Search results for: "Attachment"
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- Looking for Essence in the Wilderness… If you’re going to look for essence, you have to look in the mind that’s experiencing these things but is not attached to them, not clinging to them. Even your sense of yourself, you as a being, is a product of attachment. That’s the Buddha’s definition. Sometimes you hear it said that the Buddha said there really is no being …
- Pleasure on the Middle Way… And because you have this alternative source of pleasure, this alternative feeding spot, you can allow yourself to be attached to it. In fact, if you’re not attached to it, it’s going be hard to really develop it well. But if you got this alternative feeding spot, then the thought of your other sources of food disappearing doesn’t dig so sharply …
- The Chess Game… You’ve got to have a strong sense of concentration, a strong sense of ease, that’s both mindful and clear so that you can see where the mind is attached to the body, so that you can see where it’s attached to mental states, or you can see where there’s this attachment to the concept of the mind itself. Start taking …
- The Body Doesn’t Care… So it’s good to step back from your attachment to the body to realize how many of your other attachments depend on it, and how meaningless it is in and of itself. This doesn’t mean the body’s no good at all. After all, without the body, we couldn’t practice. But when you can see that as the essence of the …
- Heightening the Mind… Hopefully by that time the habit has become built-in enough so that you realize you can’t allow yourself to get attached to anything, even the really amazing experiences. Lift yourself up rung by rung by rung along the ladder. You go from one attachment to a higher one to a higher one. Finally, though, there comes a point where you have to …
- Sensuality… They get away with that because of our attachments to our sensual pleasures. They raise the specter of war, they raise the specter of unemployment and poverty, and push through all kinds of horrible legislation based on that. As long as we’re attached to sensual pleasures, we’re going to be susceptible to their fear-mongering. Think about it. If you weren’t …
- Desire… Practice but don’t be attached to the results of your practice. Well, that works only when you’ve achieved full happiness. That’s when you can relate to the world in that way. Prior to that, though, you’ve got to have your attachments. You’ve got to have your desires. You can’t pretend that you don’t. Otherwise, you start lying …
- Honoring the Noble Ones… Nobody ever killed anybody based on attachment to concentration. They do kill one another based on their attachment to sensual pleasures, their attachment to any of the hindrances. So attachment to concentration is a safe attachment. Think of the Buddha’s image of the path as being like a series of relay chariots: When you’re riding in a relay chariot, you’ve got …
- Turning Anxiety into Heedfulness… Where your attachments are focused is going to determine whether they’re relatively safe or not. If you have lots of attachments in the world, as Ajaan Lee said, you have lots of magnets out in the world that are going to pull you to where they are. It’s like leaving yourself exposed on many sides. Wherever you have an attachment, there you …
- One Thing Clear Through… We’re taking things in, in order to sustain our identity as a being that we’ve created through our attachments. Now, the purpose of the practice is to go beyond being a being. Unbinding, nibbana, is a state where there’s no feeding, no attachment at all. As the Buddha said, feeding, attachment, clinging: It’s all suffering. For a lot of us …
- How to Think about Death… If we get attached to it, it becomes one reason to fear death. Altogether, the Buddha said, there are four reasons for fearing death. One is attachment to sensual pleasures—or sensuality, your ability to think about sensual pleasures. The second is attachment to the body. The third is realization that you’ve done something really unskillful and might have to pay for it …
- A Conglomeration of Germs… If you’re attached to it, then when you die you’re not going to go anywhere. You’re just going to hang around. When Ajaan Fuang was teaching in Bangkok, he taught at a monastery that had a crematorium and sixteen of what he called “body shops”: the pavilions where they’d set out coffins and hold funerals. Occasionally, say, on a Saturday …
- Sensuality Is a Fetter… Therefore, you shouldn’t say bad things about the body.” Well again, that’s showing an attachment to the body right there and an unwillingness to really look at what’s going on deeper in the mind. It’s not something just for monks, or just for men, or just for anybody. It’s for everybody. Our attachment to the body is what brought …
- Fears… These things are real and they do cause suffering — if you don’t work your way down into exactly where your attachments are. This is precisely the Buddhist take on fear: It comes from clinging and attachment. And the clinging is threatened by impermanence, by stress and suffering, by the fact that these things are beyond your control. The purpose of our training here …
- Relationships… And when we hear those teachings, we immediately translate them into attachment. We start thinking about our attachments to other people, our attachments to certain way of doing things, certain living situations we have. It’s important that we take those notions apart. Because when we hear the Buddha says to be unattached, it sounds like we’re being told to be cold-hearted …
- Secluded from Sensuality… And it’s a much better attachment than being attached to sensuality, because that kind of attachment can lead you to do all kinds of things that go against the path. Whereas the only problem with being attached to the pleasure of concentration is that you may hang out here too long—unwilling to do further work—but that can be cured. In the …
- Ask the Right Questions… We define ourselves by our attachments, and then, our attachments—the ways we define ourselves—place limitations on us. We’re here to get rid of our limitations, so we don’t try to answer questions that would add more limitations to those we already have. Think about that question: Do you have a self? Do you not have a self? What happens if …
- To Be Trustworthy… The more things you lay claim to outside, the more your attachments are going to get you to do whatever is possible to hold onto those attachments. And again, that’s a source of your not being able to trust yourself. So try to focus your search for happiness inside. And as for the thoughts that go out involved in greed and distress with …
- Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice… It lies in what you do with it.” It’s good to do this practice on a regular basis to help loosen your attachment to the body. It helps with a lot of defilements, not just with your attachment to lust. It’s interesting to note that the Buddha’s analysis of lust is that you start with your attraction to your own body …
- Anybody Home?… When asked what a being was, he said very clearly and straightforwardly, “Beings are their attachments.” He wouldn’t define what you are, but he said that you’re defining yourself by your attachments. You create an identity and you go into it. This is the process of becoming, which, as he said, happens an awful lot. It’s why we suffer. You create …
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