Search results for: "Attachment"
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- Arising & Passing Away… What’s really great about it? Yet somehow you can put it back together in your mind very quickly and get very attached to it. The problem is not with the body, the problem is with the attachment. And a good way of seeing the attachment is to start taking things apart and then noticing what happens in the mind when you start putting …
- Alighting on the Dhamma… If you do it too quickly, you lose the foundation in concentration you need in order help pry away your attachments to other things. In fact, while you’re developing the concentration, you want to hold on to it. At that point, the clinging is not a problem, because you use the concentration to pry away your attachments to sensuality in general, i.e …
- Stretch Your Mind… This helps to pry you away from a lot of your attachments. You may still have your attachment to concentration, but for the time being, allow that, because it’s a useful attachment. You can do lots of good work with that. It’s only when the outside work is done that you can turn the analysis in on the concentration itself to look …
- Breathing Easy… Or we get into battles within the family, within the society, between societies, all from our attachment to sensual pleasures. Our attachment to firm concentration, however, doesn’t carry those dangers. The one danger is that you get stuck on it and you don’t want to go on to awakening. You have a sense that this is good enough right here. As I …
- Stay Centered… That’s just an example to point out how, often, when we’re attached to something, it’s not so much the thing that we’re attached to; we’re attached to the perception about it. If you miss that, then you can see all the drawbacks of that thing but still hold on to the perception. So there’s a lot to parse …
- The Four Biases… It’s not attached to the world, and as a result it doesn’t have any fear about what’s going to happen in the world. It’s that quiet corner that allows us to have a basis for our integrity, a basis for our skill in how we approach life, so that we’re not influenced by what the Buddha called the four …
- Equanimity Isn’t Apathy… The mind has lots of ways of looking for an easy way out. “All that work that goes into concentration practice is just an attachment,” you might say. “Well, I’m going to be beyond that attachment, skip over that, because I’ve already seen through it.” You can’t skip over it. You’ve got to go through the process because mastering the …
- Purity Comes Through Discernment… Where is the attachment that keeps digging for it and bringing it out? Simply watching the thought come and go, come and go, come and go won’t always work. This is why the Buddha said that purification of the mind doesn’t come through equanimity, it comes through discernment. You have to understand the coming, understand the going. The first thing is to …
- Hold onto the Breath… This means that you have to be attached to it, obsessed with it. Simply learn how to be attached wisely. Be attached to the causes that give rise to the sense of well-being, and the well-being will have to come. So focus on what you’re doing right here, right now. As you pick up stories from the past or worries about …
- To Understand the Path… And the work of insight works best when you develop a sense of ease and well-being through the concentration, so that you can look at your other attachments, realizing they’re not nearly as nice as this one, so that your letting go is not neurotic, it’s not alienating, it’s simply the letting go of a wise person who’s found …
- To Know the Unconditioned… through this process of peeling away your attachments, however you can get the mind as quiet as possible. Peel away the attachments you can see through having something quiet and good to compare them to. This is why we do concentration and then look at our other attachments. We see that they’re nowhere near as peaceful or satisfying as a state of concentration …
- The Breath All the Way… to get a sense of dispassion for the things we’re attached to. You really have to understand what attachment is all about. You’re attached to things because they give pleasure, and even when you’re attached, you can admit that the pleasure’s not constant and that it takes some effort. Still, it seems that you get at least enough pleasure to …
- Finding the Openings… But what do you get for it? The pleasures you’ve gotten from attachment in the past: Where are they now? Usually what remains is the karma that comes from that attachment, the things you did in order to hold on, some of which were not very skillful at all. Reflect on the past, then look at the present: What are you doing right …
- The Field Hospital… We’re attached to sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations. And we’re attached especially to our thoughts about those things, our plans for those things—we crave the craving. This is where craving gets tricky: We have to deal with many layers all at once, even with just this one kind of craving. As the Buddha said, you can’t get past it …
- Death Is Normal… one, about the value of your attachment to the body; and then, two, what will your mind have left when it has to leave the body? You want it to have good qualities. As the Buddha said, when you survey your mind and find that there’s anything unskillful in it, you should have the same attitude as a man whose turban or hair …
- Murderers, Vipers, & Floods, Oh My!… We’re really, really attached to our story-making. But still, we have to look at the downside and that includes looking at the downside of the objects. The human body is the number one sensual attraction. We start out being attracted to our own bodies—attached to them—and then from there, we go on to other people’s bodies. So we have …
- The Graduated Discourse… But then if you’re attached to the rewards, you start behaving in unskillful ways to protect them. And then you start falling again. Even when you don’t think you’re attached, the fact that you simply get used to having things easy in a certain way makes it hard when you fall. You don’t have to look at heaven to see …
- Working Hypotheses… As I said, it still has its attachments, and one of the last attachments we’re going to let go of is this steady flame. But before you let it go, get a lot of use out of it, because there are so many interesting things you can see in the mind if you look inside. All this, of course, is based on the …
- The Duty to Understand… The purpose of this contemplation is to get us to stop and look at our own attachment, because even if we don’t think we’re pretty or good-looking enough, still we’re awfully attached to the body, and a fair amount of that attachment is sensual. There’s that passage where the Buddha says that you start out by being attracted to …
- Urgency & Contentment… As long as there’s attachment, the mind is leaving itself open to all kinds of suffering. So the skills you develop with the breath to cut through that attachment are very important, because we have this house not just for relaxing. It’s also a place where we can work in comfort—this house of the breath, this home for the mind. So …
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