still an element of stress, there’s still an element of change. But it’s a lot more subtle than it was before. There’s still a burning going on in …
- Great Expectations… They say, “Isn’t there righteous anger?” Actually, righteous anger is probably one of the worst kinds because there’s a lot of attachment there. Actually, it’s perfectly possible to live in the world, see what’s wrong with what’s going on, and not be angry about it. In fact, the more matter-of-fact you are about what’s wrong, then …
- Saṃvega & Pasāda… As the Buddha said, if you don’t have the sense of pleasure that comes from getting the mind into concentration, then no matter how much you may see the drawbacks of sensuality—of being attached to the body—you’re going to go back to sensuality. The mind needs pleasure for its food, so learn how to feed inside, on the pleasure of …
- You Can Do Better… He said that you have to be very careful because if it gets really strong, you’re going to get attached. He said the physical pleasure of concentration comes from tactile sensations, which means it’s a sensual pleasure. Wanting it is craving for sensuality. Well, the pleasure of concentration is not sensual, and it’s not a tactile sensation. It has to do …
- Being Your Own Teacher… If your calculation includes only this one lifetime, you’re really going to limit your sense of where the dangers are in the mind—what an act of desire or an act of attachment might do—which means that you end up with a lot of things in the mind that don’t get probed, don’t get investigated because they seem perfectly innocuous …
- The Door of the Cage (2)… This helps loosen up attachments to unskillful views about the world—that no matter how real they may seem, you do have the choice to look at other aspects of reality that give you more encouragement to practice, give you more reason to practice. And same with the various selves that you could be identifying with: Do you really want to identify with the …
- A Blameless Happiness… What is your intention right now? Is your intention to hold onto the body? Or are you willing to let go of some things that you thought you couldn’t do without, but you might actually be better off if you could let go of some of that attachment? What is your perception of the body? What is your perception of the pain? How …
- Comprehending Clinging… But to adopt these right forms of clinging—notice that views, habits and practices, and a sense of the self are there, but nothing about sensuality on the path—you also have to clear away your other forms of attachment. Sensuality, of course, is the big one. It’s going to pull you off if you’re not careful. This is why you have …
- Load next page...
