Search results for: "Attachment"

  1. Attached to Concentration
    Sometimes you hear in meditation instructions that concentration is okay as long as you don’t get attached to it. That begs the question: How are you going to develop concentration unless you have some attachment, unless you enjoy it? There’s a refrain in the Canon where the Buddha says that once you find an object you like, you take pleasure in it … 
  2. Contemplation of the Body
     … It’s usually a disguise for your attachment. The body isn’t the problem; the attachment is the problem, but to deal with the attachment you’ve got to focus on the object where the attachment holds on very tight. When you really look at it, you see that the body’s really not much, it’s not worth much, and yet your attachment … 
  3. Don’t Be Afraid of Jhana
     … You will get stuck on it, but there’s healthy attachment and unhealthy attachment. With healthy attachment, it’s not the case that you can’t let go. There are some people who are unhealthy to begin with, who latch onto anything and develop an unhealthy attachment to concentration. But you can induce a healthy attachment to concentration if you approach it with just … 
  4. At the Door of the Cage
     … You let go of lower attachments only when you’ve got something higher to hold onto. So when you’re practicing concentration don’t be afraid of being attached to it. In fact, you should get attached here. That’s part of the whole dynamic of the practice. Allow yourself to be attached to the breath, get to play with the breath, make the … 
  5. Wisdom Requires Integrity
     … You can have perceptions of being one and perceptions of emptiness, and yet still be attached to the flashlight. You’re attached because you see that it’s worth being attached to. The effort that goes into the attachment is rewarded, and the reward is more than worth the effort of the attachment. That’s how you see things. And the question is, where … 
  6. Get Attached to Jhana
     … Don’t be afraid of getting attached to it. As Ajaan Fuang used to say, “That kind of attachment is easy to peel away.” His fear, when he was working with his students, was that they wouldn’t learn to how to get attached to it to begin with, which would mean, of course, that they’d just go slipping back to their old … 
  7. The Safety of Jhana
     … Actually, the danger of being attached to concentration is much less than the danger of what people already are attached to, i.e., sensual pleasures. No one has yet killed anyone over the pleasures of concentration. Nobody steals because of the pleasures of concentration. Nobody engages in illicit sex, lies, or takes intoxicants because of the pleasures of concentration. Sensual pleasure: That’s what … 
  8. Prepare to Die
     … The four fears the Buddha mentioned in that one sutta have to do with two kinds of attachments and two kinds of uncertainty. The attachments are attachment to the body and attachment to sensual pleasures. This is why renunciation is such an important part of the practice. If you’re attached to your body, attached to sensual pleasures, you can’t think of any … 
  9. Body & Food
     … Let go of attachment to that, and that’ll care of everything else. But again, that’s focusing on abstraction, and the work at hand never really gets done. It gets swept under the carpet. It’s easy then to say once you abandon your sense of I or sense of attachment, that then you can go ahead and be attached to the body … 
  10. How the Dhamma Protects
     … The best protection is once the mind is solid and secure in concentration, that you start looking at where the mind still attached to things, where it hankers after sensual desires, where it gets caught up in anger, or attached to things, attached to your body. You have to examine these attachments. The reason the mind is attached is because it feels that its … 
  11. Skillful Attachments
  12. Holding On to the Path
     … As for attachment, even though the Buddha doesn’t say that you have to be attached to the path, still, you have to really want to work on, you have to really stick with it, and to that extent it’s attachment. As Ajaan Fuang once said, you have be crazy about the meditation in order to do it well: really sticking with it … 
  13. The Creator of Worlds
     … And even though it involves some attachment —because you will be attached to this state of concentration—it’s a much better attachment than places where you’re already attached. It’s very ironic that you hear so much about the dangers of being attached to concentration. The Buddha himself mentioned only one danger, which is that once you’ve got here you may … 
  14. Attached to the Body
     … Once you can pull yourself away a little bit from that attachment and really look at the mind’s habits here, that’s when you really start gaining useful insights into why there’s clinging, why there’s attachment. You take the sources of clinging apart. There’s clinging for sensuality: That’s clinging to your passions. Remember, you’re not clinging so much … 
  15. Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice
     … One way of counteracting the attachment is to start thinking about all the unattractive and undesirable things that there are in your body. This is not to make you hate the body. It’s not meant to induce the desire to die or anything like that. It’s just medicine for the fact that we’re strongly attached to the body, and that attachment … 
  16. Long-Term Welfare
     … You need to have a sense of well-being to hold on to before you can let go of other attachments. Otherwise, when you let go of, say, your attachment to sensual pleasures, you start holding on to your attachment to your views, and that can be very strong and very tenacious. Yet, those are things we have to learn how to let go … 
  17. A Clean Break at Death
     … The same principle applies to your attachments You want to make a clean break here as well. The two main things we’re attached to our sensual pleasures and to our bodies. If your mind tends to dwell on the pleasures you’ve enjoyed as a human being, the things you’ve seen and heard and smelled and tasted and touched, if you’ve … 
  18. Attachment to Precepts
     … Many times, you see it translated as “attachment to rites and rituals” or “attachment to precepts.” I know not a few people out there who say, “Well, that’s one fetter I’m not attached to. I’m not attached to rites, rituals, or precepts. I just do anything I want.” But that’s not what the Buddha’s talking about. The word *sīla … 
  19. The Real Thing
     … So we have to keep that in mind, just as a way of cutting through not only our attachment to our own body but our attachment to lust, our belief that lust is a good thing. It’s not so much that we’re really attached to that other person’s body. We’re more attached to our lust. and then the attachment to … 
  20. Mindfulness Immersed in the Body
     … This is a large part of our attachment in the body, apart from lust, which is simply lust for a body itself. There are also all the other things we can access in the world through the body. If the body malfunctions, that cuts off our access. This contemplation helps you see that our attachment of the body is not to the body in … 
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