Search results for: "Attachment"
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- You Can Make a Difference… And we should receive the teachings as a pure gift, and appreciate that there are no strings attached. It’s offered freely, by someone who saw that we really need it. So, as long as we appreciate of the fact that we really need the training, we really need the teaching, we can benefit from it—out of a sense of gratitude for all …
- To Free You from Clinging… But then there comes a point where the power you exercise over them is the one thing getting in the way, the one attachment, the one type of clinging that’s getting in the way of total release. That’s when you’ve got to drop them. So realize that all the Buddha’s teachings are strategies for the sake of lack of clinging …
- Inner Wealth Management… Don’t be afraid of getting stuck on the pleasure of concentration, because you have to get stuck here first so that you can pull away your attachments to unskillful thoughts: thoughts of sensuality, thoughts of ill will, fearful thoughts, jealous thoughts. You want to give the mind good food so that it can stop feeding on its old garbage. But you have to …
- Now & at Death… You ask yourself, “Is this body something I really want to get involved with?” As the Buddha recommended, if you find, when you’re dying, that you’re still attached to human sensual pleasures, remind yourself that there are better sensual pleasures higher up in the deva realms. And if you’re going to be reborn there, it’s not the case that you …
- The Wheel of Dhamma… Don’t be afraid of getting attached to nice states of mind, because they’re your path. Then again, though, you don’t latch on to them as the end in and of themselves, but you do hold on to them as your path. If you let go of the path, what have you got? You’ve got nothing. That’s why you don …
- Part V : Finding a Teacher… I don’t need them because they come with strings attached. They come with poison for the mind.” Finally, there’s discernment—which, in this context, is defined as discernment of arising and passing away. What this means is that you learn to look into the mind to see exactly how it’s creating suffering out of things where it doesn’t have to …
- Mature Strategies… It’s finally willing to give the Buddha’s approaches a try, to replace our old strategies — which have had some success, but not total success, but to which we’re so attached — with new strategies that promise something more. Although those new strategies may initially seem counterintuitive, they make more and more sense as you get to know them. And they really do …
- Responsible for Your Goodness… We’re attached to things that are causing suffering because we don’t see the connection—or if we see the connection, we don’t think there’s any alternative. So when the Buddha talks about the path, it’s to remind us that there are alternatives. Good ones. And when he does talk about the cessation of suffering, he tells us enough to …
- Taking Responsibility… We feel that if we’re being asked to give up our attachment to sensual pleasure, we’d have nothing left but pain. One of the purposes of the practice is to show you that there is an alternative. You can get the mind into good strong states of concentration that don’t depend on sensual passion. So there is another alternative, but the …
- Admit Your Stupidity… I think I’ll stop having attachment.” The mind doesn’t work that way, because we’ll be seeing, as we get to know the mind, that it tends to feed. To think that you can simply give up feeding by realizing that food is impermanent is not very realistic. You have to understand why the mind is feeding on things that are unhealthy …
- Poison Your Fantasies… There’s a very naïve idea about insight that all you have to do is realize that things arise and pass away, things are made out of fabrications, and that’s enough to let go of any attachment you might have to them. But that’s like thinking that when there’s a sexually arousing picture on your computer screen, and you know that …
- Questions of Skill… We’re more attached to our fantasies than we are to the things we actually encounter. You get to know these fantasies really well by saying No to them as you try to get the mind into a state of concentration, as you’re trying to replace your fascination with sensuality with fascination about how you feel the body from within. That’s called …
- Guardian Meditations… Why is that? How can the mind see these things, know these things, and still turn a blind eye to them? The purpose of this contemplation is to see that whatever thoughts of lust or pride or attachment you have for the body are really misplaced. The problem, of course, is not with the body. It’s not making any claims on you. You …
- Customs of the Noble Ones… being content with what you have in terms of food, clothing, and shelter—not priding yourself on your contentment, but simply realizing that the contentment is something you need to develop in order not to get sucked into the dangers of being attached to food, clothing, and shelter, or wanting more than what you’ve got. After all, this is how any culture makes …
- Therapy for the Mind… You learn how to delight in abandoning your attachment to the mind’s old familiar diseases—to recognize them as diseases and then to delight in developing the qualities that can outwit them. After all, the defilements have their reasons and their clever tricks. They have their strategies for making you fall for them. One of them is, of course, the idea, “Well, it …
- Twigs & Branches… This body that you’re so attached to, this is what it’s made up of: hair of the head, hair of the body, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, all the way down the line. Here again, you use that contemplation to get yourself away from the appearance of the body to get more interested in how you experience the body from within. Then you …
- Trading Up… That kind of thinking constitutes a huge portion of the junk up in the attic, but of course it’s something we’re really attached to. When you talk about right resolve, it’s easy to say that, yes, you’d like to learn how not have so much ill will for other people and you’d like to learn how not to be …
- Not What You Are, What You Do… You can get very much attached to that kind of passivity and still be stuck with all your problems. So instead we bring more and more knowledge to the process of breathing and how we use our thoughts around the process of breathing. Sometimes you hear that our thinking, which is based a lot on language, is the reason why we suffer, that we …
- Faith in the Buddha’s Awakening… The being is made of attachment and its sustenance is craving. The image the Buddha gives is of a fire that goes from one house to another. He says, the fire leaps from one house to the next based on the wind, based on the air. That’s its sustenance. And as to what this “being” is, though, the Buddha doesn’t answer the …
- A Haven for Inner Wealth… You don’t just look at the mind and watch things coming and going, seeing something good coming, and saying, “Well, I don’t want to be attached to it,” and then let it go. If something good comes, you want to maintain it. In fact, that’s one of the duties of mindfulness: to give rise to good states in the mind and …
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