Search results for: "Attachment"

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  2. The Whole Story
     … But it’s enough to remind you that if you’re feeling lust for the body, desire for the body, attachment to your body, attachment to someone else’s body, it’s because you’re not telling yourself the whole story. You’re focusing on a few details and turning a blind eye to what you don’t want to see. A glance, a … 
  3. Gladdening the Mind
     … Don’t be afraid of those feelings, thinking that they’re an attachment. Of course you’re going to be attached to them — but it’s better to be attached to good things than to things that stir up the mind in harmful ways. In the beginning these feelings of refreshment and rapture come and go seemingly without any pattern. But over time you … 
  4. The Fires of Sensuality
     … It’s very easy to get attached to the flavors of those things, and from there we can attached to other flavors, the flavors of sights, the flavors of the sounds, all the way to the mind. So the first thing we have to reflect on is the danger of sensuality. Here sensuality doesn’t mean just lust. It means are our passion for … 
  5. Clinging & the End of Clinging
     … When we practice, this presents a challenge, because he’s telling us that we’re suffering because of our attachments. The firmer our attachments, the more strongly we hold to them, then the more we have to let go of them because they’re causing us the most suffering. This is why that first noble truth is a noble truth. The simple act of … 
  6. The Resolve to Let Go
     … To get the mind rightly concentrated, you have to be willing to renounce your attachment to sensual pleasures, your attachment to sensual passions. As the Buddha noted, our real attachment to sensuality is more to our thoughts about sensual pleasures than to the actual pleasures themselves. The pleasures are very fleeting, but you can think for hours about how much you want a particular … 
  7. Passion for Dispassion
     … figuring out where their attachments are, why they’re attached, what they can do to pry lose those attachments. But the important thing is you learn how to be passionate for the path. The Buddha talks about six things that you can take delight in that help you along the path. The first, of course, is simply delighting in the Dhamma: a teaching that … 
  8. Switch the Context
     … When you turn things inside out like this, you get a new perspective, and it loosens up a lot of your old attachments. As you learn to depersonalize things and give them a new context in this way, a lot of the old stories dissolve away. A lot of your problems with settling the mind down dissolve away, and you begin to see attachments … 
  9. The Possibility of Letting Go
     … The problem, of course, is that many of your attachments go very, very deep and just one meditation session is not going to cut through the issue. But at least you learn how to look at it from a little bit of a distance. It makes it that much easier to let go of these things when you’re forced to let go. All … 
  10. Tranquility & Insight Together
     … But that kind of attachment is a lot less destructive than the attachments we have for sights, sounds, smells, tactile sensations. I mean, people kill one another over material things. That’s one of the reasons why there’s killing and stealing and lying and illicit sex and intoxication—it’s because we’re stuck on sensual pleasures. And as the Buddha noted, the … 
  11. Collecting Your Tools
     … When are they useful? Where are they useful? We hear that views are one of the mental fermentations, views are one of the forms of attachment. Well, does this mean we shouldn’t have views? Well, no, how could anyone live without views? If you try to deny that you have views, you’re stuck in denial. The views go underground where you can … 
  12. Stepping Out of Truth Games
     … Your ability to step out of your world, your identity, who you are, will help you get into concentration and help save you from all kinds of unskillful attachments—or even the normally skillful attachments at times when they’re not useful and not timely. This ability to step back is your safeguard. So keep practicing at it until you get good at it … 
  13. Work & Play
     … It’s how you handle those things, based on your own ignorance, your own attachment, your own clinging and craving—something we normally don’t like to admit to ourselves. It’s like trying to talk to a person about his faults. If you catch him when he’s in a foul mood, he won’t want to listen. He’ll be even more … 
  14. Attachment to the Body
     … One of the big issues, of course, is your attachment to the body. Here’s the irony of all this. We’re staying with the body, staying with the breath, but at the same time we have to learn how to detach ourselves from it. After all, we’re not going to be here together forever. There will have to be a separation. And … 
  15. Freedom Through Painful Practice
     … A lot of people say they’re not attached to their body, so they don’t understand why we have the chant about the 32 parts of the body. It seems to be a lot of negativity, but the chant is to remind you that this body you’re depending on is not all that dependable. What would you do if you didn’t … 
  16. Your Tranquility & Your Insight
     … And your attachment to things: Even though there’s a common denominator in all attachment, the particulars of your attachments are going to be yours. Think about that statement that Ajaan Mun made to Ajaan Fuang one time: that we people are all alike, but then we’re different, but when you come down to it, we’re really all alike. We’re all … 
  17. Insight Is a Judgment Call
     … What’s the best thing that the mind can fabricate? There are some very subtle states of concentration, very strong, and as you develop them, you find yourself getting attached to them. But that’s okay, because that attachment allows you to let go of attachments, say, to sensuality, to unskillful thoughts, or even to weaker and less subtle states of concentration. You finally … 
  18. Wild Horses
     … This can help pry you lose of your attachment to sensuality. As for your attachment to the body, this is why we have contemplation of the body. You can imagine taking it apart in your mind, all those different parts, and putting them on the floor in front of you. Then you ask yourself, “Okay, which part do you want to identify with? Which … 
  19. Beneficial Thinking
     … Each of us is attached to the body in a different way. But in every way, the attachment is a cause of suffering. Which doesn’t mean we’re going to take the body out and throw it away. We use it. But again, it’s all for the purpose of having the right attitude, a useful attitude toward the body—and learning how … 
  20. The Five Aggregates
     … insight into where your attachments are, where your craving is, where your clinging is. So the fact that our present experience has to have an element of intentionality is what opens the path. That way, we can take these khandhas—which are the basic raw materials available to us—and intentionally turn them into something useful rather than into a burden. So try to … 
  21. Sensual Passion
     … If you’re attached to those things, he says you’re a slave, a slave to craving, and you really can’t trust your mind. It goes slipping out after these things, and it can take you along with it, drag you along with it. Especially at death: You’re afraid of losing sensual pleasures, you see the opportunity for some more, and you … 
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