Search results for: "Attachment"
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- Dreams & Voices… He’d use them wisely, seeing the danger in getting attached to them, and freeing himself from that danger. That kind of dream is useful. It’s about what to do. After all, the mind is basically a doer. We’re constantly fabricating the present moment, putting things together, but then the present moment passes away, so we have to put together another present …
- Lessons in Happiness… For instance, we know that we’re going to have to let go of the body, let go of attachment to the body, but what’s the first thing you focus on when you meditate? You focus on the breath, which is part of the body. You’re not letting go of the breath, you’re actually working with it. Look at those sixteen …
- Pain & the Middle Way… As the Buddha said, without the pleasure of concentration, there’s no way that discernment would be able to do away with your attachment to pain, because as long as you don’t have this alternative pleasure, then no matter how much you understand the drawbacks of sensual pleasure, you’re going to keep going for sensual pleasure. As you go for sensual pleasure …
- The Buddha’s Protection… Some people will say this is teaching you to be attached to pleasure. Well, it’s a skillful pleasure. The Buddha said that if we don’t have this pleasure—the pleasure of concentration—then the only escape we see from pain will be to go for sensuality.** **And that’s not skillful. If you get involved in sensuality, then, of course, there’s …
- A Foundation for Restraint… If we focus on the body to get the mind to settle down, we can focus on different aspects of the body and ask ourselves, “Why are we so attached to it?” So the body plays a double role. On the one hand, it’s our place of refuge, so that the mind isn’t running out all over the place. But at the …
- Healing Awareness… So this is not just an idle skill or an unhealthy attachment to pleasure. We will overcome it at some point, but meanwhile it’s a pleasure that’s needed to overcome the pleasure you get off of other things. The pleasure of learning how to have an awareness that’s healing: If you’ve trained it to be healing in its relationship to …
- Educating Equanimity… I’ve heard people complain about Ajaan Lee’s method of meditation where he focuses on the comfort in the breath, saying that this gets you attached to comfort. But if you don’t have a source of well-being to hold on to, it’s going to be really hard to deal with the difficult situations that the breath can’t cover, that …
- Respect Opens Possibilities… So the Buddha is asking you to examine your attachments really carefully. He’s asking a lot, but at the same time, he provides you with a path. And the path is not an onerous one. It takes effort, but it’s not superhuman effort. The Buddha, after all, was a human being. All of his noble disciples started out as ordinary human beings …
- A Gentle Touch… There’s a certain amount of attachment even though you’re right there, and again the gentle touch is important. As we were saying this afternoon, of these hardened shells around the heart, and many people literally tense around the heart area of the body, sometimes around the neck and shoulders, where you’re holding all kinds of emotions, all kinds of issues. If …
- Do, Maintain, Use… It’s not a matter of seeing the world outside as being inconstant, stressful, not-self, and saying, “Okay, I’m going to abandon my attachment to the world.” You have to see there’s a lot of inconstancy, stress, and not-selfness in your own observing mind. There’s a benefit to seeing a lot of the events in the mind as inconstant …
- The Karma of Pleasure… See the drawbacks of that kind of attachment, that kind of passion. And the only way you’re going to see those drawbacks is to give yourself a more blameless form of pleasure, so you can look at, say, sensual pleasure, and not be so hungry for it. If you’re hungering for it, it’s got to be good. That’s the attitude …
- A Legacy of Strengths… It’s suffering from those things because it’s attached to the things that age, grow ill, die, and get separated. It tries to feed off them to find its sense of well-being. But if you can find a well-being inside, a lot of things outside you can let go of. And even if you can’t fully let go of them …
- Know the Dhamma by Its Results… So when you can recognize a thought going through the mind that helps loosen up some of your attachments, encourage that thought. Obviously, of course, letting go deals initially with unskillful thoughts. You hold on to the skillful ones as long as you need them. But there will come a point where even the skillful thoughts have to be let go. We have this …
- Anchored by Skillful Roots… that inner source of happiness that comes as you take your attachments apart. You sit here focusing on the breath, and learn to pry the mind away from the distracting thoughts that fly off in all directions. You sit here learning how not to get involved in them, in the worlds of that the mind creates, that pull it here, pull it there. Then …
- Acceptance & Equanimity… You’ve found something better than the normal things you’ve been attached to. Then you can look back at them and realize it’s not such a big deal that things are not going the way you want. After all, when you signed on to the world, nobody agreed that they would make the world be like what you want it to be …
- Choosing Not to Suffer… There will be the stress and suffering of the physical elements, but the mind, if it learns how to let go of any attachment to those things, doesn’t have to suffer along with them. That’s a potential here in the present too. You can learn how to let go. So take this time to focus on the potentials of the breath and …
- Chew Your Food Well… The same with the other forms of clinging, such as attachment to views: As the Buddha points out, there’s right view. Right view starts as an understanding about kamma. And it’s interesting to note that when the Buddha talks about kamma, the first two things he focuses on are gratitude and generosity. If you don’t see the virtue, the value of …
- Wealth Worth Holding Onto… Then you gain the wealth of having a perspective in the mind that can step back from your attachments and view them with a bit of skepticism. And all the excuses that the mind gives, “Oh, I’ve got to hold onto this, got to hold onto that; can’t live without this, can’t live without that”: The Buddha says you can live …
- A Game of Chess… I don’t want to get attached to concentration, so I just won’t do it.” That leaves you at your baseline. Your chess pieces haven’t moved at all, and yet you want to imagine checkmate. To really win, you have to move your pawn here, move your pawn there, and get your pieces out on the board. You feel your way into …
- Remorse… In this way, getting the mind properly into concentration helps you overcome your attachment to sensual pleasures and also helps you not to be overwhelmed by the sense of pleasure that comes from getting the mind to settle down and be still. Now this, of course, includes discernment, because that ultimately is what’s going to free you from pleasure and pain. And notice …
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