Search results for: "Attachment"

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  2. The Buddha’s Relationship Advice
     … That’s what the Buddha meant.” We live in the world where there’s so much impermanence and we find somebody that we really like, that we love, that we get attached to, and there’s a lot of clinging there. The affection is not what the Buddha criticizes. He criticizes the clinging, because the clinging is where the suffering is. Clinging basically means … 
  3. The Rivers of Karma
     … As the Buddha points out, there’s no abandoning our attachment for sensual pleasures until we can develop the sense of ease that comes from getting the mind still, centered, solidly based in the present. This is how you teach the mind not to be overcome by pleasure or pain. Pain becomes a tool an opportunity to learn about how the mind creates unnecessary … 
  4. Not Just a Witness
     … As the Buddha pointed out, you can peel away your attachment to the different elements or properties—earth, water, wind, fire, and space—and arrive at pure consciousness. Pure consciousness can observe feelings from the outside, seeing what’s causing a particular feeling, how that feeling comes, how it goes away. But that’s still a constructed process, a constructed pure consciousness. You have … 
  5. New Feeding Habits for the Mind
     … Only when you stop and stand still can you see not only what’s going on around you but also what’s going on inside, those very subtle movements of the mind that can cause you to get attached to things that are going to change on you. You begin to realize that the mind’s habit of latching on to the body is … 
  6. In Accordance with the Dhamma
     … And the part of the mind that’s attached to them is something you have to learn how to let go. You have to raise your sights as to what true well-being is and bring your oughts or your shoulds, your sense of what should be done, in line with the duties of the four noble truths, because as the Buddha said, this … 
  7. Dhamma is Timeless
     … It pulls you away from your old feeding habits, from your old attachments, and it gives you freedom of a very noble sort.
  8. Concentration as Wilderness
     … You can loosen your attachment to opinions that you begin to see are really not that useful, not that helpful. And even with the ones that are useful and helpful, you realize that there are times when you pick them up and times when you put them down. You don’t need to carry them around all the time. You learn how to be … 
  9. Breath Meditation – The Four Tetrads
     … You have to gain insight into the particulars around your attachments. Say that there’s a distraction going on in the mind: What’s keeping you with that distraction? What’s saying, “Yeah, I want to go for that”? All too often, if we don’t see that, we find ourselves in the midst of the distraction without questioning: What was the voice that … 
  10. Undefeatism
     … And this aspect of the Buddha’s teachings actually is there, in the side of the teaching that deals with letting go of unskillful qualities, letting go of attachments. But remember, there’s another side of the practice as well. We don’t just let go. We also develop: We develop skillful qualities in the mind. Yet sometimes the teachings on inconstancy seem to … 
  11. Meaning & Purpose
     … We suffer because we’re attached to form, feeling, perceptions, fabrications, and consciousness. But we can use those things to create the path, and we hold on as long as we need to. The Buddha makes a comparison with relay chariots. You take one chariot, you hold on, and it takes you a certain distance. Then you get into another one and that takes … 
  12. The Chattering Mind
    Many of us are really attached to the way we talk to ourselves. We feel that if we weren’t talking to ourselves, we’d lose control of things. We might even not exist. But then you look at your inner chatter as you’re trying to get the mind to settle down, and then there’s the big question, “Who’s in control … 
  13. It’s All about Action
     … One of the important actions, of course, is learning to how to train your mind to be still and learn how to find where your clingings and attachments are and let go of them. As for what you’re going to find when you’ve let go of all your clingings, the Buddha gives just a few indications. He says that it’s a … 
  14. Respect for What’s Noble
     … After all, the Buddha’s teaching you to step back from something that’s very intimate and that you’re very much attached to: the way you feed, physically and emotionally. He’s holding you to a high standard, and there will be parts of the mind that resist. To overcome that resistance, you have to remind yourself: This really is a respectable, honorable … 
  15. For the Survival of True Happiness
     … So you want to make sure that you’re not attached to it. I think I’ve told you the story about Ajaan Fuang going around what he called the body shops at Wat Makut in Bangkok, where he taught. Saturday would be the day that people would come in the middle of the day to practice meditation with him. That meant that on … 
  16. One Thing at a Time
     … But if you’re looking for the stress in things, looking for reasons to let go of your attachments, then you hear them in a different way. You realize you can’t simply just tell yourself, “Let go.” You have to let go through understanding, which is why we focus on one thing at a time. Focus on the breath, and the issues of … 
  17. Beyond Imagination
     … When you finally delve down into your attachments and pry them away, pry them away, you find that you reach a happiness that you just cannot imagine. Imagination can go only so far. Creativity can go only so far. This is something uncreated, unimaginable. It’s really indescribable, except that the Buddha mentioned some of its good features: It’s total freedom, total bliss … 
  18. Why We Bow Down
     … That’s why we would be willing to adopt those three perceptions—inconstancy, stress, not-self—and apply them to the things we’re attached to. People sometimes say we can see these things all around us: Things are always changing—but do we know that there is nothing that doesn’t change? Maybe not in our range of experience, but perhaps there’s … 
  19. The Flamethrowing Mind
     … It gets attached to things. What we normally think of as the activities of the mind are sometimes attributed to consciousness. The mind gets released, and a couple of suttas say that even consciousness gets released. So you could say the Buddha was inconsistent in his terminology, or you could say that he was offering different ways of analyzing what’s going on in … 
  20. Pleasure & Pain
     … The Buddha also observed that we tend to be attached to sensual pleasure because we can’t think of any other escape from pain. Well, this is what right concentration does: It gives us another escape from pain, so that we’re not so concerned about indulging in the pleasure of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. We give rise to an inner sense … 
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