Search results for: "Attachment"
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- 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 …
- Right Effort… Sometimes you hear that if concentration comes, just note the fact the concentration is there, don’t get attached to it. Just watch it go away, and you’ll see the truth of inconstancy. That’s not what the Buddha taught. Your duty here, once you’ve given rise to it, is to generate the desire to develop it, to bring it to culmination …
- An Examined Life… In other words, you have to use your discernment to cut away a lot of the mind’s attachments before it’s even willing to settle down. So try to think about these issues if you find the mind running rampant. As the chant just now said, the world is swept away. It does not endure. Everything is very, very impermanent. The passage comes …
- Right Action… I don’t know anybody who’s broken the five precepts from being attached to the pleasure of jhana. So jhana is a safe place; sensuality is a dangerous place to be. Always keep that in mind. In this way, you take the principles of right action and bring them inside so that you have your own inner wealth to build on. There’s …
- Putting Aside the World… You’ve had all these attachments, all these relationships and then what happens? They end. Each person goes his or her separate way. When you meet up again, you don’t know each other. In that way, our relatives are actually strangers. There’s another passage where there’s a woman who’s lost her daughter and is in the cemetery grieving over her …
- A Slave to Craving… You see through your attachments, your misguided ideas, realizing that you can’t base true happiness on things that are inconstant, stressful, and not self. Then finally: The mind, when fostered with discernment, is released from all its effluents, in other words, all the things that come bubbling up out of the mind that make us go flowing out looking for happiness outside. When …
- Sense Pleasures & Sensuality… If you get attached to a particular sensual pleasure, you’re going to have to put yourself in a position where it can be taken away from you. The image is of a hawk that has a piece of meat: It takes off, and other hawks, crows, and kites take after it to pull the meat away. If it doesn’t let go, it …
- Sense Restraint… As you hold to these precepts, you begin to realize how much you’re attached to these sensations. If you start thirsting after them, you start thinking about them, then it’s a sign that you’re used to thinking about them. You usually don’t notice that because there’s no restraint. But when you put restraint on yourself, then you begin to …
- Focused on Your Duties… If you can see through your attachments here, can understand what it is that keeps the mind trapped in the process of fabrication, so much the better. But in every case, the work is done right here. If it doesn’t get done right here, it’s not going to get done. This is why we keep death in the background as our topic …
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