Search results for: "Attachment"
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- Antidotes… Why do you react in certain ways? What is it about that reaction that you enjoy? The Buddha gives an example for when you’re analyzing your attachment to concentration. This is a fairly advanced stage, but the principle applies all across the board. You look at the state of concentration and learn how to see it as aggregates. Then look at the aggregates …
- Trustworthy Intentions… The purpose of the chant is to call that attachment into question. Do you really want to be attached to this dirty bundle of needs? This point is related to another chant we do every night, on the four requisites, to remind ourselves of why we have food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. It’s because we’ve got this body that needs these things …
- Days Fly Past… Is it constant? Is it totally free of stress? Is there any sense of attachment to “me” or “mine” in there? If it’s inconstant, if it’s stressful, if there’s any attachment to “me” or “mine” in there, it can’t be what you‘re looking for. Keep on looking. But it is here. That’s the guarantee. So days and nights …
- Three Levels of Effort… You say, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got that attachment and this attachment.” As you’re watching, you can see clearly that if you try to hold on to these things, you’re going to suffer. You can feel the tension in the breath, and you ask yourself, “Why would I want to hold on to those things?” So as you stay here, watch …
- The Wheel of Dhamma… It can be the form of your own body or the form of things you’re attached to, items that you like, people you like. Feeling is just registering the sensation of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain. These feelings can be physical or mental, but in either case, we’re talking about the feeling tone. These are things we really like to …
- A Questioning Attitude… And she told him, “You’re confusing nibbāna with equanimity.” As the Buddha points out, you can be thoroughly attached to equanimity and it’s still a form of clinging, still a form of attachment, a form of suffering—very subtle, but it’s there. But if you spend your time just noting everything else, you’re going to miss it. Or looking at …
- Body as Path… If it were simply used as an object of attachment, it would cause a lot of problems. As we want to it be this way, we want it to be that way, it keeps going against our wishes. If it went totally against our wishes, we wouldn’t be able to latch on to it at all. There are some things we can make …
- Alone with Your Mind… Ask yourself, “Why should I be thinking that thought? What’s accomplished by it in the grand scheme of things? Is this something I really should be worried about? What’s the attachment here?” If you can actually locate the attachment, learn to look at it in ways that help you develop a sense of dispassion toward it. If nothing really clear comes, then …
- Choiceful Awareness… And don’t be afraid of getting attached to it. If you don’t have an attachment here, you’re going to go back to your old attachments. Choose to breathe in a way or choose to focus in a way that gives rise to a sense of well-being. Choose to maintain that well-being. Keep your thoughts thinking in the terms of …
- Relationships… Now, we’ve got a problem here that in English we talk about feeling attachment for someone, and we tend to equate the attachment with the clinging. But that’s not necessarily the case. When you feel strong attachment for another person, there’s a whole cluster of emotions in there—and only one of them is clinging. There’s affection and that’s …
- The Skill of Restraint… All the precepts get broken because of people’s attachment to the pleasures of the senses. You don’t see anybody killing or stealing because of their attachment to jhana. So even though this is an attachment, it’s a better one. And when your happiness is not dependent on things outside being a certain way, people outside have less power over you. We …
- The Form of the Body… If you think you’re not attached to the body, you suddenly discover a lot of very intimate and demanding attachments. Even in just one hour, it’s easy for the mind to complain about the pain here, the pain there, how much longer it’s going to go on, what’s going to happen to the body as a result. It goes on …
- Indulge in the Pleasure of Jhana… He said that if you don’t have this kind of pleasure to tap into, there’s no way you’re going to be able to get past your attachment to sensuality. No matter how much you see the drawbacks of sensuality, you keep coming back, coming back for more, because the mind needs pleasure. It feeds off of pleasure. If it doesn’t …
- Hold on for All You’re Worth… There was another monk who said when you’re concentrated you’re holding onto one object, well that’s attachment. Attachment is bad, so you should just let things come and go and just sit there watching them come and go and that’s it. If those are your attitudes, you’re never going to get anywhere on the path, because the path does …
- Worldly Narratives… You use the process of fabrication to peel away your attachment to fabrications. Use the process of fabrication to create states of concentration in the mind. That’s what the path is: a type of fabrication, but it’s skillful fabrication. There are certain aspects of the Buddha’s teachings that are non-dual but, when you’re getting on the path, dualism is …
- For Your Future’s Sake… With the five aggregates, he said, if they were exclusively stressful, exclusively painful, we wouldn’t be attached to them. So, they do offer their pleasures. But then, if we just stay with their pleasures, we become attached. Some people say, “Well, you can be wisely attached. Hold on for the duration of however long something is going to be there, knowing that it …
- The Buddha Didn’t Play Gotcha… Or once you get there, you have to be very careful not to get attached to it. It’s dangerous, so you shouldn’t do it too much. Similarly with nibbana: We’re told that nibbana’s the highest ease, the highest happiness, and yet if you want it, you can’t get it. It’s like he’s dangling these things in front …
- The Uses of Pleasure & Pain… They’re tools, tools that you can apply to dismantling your attachments so you don’t have to lug things around any more. Use them to cut away your obvious attachments and then finally, when everything else is taken care of, you can let go of your attachments to the tools themselves. But until that point, you want to take good care of them …
- The Power is in Your Hands… But the Buddha wants you to develop this impersonal perspective on things that are actually very personal right now because we tend to be very attached to the personal things that are causing suffering. That’s the whole analysis: We’re attached to our ideas, to our perceptions, to the way we pay attention to things, and to the intentions we have. We’re …
- Equanimity & Exertion… As the Buddha said, we’re actually attached not so much to the object of the lust or the object of the desire. We’re attached more to the process of desiring itself. It’s fun to think about things you might want and to plan about them. We’re addicted to this. So you have to turn around and look at the process …
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