Attachment Buddha Quotes

You only lose what you cling to.

Attachment leads to suffering.

Attachment to views is the greatest impediment to the spiritual path.

There is a simple way to become buddha: When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no designing thoughts or worries, you will be called a buddha. Do not seek anything else.

It is not the outer objects that entangle us. It is the inner clinging that entangles us." - Tilopa

Live in joy, in love, even among those who hate. Live in joy, in health, even among the afflicted. Live in joy, in peace, even among the troubled. Look within, be still. Free from fear and attachment, know the sweet joy of the way.

He has no need for faith who knows the uncreated, who has cut off rebirth, who has destroyed any opportunity for good or evil, and cast away all desire. He is indeed the ultimate man.

one of the most radical, far-reaching, and challenging statements of the Buddha is his statement that as long as there is attachment to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant, liberation is impossible.

Zen is not some fancy, special art of living. Our teaching is just to live, always in reality, in its exact sense. To make our effort, moment after moment, is our way. In an exact sense, the only thing we actually can study in our life is that on which we are working in each moment. We cannot even study Buddha’s words.” - “So we should be concentrated with our full mind and body on what we do; and we should be faithful, subjectively and objectively, to ourselves, and especially to our feelings. Even when you do not feel so well, it is better to express how you feel without any particular attachment or intention. So you may say, “Oh, I am sorry, I do not feel well.

When desire flows, Pleasure arises. Attached to happiness, seeking enjoyment, People are subject to birth and old age.

Venez, contemplez ce monde, multicolore comme les chars royaux, dans lequel les sots se plongent, et avec lequel les sages ne conservent point d’attaches.

There is evidence that the honoree [Leonard Cohen] might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you're wondering, is simply this: everything is connected. Everything. Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language. And just as a sudden infatuation often will light up a person's biochemical atmosphere more pyrotechnically than any deep, abiding attachment, so an unlikely, unexpected burst of linguistic imagination will usually reveal greater truths than the most exacting scholarship. In fact. The poetic image may be the only device remotely capable of dissecting romantic passion, let alone disclosing the inherent mystical qualities of the material world. Cohen is a master of the quasi-surrealistic phrase, of the "illogical" line that speaks so directly to the unconscious that surface ambiguity is transformed into ultimate, if fleeting, comprehension: comprehension of the bewitching nuances of sex and bewildering assaults of culture. Undoubtedly, it is to his lyrical mastery that his prestigious colleagues now pay tribute. Yet, there may be something else. As various, as distinct, as rewarding as each of their expressions are, there can still be heard in their individual interpretations the distant echo of Cohen's own voice, for it is his singing voice as well as his writing pen that has spawned these songs. It is a voice raked by the claws of Cupid, a voice rubbed raw by the philosopher's stone. A voice marinated in kirschwasser, sulfur, deer musk and snow; bandaged with sackcloth from a ruined monastery; warmed by the embers left down near the river after the gypsies have gone. It is a penitent's voice, a rabbinical voice, a crust of unleavened vocal toasts -- spread with smoke and subversive wit. He has a voice like a carpet in an old hotel, like a bad itch on the hunchback of love. It is a voice meant for pronouncing the names of women -- and cataloging their sometimes hazardous charms. Nobody can say the word "naked" as nakedly as Cohen. He makes us see the markings where the pantyhose have been. Finally, the actual persona of their creator may be said to haunt these songs, although details of his private lifestyle can be only surmised. A decade ago, a teacher who called himself Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh came up with the name "Zorba the Buddha" to describe the ideal modern man: A contemplative man who maintains a strict devotional bond with cosmic energies, yet is completely at home in the physical realm. Such a man knows the value of the dharma and the value of the deutschmark, knows how much to tip a waiter in a Paris nightclub and how many times to bow in a Kyoto shrine, a man who can do business when business is necessary, allow his mind to enter a pine cone, or dance in wild abandon if moved by the tune. Refusing to shun beauty, this Zorba the Buddha finds in ripe pleasures not a contradiction but an affirmation of the spiritual self. Doesn't he sound a lot like Leonard Cohen? We have been led to picture Cohen spending his mornings meditating in Armani suits, his afternoons wrestling the muse, his evenings sitting in cafes were he eats, drinks and speaks soulfully but flirtatiously with the pretty larks of the street. Quite possibly this is a distorted portrait. The apocryphal, however, has a special kind of truth. It doesn't really matter. What matters here is that after thirty years, L. Cohen is holding court in the lobby of the whirlwind, and that giants have gathered to pay him homage. To him -- and to us -- they bring the offerings they have hammered from his iron, his lead, his nitrogen, his gold.

Attachment is conditional, offers love only to certain people in certain ways; it is exclusive. Love, in the sense of metta, used by Buddha, is a universal, nondiscriminating feeling of caring and connectedness.

RAIN. First you Recognize the feeling. Then you Accept the feeling (rather than try to drive it away). Then you Investigate the feeling and its relationship to your body. Finally, the N stands for Nonidentification, or, equivalently, Nonattachment. Which is a nice note to end on, since not being attached to things was the Buddha’s all-purpose prescription for what ails us.

According to the Buddha, then, life has no meaning, and people don’t need to create any meaning. They just need to realise that there is no meaning, and thus be liberated from the suffering caused by our attachments and our identification with empty phenomena.

THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS I. Suffering does exist. II. Suffering arises from "attachment" to desires. III. Suffering ceases when "attachment" to desire ceases. IV. Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the eightfold path: 1. Right understanding (view). 2. Right intention (thought). 3. Right speach. 4. Right action. 5. Right livelihood. 6. Right effort. 7. Right mindfulness. 8. Rght meditation (concentration). Buddha's fourfold consolation: With a mind free from greed and unfriendliness, incorruptible, and purified, the noble disciple is already during this lifetime assure of a fourfold consolation: “If there is another world (heaven), and a cause and effect (Karma) of good and bad actions, then it may be that, at the dissolution of the body, after death, I shall be reborn in a happy realm, a heavenly world.” Of this first consolation (s)he is assured. “And if there is no other world, no reward and no punishment of good and bad actions, then I live at least here, in this world, an untroubled and happy life, free from hate and unfriendliness.” Of this second consolation (s)he is assured. “And if bad things happen to bad people, but I do not do anything bad (or have unfriendliness against anyone), how can I, who am doing no bad things, meet with bad things?” Of this third consolation (s)he is assured. “And if no bad things happen to bad people, then I know myself in both ways pure.” Of this fourth consolation (s)he is assured.

As the Buddha taught, the cause of suffering is attachment; the end of attachment will mean the end of suffering.

Where nothing is sought this implies Mind unborn; where no attachment exists, this implies Mind not destroyed; and that which is neither born nor destroyed is the Buddha.

Generosity says a great deal about a person's emotional and spiritual development. When it's hard to give, or it feels like ripping away a part of the self, we are still anchored in our attachments or stories we've created about scarcity. If this applies to you, make friends with the part of you that feels resentful or finds it difficult to give.

Let a man leave anger, let him forsake pride, let him overcome all bondage! No sufferings befall the man who is not attached to name and form and who calls nothing his own. [Verse 221] TR- Friedrich Max Müller

There is a simple way to become a buddha: When you refrain from unwholesome actions, are not attached to birth and death, and are compassionate toward all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything, with no thoughts or worries, you will be called a buddha. Seek nothing else.

This love meditation is adapted from the Visuddhimagga by Buddhaghosa, a 5th century C.E. systematization of the Buddha's teaching. We begin by practicing the love meditation on ourselves ("May I"). Until we are able to love and take care of ourselves, we cannot be much help to others. After that, we practice them on others ("May he/she/they") - first on someone we like, then on someone neutral to us, and finally on someone who makes us suffer. May I be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit. May I be safe and free from injury. May I be free from anger, afflictions, fear and anxiety. May I learn to look at myself with the eyes of of understanding and love. May I be able to recognize and touch the seeds of joy and happiness in myself. May I learn to identify and see the sources of anger, craving, and delusion in myself. May I know how to nourish the seeds of joy in myself every day. May I be able to live fresh, solid, and free. May I be free from attachment and aversion, but not indifferent. Love is not just the intention to love, but the capacity to reduce suffering, and offer peace and happiness. The practice of love increases our forbearance, our capacity to be patient and embrace difficulties and pain. Forbearance does mean that we try to suppress pain.

As the Supreme Buddha once said, “The root of suffering is attachment.

Everything changes. There is nothing to stick to. That is the Buddha's most important teaching.

The root of suffering is attachment.

What happens after Moksha (liberation)? Moksha means free from Time. So, there is no after or before. Mind exists inside Time. It can never be free from Time, It asks such questions to keep you (soul) attached. It’s a toxic love story between you and your manipulative mind.

After several days, I had a pivotal interview with my teacher. When I described how I’d become so overwhelmed, she calmly asked, “How are you relating to the presence of desire?” I was startled into understanding. Her question pointed me back to the essence of mindfulness practice: It doesn’t matter what is happening. What matters is how we are relating to our experience. For me, desire had become the enemy, and I was losing the battle. She advised me to stop fighting my experience and instead investigate the nature of my wanting mind. Desire was just another passing phenomenon, she reminded me. It was attachment or aversion to it that was the problem.

For Buddha, attachments are like a game of roulette in which someone else spins the wheel and the game is rigged: The more you play, the more you lose. The only way to win is to step away from the table. And the only way to step away, to make yourself not react to the ups and downs of life, is to meditate and tame the mind. Although you give up the pleasures of winning, you also give up the larger pains of losing.

We attach to anything or anybody because we think that they make us happy. We attach to the happiness so much. On the other hand we can say that we only attach to the happiness. Not to anything else or anybody else.

We become attached to each pleasant thought, feeling, taste, smell, and sound. But because everything is impermanent, we’re craving and clinging to fleeting experiences. Pleasure never lasts long enough; we can never sustain enough pleasure to satisfy the cravings. Suffering is the inevitable outcome of clinging to experiences that are unsustainable. Each moment of attachment or clinging creates some level of suffering in our lives as we grieve the loss of pleasure. What we often forget is that we have the power and ability simply to let go, and each moment of letting go is an act of mercy. The subversive act of nonclinging is an internal coup d’état.

A person of wisdom should be truthful, without arrogance, without deceit, not slanderous and not hateful. The wise person should go beyond the evil of greed and miserliness. To have your mind set on calmness, you must take power over sleepiness, drowsiness and lethargy. There is no place for laziness and no recourse to pride. Do not be led into lying, do not be attached to forms. You must see through all pride and fare along without violence. Do not get excited by what is old, do not be contented with what is new. Do not grieve for what is lost or be controlled by desire.

The Sage A person of wisdom should be truthful, without arrogance, without deceit, not slanderous and not hateful. The wise person should go beyond the evil of greed and miserliness. To have your mind set on calmness, you must take power over sleepiness, drowsiness and lethargy. There is no place for laziness and no recourse to pride. Do not be led into lying, do not be attached to forms. You must see through all pride and fare along without violence. Do not get excited by what is old, do not be contented with what is new. Do not grieve for what is lost or be controlled by desire.

This is a really slippery business, and many people can get all into craving for non-craving and desiring non-attachment. This can be useful if it is done wisely and it is actually all we have to work with. If common sense is ignored, however, desiring non-attachment may produce neurotic, self-righteous, repressed ascetics instead of balanced, kind meditators. A

We're like the teenager who "will die" if he or she can't go to a certain rock concert or see a certain friend. Because we tell ourselves it's absolutely crucial that [things should be a certain way right now] we create turmoil and anxiety. It's not [the way things are] that causes pain, it's the meaning we give to these events and our demand that such things not happen. While we can have preferences, the minute we start insisting that people and situations be different, we create internal turmoil - anger, hostility, sadness, and so on. It's our attachments that lead us to donning a mask, blaming others, or feeling incomplete.

I know I shouldn’t be writing haiku now, so close to my death. But poetry is all I’ve thought of for over fifty years. When I sleep, I dream about hurrying down a road under morning clouds or evening mist. When I awaken I’m captivated by the mountain stream’s interesting sounds or the calls of wild birds. Buddha called such attachment wrong, and of this I am guilty. But I cannot forget the haiku that have filled my life.

Deep down, we all want the same things. We all want love and peace and happiness. We all make mistakes. We are all very confused. We all hurt, and we all hurt others. We are all caught up in our stories, forming attachments and tearing away from them. We are all disappointed. You are angry, but could it be true that the person who has hurt you was just the same as you, in a universal sense? They hurt you in search of the things that you seek for yourself.

Without discursive thought it is just dharma practice. Hope together with aim obscures. One does not cut through pride by meditatively cultivating the desire for happiness. If there is hope, even the hope for buddhas, it is a negative force. If there is apprehension, even apprehension about hells, it is a negative force.

Sosan is the third Zen Patriarch. Nothing much is known about him – this is as it should be, because history records only violence. History does not record silence – it cannot record it. All records are of disturbance. Whenever someone becomes really silent, he disappears from all records, he is no more a part of our madness. So it is as it should be. Sosan remained a wandering monk his whole life. He never stayed anywhere; he was always passing, going, moving. He was a river; he was not a pond, static. He was a constant movement. That is the meaning of Buddha’s wanderers: not only in the outside world but in the inside world also they should be homeless – because whenever you make a home you become attached to it. They should remain rootless; there is no home for them except this whole universe.

Hadn't another wise man, the Buddha himself, warned about the evils of attachment?

Attachment,” Buddha had said, “is the cause of grief.

The Gautama Buddha instructs me to walk away from illness. But he wasn't attached to a drip.

Seeking within, you will find stillness. Here there is no more fear or attachment—only joy.” —Buddha,

The pure Buddha, the mind that is clear of attachment, exists anywhere in perfect harmony with all the forces around it.

One must not get too attached to the things of this world. AS

…When the secret is discovered, when the Truth is seen, all the forces which feverishly produce the continuity of samsara in illusion become calm and incapable of producing any more karma-formations, because there is no more illusion, no more 'thirst' for continuity. It is like mental disease which is cured when he cause or the secret of the malady is discovered and seen by the patients.

When you do good, let it be good in line with nature. Don't latch onto the thought that you're good. If you get attached to the idea that you're good, it will give rise to lots of other attachments.

When Buddha spoke about suffering, he meant that we have unsatisfactory experiences. Even the happiness we have does not last forever, and that situation is unsatisfactory. The causes of our problems lie not in the external environment and those inhabiting it, but in our own mind. The disturbing attitudes and negative emotions, such as clinging attachment, anger, and ignorance are the real source of our unhappiness.

All things are transient. Buddha says it is so, and Hock Seng, who didn't believe in or care about karma or the truths of the dharma when he was young, has come in his old age to understand his grandmother's religion and its painful truths. Suffering is his lot. Attachment is the source of his suffering. And yet he cannot stop himself from saving and preparing and striving to preserve himself in this life which has turned out so poorly. How is it that I sinned to earn this bitter fate? Saw my clan whittled by red machetes? Saw my businesses burned and my clipper ships sunk? He closes his eyes, forcing memories away. Regret is suffering.

Desire and aspiration are two different things. The idea that you want to achieve something in Zen meditation is basically selfish. ‘I want to get enlightened’ means ‘I want to get enlightened.’ But aspiration is not for myself, it is not a merely individual desire, it transcends the idea of self. It is desire without attachment. If enlightenment comes, good. If enlightenment does not come, good. Actually, this is enlightenment.

Both Christ and Buddha saw the passage as one of suffering, and basically found identical ways out. What they discovered and revealed to us was that each of us has within himself or herself a “stillpoint” – comparable, perhaps to the eye of a cyclone, a spot or center of calm, imperturbability, and non-movement. Buddha articulated this central eye in negative terms as “emptiness” or “void”, a refuge from the swirling cyclone of endless suffering. Christ articulated the eye in more positive terms as the “Kingdom of God” or the “Spirit within”, a place of refuge and salvation from a suffering self. For both of them, the easy out was first to find that stillpoint and then, by attaching ourselves to it, by becoming one with it, to find a stabilizing, balanced anchor in our lives. After that, the cyclone is gradually drawn into the eye, and the suffering self comes to an end. And when there is no longer a cyclone, there is also no longer an eye.

Buddhism began in Northern India in the sixth century BC. In origin it was not at all pantheistic. In the oldest scriptures, written in the Pali language, Buddha teaches that life is essentially suffering. His doctrine is above all a method for avoiding suffering and rebirth into a world of suffering. To do so we must abandon desire and attachment to worldly things, and give up the illusion of having a self. If we achieve this, we can attain nirvana. Nirvana is seen not as some separate divine realm, but simply the permanent cessation of all craving and suffering.

Your False Self is who you think you are. Your thinking does not make it true. Your False Self is almost entirely a social construct to get you started on your life journey. It is a set of agreements between your childhood and your parents, your family, your neighbors, your school chums, your partner or spouse, and your religion. It is your “container” for your separate self. 4 Jesus would call it your “wineskin,” which he points out usually cannot hold any new wine (Mark 2: 21–22). Your ego container likes to stay “contained” and hates change. Your False Self is how you define yourself outside of love, relationship, or divine union. After you have spent many years laboriously building this separate self, with all its labels and preoccupations, you are very attached to it. And why wouldn’t you be? It’s what you know and all you know. To move beyond it will always feel like losing or dying. Perhaps you have noticed that master teachers like Jesus and the Buddha, St. Francis, all the “Teresas” (Avila, Lisieux, and Calcutta), Hafiz, Kabir, and Rumi talk about dying much more than we are comfortable with. They all know that if you do not learn the art of dying and letting go early, you will hold onto your False Self far too long, until it kills you anyway.

Buddha's four noble truths: 1. Life is suffering. 2. Suffering is caused by attachments (to objects, ideas, individuals, to survival itself). 3. There is an antidote to suffering: the cessation of desire, of attachment, of the self. 4. There is a specific pathway to a suffering-free existence: the eight step path to enlightenment.

Another reason for Buddha’s emphasis on detachment may have been the turbulent times he lived in: Kings and city-states were making war, and people’s lives and fortunes could be burned up overnight. When life is unpredictable and dangerous (as it was for the Stoic philosophers, living under capricious Roman emperors), it might be foolish to seek happiness by controlling one’s external world. But now it is not. People living in wealthy democracies can set long-term goals and expect to meet them. We are immunized against disease, sheltered from storms, and insured against fire, theft, and collision. For the first time in human history, most people (in wealthy countries) will live past the age of seventy and will not see any of their children die before them. Although all of us will get unwanted surprises along the way, we’ll adapt and cope with nearly all of them, and many of us will believe we are better off for having suffered. So to cut off all attachments, to shun the pleasures of sensuality and triumph in an effort to escape the pains of loss and defeat—this now strikes me as an inappropriate response to the inevitable presence of some suffering in every life.

obsession with sensual pleasures, holding firmly to sensual pleasures that khattiyas fight with khattiyas, brahmins with brahmins, and householders with householders.” “Why is it, Master Kaccāna, that ascetics fight with ascetics?” “It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.

Naturally, when things break down, as all things do, we get lost in the pieces—we get lost in trying to reshape them into something familiar. We want to put them back into a recognizable framework so that we can get to work again building that thing we’ve held so dearly in our minds. Wanting to create is not the problem. Wanting a framework for our lives is not the problem. It’s attachment to the pieces of that old frame that is the problem.

Listen Bhikkhus, just as a buffalo boy recognizes each of his own buffaloes, a bhikkhu recognizes each of the essential elements of his own body. Just as a buffalo boy knows the characteristics and tendencies of each buffalo, a bhikkhu knows which actions of body, speech, and mind are worthy and which are not. Just as a buffalo boy scrubs his animals clean, a bhikkhu must cleanse his mind and body of desires, attachments, anger, and aversions.

The Buddha said that suffering is like being shot by two arrows. The first arrow is the physical pain—it’s the metal piercing the skin, the force colliding into the body. The second arrow is the mental pain, the meaning and emotion we attach to the being struck, the narratives that we spin in our minds about whether we deserved or didn’t deserve what happened. In many cases, our mental pain is far worse than any physical pain. In most cases, it lasts far longer.

Each being in the universe, therefore, inhabits a private world. It is as if the universe were populated by countless cinemas, each occupied by a single person, each eternally viewing a different film projected by consciousness, each eternally suspending disbelief. For the Yogacara, ignorance and suffering result from believing the movie to be real, from mistaking the projections to be an external world, from thinking that what appear to be external objects are independent of consciousness, and then running after them, desiring some and hating others. For the Yogacara, wisdom is the insight that everything is of the nature of consciousness and the product of one's own projections. With this insight, desire and hatred, attachment and aversion, naturally cease, for their objects are seen to be illusions. With the achievement of enlightenment, the substratum consciousness is transformed into the mirror like wisdom of a buddha.

The student was silent. Soen-sa said, “What color is this?” The student said, “You have eyes.” Soen-sa said, “Eyes? These are not eyes. They are holes in my face.” (Laughter.) “I ask you once again—what color is this door?” The student was silent. Soen-sa said, “It is brown.” “But if I'd said brown, you would've said I'm attached to color!” Soen-sa said, “Brown is only brown.” Then, pointing to a glass of water, “What is this?” “Water.” “Yah. Water is water. This is not thinking. When you said ‘water’—this mind. This mind is very important. It is a clear mirror. Red comes, the mirror is red. Yellow comes, the mirror is yellow. Water comes, there is water. A door comes, there is a door. If you are not thinking, your mind is the same as a mirror. It is only like this. So true emptiness is clear mind. In original clear mind there is no name and no form. Nothing appears or disappears. All things are just as they are. If you are thinking, you are in a dream. You must cut off all your thinking and wake up.

According to the Buddha, then, life has no meaning, and people don’t need to create any meaning. They just need to realize that there is no meaning, and therefore be liberated from the suffering caused by our attachments and our identification with empty phenomena. “What should I do?” ask people, and the Buddha advises: “Do nothing. Absolutely nothing.” The whole problem is that we constantly do something. Not necessarily on the physical level—we can sit immobile for hours with closed eyes—yet on the mental level we are extremely busy creating

For the supersophisticated, he would often say there is neither self nor nonself and then further confuse them by saying that if they took that too seriously they would be wrong too. His efforts were always in the service of releasing people from their fixed ideas about who or what they were, about freeing them from attachment to whatever concept they were clinging to, about loosening the hold that the fear-based ego claimed as its birthright. The Buddha understood the traumas of everyday life, but he was determined to challenge both the protective reactions of dissociation and the underlying hopelessness that accompanies them.

The Buddha taught non-attachment not as a means of escaping reality, but as a means of dealing with the fundamental nature of reality. There simply is nothing to which we can attach ourselves, no matter how hard we try. The idea of behaving without attachment springs from understanding that everything is empty. The self is empty, the desires of the self are empty, and the objects of those desires also are empty. In time, things will change and the conditions that produced our current desires will be gone. Why then, cling to them now? The Buddha taught that our tendency to cling to the illusion of permanence is a fundamental cause of suffering.

Building of character is the only true practice of Yoga, and it is the only way we can really help humanity. Christ helped the world by His character. It is not that He turned this earth into a heaven. That is not possible. There was just as much evil in the world after He came as before, but by His example He is helping each individual soul to over- come its limitations and to strive toward perfection. Neither Christ nor Buddha, or any other prophet, claimed to be exceptions. On the contrary, they preached that all can become like them. We can all become perfect characters. But only when we build our characters on the firm foundations of purity, unselfishness, and non-attachment will they be immovable, and become a blessing to all mankind.

The last is the worship of God in innumerable forms. Each is a symbol that points to something beyond; and as none exhausts God’s actual nature, the entire array is needed to complete the picture of God’s aspects and manifestations. But though the representations point equally to God, it s advisable for each devotee to form a lifelong attachment to one, so only then can its meaning deepen and its full power become accessible. The ideal form for most people will be one of God’s incarnations, for God can be loved most readily in human form because our hearts are already attuned to loving people. Many Hindus readily acknowledge Christ as an incarnation as well as Rama, Krishna, and the Buddha. Whenever the stability of the world is seriously threatened, God descends to address the imbalance.

On the American desert are horses which eat the locoweed and some are driven made by it; their vision is affected, they take enormous leaps to cross a tuft of grass or tumble blindly into rivers. The horses which have become thus addicted are shunned by the others and will never rejoin the herd. So it is with human beings: those who are conscious of another world, the world of the spirit, acquire an outlook which distorts the values of ordinary life; they are consumed by the weed of non-attachment. Curiosity is their one excess and therefore they are recognized not by what they do, but by what they refrain from doing, like those Araphants or disciples of Buddha who are pledged to the "Nine Incapabilities." Thus they do not take life, they do not compete, they do not boast, they do not join groups of more than six, they do not condemn others; they are "abandoners of revels, mute, contemplative" who are depressed by gossip, gaiety and equals, who wait to be telephoned to, who neither speak in public, nor keep up with their friends, nor take revenge upon their enemies. Self-knowledge has taught them to abandon hate and blame and envy in their lives, and they look sadder than they are. They seldom make positive assertions because they see, outlined against any statement, as a painter sees a complementary color, the image of its opposite. Most psychological questionnaires are designed to search out these moonlings and to secure their non-employment. They divine each other by a warm indifference for they know that they are not intended to forgather, but, like stumps of phosphorus in the world's wood, each to give forth his misleading radiance.

Heed the words of Gautama Buddha, spoken 2,600 years ago: “Do not believe in what you have heard; do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations; do not believe anything because it is rumored and spoken of by many; do not believe merely because the written statements of some old sage are produced; do not believe in conjectures; do not believe in that as a truth to which you have become attached by habit; do not believe merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. After observation and analysis, when it agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”1 Remember, nothing within the spirit realm can harm you as long as you maintain control and authority over your life. You should use your relationship with the spirit realm only to supplement—not substitute—your life. In

Since healing essentially comes from our mind, not from our body, it is important to understand the nature of the mind. The intrinsic nature of the mind is pure in the sense that it is not one with the faults of the mind, with the disturbing thoughts and obscurations. All the faults of our mind — our selfishness, ignorance, anger, attachment, guilt, and other disturbing thoughts — are temporary, not permanent and everlasting. And since the cause of our suffering, our disturbing thoughts and obscurations, is temporary, our suffering is also temporary. The mind is also empty of true existence, of existence from its own side. This quality of mind, known as Buddha Nature, gives us the potential to free ourselves completely from all suffering, including disease, and the causes of suffering and to achieve any happiness we wish, including the peerless happiness of enlightenment. Since the mind has all this potential, we do not need to feel depressed or hopeless. It is not as if we have to experience problems forever. We have incredible freedom to develop our mind in any way that we wish. It is simply a question of finding the right way to use the potential of our mind.

The Buddha, too, goes into the forest and has conferences there with the leading gurus of his day. Then he goes past them and, after a season of trials and search, comes to the bo tree, the tree of illumination, where he, likewise, undergoes three temptations. The first is of lust, the second of fear, and the third of submission to public opinion, doing as told. In the first temptation, the Lord of Lust displayed his three beautiful daughters before the Buddha. Their names were Desire, Fulfillment, and Regrets - Future, Present, and Past. But the Buddha, who had already disengaged himself from attachment to his sensual character, was not moved. Then the Lord of Lust turned himself into the Lord of Death and flung at the Buddha all the weapons of an army of monsters. But the Buddha had found himself that still point within, which is of eternity, untouched by time. So again, he was not moved, and the weapons flung at him turned into flowers of worship. Finally the Lord of Lust and Death transformed himself into the Lord of Social Duty and argued, "Young man, haven't you read the morning papers? Don't you know what there is to be done today?" The Buddha responded by simply touching the earth with the tips of the fingers of his right hand. Then the voice of the goddess mother of the universe was heard, like thunder rolling on the horizon, saying, "This, my beloved son, has already so given of himself to the world that there is no one here to be ordered about. Give up this nonsense." Whereupon the elephant on which the Lord of Social Duty was riding bowed in worship of the Buddha, and the entire company of the Antagonist dissolved like a dream. That night, the Buddha achieved illumination, and for the next fifty years remained in the world as teacher of the way to the extinction of the bondages of egoism. p171-2

There appears to have been institutionalized bias against women right from the earliest times. I don’t think anybody sat down and thought, “Oh, let us be biased.” It’s just that it was part of the prevailing social scene. As the years passed, everything was recited and recorded from the male point of view. I am sure this was not intentional, it was just how it happened. Because most of the texts and the commentaries were written from the male point of view—that is, by monks—women increasingly began to be seen as dangerous and threatening. For example, when the Buddha talked about desire, he gave a meditation on the thirty-two parts of the body. You start with the hair on the top of the head and then go all the way down to the soles of the feet, imagining what you would find underneath if you took the skin off each part; the kidneys, the heart, the guts, the blood, the lymph and all that sort of thing. The practitioner dissects his body in order to cut through the enormous attachment to physical form and see it as it really is. Of course, in losing attachment to our own bodies, we also lose attachment to the bodies of others. But nonetheless, the meditation that the Buddha taught was primarily directed towards oneself. It was designed to cut off attachment to one’s own physical form and to achieve a measure of detachment from it; to break through any preoccupation the meditator might have about the attractiveness of his own body. However, when we look at what was being taught later, in the writings of Nagarjuna in the first century, or Shantideva in the seventh, we see that this same meditation is directed outwards, towards the bodies of women. It is the woman one sees as a bag of guts, lungs, kidneys, and blood. It is the woman who is impure and disgusting. There is no mention of the impurity of the monk who is meditating. This change occurred because this tradition of meditation was carried on by much less enlightened minds than that of the Buddha. So instead of just using the visualization as a meditation to break through attachment to the physical, it was used as a way of keeping the monks celibate. It was no longer simply a means of seeing things as they really are, but instead, as a means of cultivating aversion towards women. Instead of monks saying to themselves, “Women are impure and so am I and so are all the other monks around me,” it developed into “Women are impure.” As a consequence, women began to be viewed as a danger to monks, and this developed into a kind of monastic misogynism. Obviously, if women had written these texts, there would have been a very different perspective. But women did not write the texts. Even if they had been able to write some works from the female point of view, these still would have been imbued with the flavor and ideas of the texts and teachings designed for males. As a result of this pronounced bias, an imbalance developed in the teachings.

In the contemporary world there are two classes of bad plans-the plans invented and put into practice by men who do not accept our ideal postulates, and the plans invented and put into practice by the men who accept them, but imagine that the ends proposed by the prophets can be achieved by wicked or unsuitable means. Hell is paved with good intentions, and it is probable that plans made by well-meaning people of the second class may have results no less disastrous than plans made by evil-intentioned people of the first class. Which only shows, yet once more, how right the Buddha was in classing unawareness and stupidity among the deadly sins. Let us consider a few examples of bad plans belonging to these two classes. In the first class we must place all Fascist and all specifically militaristic plans. Fascism, in the words of Mussolini, believes that "war alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to meet it." Again, "a doctrine which is founded upon the harmful postulate of peace is hostile to Fascism." The Fascist, then, is one who believes that the bombardment of open towns with fire, poison and explosives (in other words, modern war) is intrinsically good. He is one who rejects the teaching of the prophets and believes that the best society is a national society living in a state of chronic hostility towards other national societies and preoccupied with ideas of rapine and slaughter. He is one who despises the non-attached individual and holds up for admiration the person who, in obedience to the boss who happens at the moment to have grabbed political power, systematically cultivates all the passions (pride, anger, envy, hatred) which the philosophers and the founders of religions have unanimously condemned as the most maleficent, the least worthy of human beings. All fascist planning has one ultimate aim: to make the national society more efficient as a war machine. Industry, commerce and finance are controlled for this purpose. The manufacture of substitutes is encouraged in order that the country may be self-sufficient in time of war. Tariffs and quotas are imposed, export bounties distributed, exchanges depreciated for the sake of gaining a momentary advantage or inflicting loss upon some rival. Foreign policy is conducted on avowedly Machiavellian principles; solemn engagements are entered into with the knowledge that they will be broken the moment it seems advantageous to do so; international law is invoked when it happens to be convenient, repudiated when it imposes the least restraint on the nation's imperialistic designs. Meanwhile the dictator's subjects are systematically educated to be good citizens of the Fascist state. Children are subjected to authoritarian discipline that they may grow up to be simultaneously obedient to superiors and brutal to those below them. On leaving the kindergarten, they begin that military training which culminates in the years of conscription and continues until the individual is too decrepit to be an efficient soldier. In school they are taught extravagant lies about the achievements of their ancestors, while the truth about other peoples is either distorted or completely suppressed. the press is controlled, so that adults may learn only what it suits the dictator that they should learn. Any one expressing un-orthodox opinions is ruthlessly persecuted. Elaborate systems of police espionage are organized to investigate the private life and opinions of even the humblest individual. Delation is encouraged, tale-telling rewarded. Terrorism is legalized. Justice is administered in secret; the procedure is unfair, the penalties barbarously cruel. Brutality and torture are regularly employed.

We see three men standing around a vat of vinegar. Each has dipped his finger into the vinegar and has tasted it. The expression on each man's face shows his individual reaction. Since the painting is allegorical, we are to understand that these are no ordinary vinegar tasters, but are instead representatives of the "Three Teachings" of China, and that the vinegar they are sampling represents the Essence of Life. The three masters are K'ung Fu-tse (Confucius), Buddha, and Lao-tse, author of the oldest existing book of Taoism. The first has a sour look on his face, the second wears a bitter expression, but the third man is smiling. To Kung Fu-tse (kung FOOdsuh), life seemed rather sour. He believed that the present was out step with the past, and that the government of man on earth was out of harmony with the Way of Heaven, the government of, the universe. Therefore, he emphasized reverence for the Ancestors, as well as for the ancient rituals and ceremonies in which the emperor, as the Son of Heaven, acted as intermediary between limitless heaven and limited earth. Under Confucianism, the use of precisely measured court music, prescribed steps, actions, and phrases all added up to an extremely complex system of rituals, each used for a particular purpose at a particular time. A saying was recorded about K'ung Fu-tse: "If the mat was not straight, the Master would not sit." This ought to give an indication of the extent to which things were carried out under Confucianism. To Buddha, the second figure in the painting, life on earth was bitter, filled with attachments and desires that led to suffering. The world was seen as a setter of traps, a generator of illusions, a revolving wheel of pain for all creatures. In order to find peace, the Buddhist considered it necessary to transcend "the world of dust" and reach Nirvana, literally a state of "no wind." Although the essentially optimistic attitude of the Chinese altered Buddhism considerably after it was brought in from its native India, the devout Buddhist often saw the way to Nirvana interrupted all the same by the bitter wind of everyday existence. To Lao-tse (LAOdsuh), the harmony that naturally existed between heaven and earth from the very beginning could be found by anyone at any time, but not by following the rules of the Confucianists. As he stated in his Tao To Ching (DAO DEH JEENG), the "Tao Virtue Book," earth was in essence a reflection of heaven, run by the same laws - not by the laws of men. These laws affected not only the spinning of distant planets, but the activities of the birds in the forest and the fish in the sea. According to Lao-tse, the more man interfered with the natural balance produced and governed by the universal laws, the further away the harmony retreated into the distance. The more forcing, the more trouble. Whether heavy or fight, wet or dry, fast or slow, everything had its own nature already within it, which could not be violated without causing difficulties. When abstract and arbitrary rules were imposed from the outside, struggle was inevitable. Only then did life become sour. To Lao-tse, the world was not a setter of traps but a teacher of valuable lessons. Its lessons needed to be learned, just as its laws needed to be followed; then all would go well. Rather than turn away from "the world of dust," Lao-tse advised others to "join the dust of the world." What he saw operating behind everything in heaven and earth he called Tao (DAO), "the Way." A basic principle of Lao-tse's teaching was that this Way of the Universe could not be adequately described in words, and that it would be insulting both to its unlimited power and to the intelligent human mind to attempt to do so. Still, its nature could be understood, and those who cared the most about it, and the life from which it was inseparable, understood it best.

Religion is inevitably something that demands faith, or belief from us. Given the variety of forms of religion, it is natural that definitions of faith are also various. One interpretation, based on our discussion thus far, is to say that faith involves the sincere taking of our entire past as a foundation while simultaneously looking forward to the creation of a bright future. While this is a somewhat narrow perspective of the notion of faith, it reflects at least two essential points. One is that no one can rearrange his or her past. Whatever may be in our past, we have to accept it. The second point is that the thinking consciousness is operating while being continually subjected to the powerful influences of the manas [mind of self-attachment]. Even the wholesome mental factors are working under the severe constraints of a deeply embedded selfish attachment that is utterly bereft of the ability to take an unbiased perspective on anything. The only recourse we have is to consciously accept our past without a struggle, and from the position of leverage provided by this awareness, elevate, deepen, and broaden our inclination toward the world of the Buddha. This is the first religious step of Yogācāra, it's foundational form of faith.

Because of our strong attachment to the fulfilment of our own wishes, whenever our wishes – especially those we consider important – are not fulfilled we experience mental pain, discouragement and many other problems.

Wanting things to be different from what they are is suffering. Attraction and aversion, greed and hatred, lust and ill will: These are the attachments that cause suffering. “I like that; I want more”—“I dislike this; make it stop”: Letting go of these attachments is the end of suffering. Release from this unsatisfactory predicament is the goal of life, whether we are aware of it or not.

Misery is nothing but the shadow of attachment. And hence all stagnancy. The attached person becomes a stagnant pool -- sooner or later he will stink. He flows no more. - Osho

Vedas and the post-Vedic literature mention Varna Ashrama with three classes. The term and the connotation attached to caste system is not what Var naDharma was. Chanakya specifically mentioned that there is no slavery within Var na Dharma. The word shudra appears in Tulsidasa’s version of Ramayana. It is not mentioned in the version given in the Mahabharata nor in Bhasa’s Ramayana. Neither Buddha nor any other scholar discussed or even referred to the caste system as it is portrayed today.

A more promising hypothesis is that happiness comes from within and cannot be obtained by making the world conform to your desires. This idea was widespread in the ancient world: Buddha in India and the Stoic philosophers in ancient Greece and Rome all counseled people to break their emotional attachments to people and events, which are always unpredictable and uncontrollable, and to cultivate instead an attitude of acceptance. This ancient idea deserves respect, and it is certainly true that changing your mind is usually a more effective response to frustration than is changing the world.

Once Zen Master To An was visiting another temple. He wasn't wearing his Zen Master clothes, only the clothes of a wandering monk. He began a conversation with one of the monks at the temple, who did not recognize that he was a Zen Master. Soon the monk began to talk about his Master. “Every day he does one thousand prostrations. He eats only once a day. He hasn't left the temple for thirty years. He is always sitting Zen. He is the greatest Zen Master in all of China.” To An said, “Well well, he sounds like an extraordinary man. I can't do any of these things. I can't bow a thousand times a day; but my mind is never lazy. I can't eat only once a day; but I never desire food. I can't stay in a temple for more than a short time; but wherever I go I have no hindrance. I can't sit Zen for very long; but I never give rise to thinking.” The monk said, “I don't understand.” To An said, “Go ask your Master to explain.” The monk bowed and went into the temple. Soon the Zen Master came running out to To An and prostrated himself three times in front of him. “You are a great Zen Master,” he said. “Please let me become your disciple. I have been very attached to hard training. But now that I have heard your kind words, my mind is clear.” To An laughed and said, “No no, I can't be your teacher. You are already a great Zen Master. All you need to do is to keep the mind you had when you were bowing to me. Already you are a free man. Before, you were bowing, sitting, and eating only for yourself. Now it is for all people.” At these words, the Zen Master began to weep with joy. He bowed again to To An and said, simply, “Thank you.

The Buddha told Mahamati, “There are three different levels of srota-apannas and attainments of srota-apannas.436 And what are the three? They are basic, intermediate, and advanced. Those at the basic level are reborn seven more times at the most. Those at the intermediate level are reborn three to five more times before they attain nirvana. And those at the advanced level attain nirvana in this life. “For each of these three, there are three bondages: coarse, intermediate, and subtle. And what are the three bondages? They are belief in a body, doubt, and attachment to codes.437 In terms of differences among these three bondages, whoever reaches the subtlest of the advanced level becomes an arhat.

The process is very simple. Every time a negative ego thought or emotion comes up in your consciousness push it out of your mind and replace it with the Christ consciousness attitude and antidote. By not giving energy or water, so to speak, to that weed it will die within three weeks time. That is how long it takes to cement in a new habit into the subconscious mind. By not giving water to negative ego thinking and emotions and watering Christ consciousness attitudes and feelings they expand and grow. Soon, you have a habit of Christed thinking and feeling and a habit of being in inner peace and joyous all the time. The happiness you seek is an attitude and perspective that is attached to nothing outside of self, and nothing having to do with another person.

The root cause of suffering is explained as the second of the Buddha's truths. Quite simply, it is our own desire for sensual pleasure and our attachment to the objects of the senses that cause us so much pain. Being deluded concerning the reality of this world, we react to the phantoms of our perceptions with lust or anger. We are filled with desire or hatred, pride or jealousy, and all such conceits cause us to act in a way that gives pain to ourselves and others.

Give Thoughts Room Your thoughts are just your thoughts.   They are not your life. They are your thoughts. Make a room as big as the sky in your mind. Your thoughts can be clouds that float through.   Some of your thoughts are clear. Some of your thoughts are muddy. Belief is just thought.   An open mind isn't attached to thinking or belief.   Thoughts can be a jail. Watching them coming and going lets you out to play in the universe.   Please enjoy watching your thoughts come and go!   You will learn this sitting quietly.

Unlike many of the faiths I'd come across as a religion reporter, the Buddha wasn't promising salvation in the form of some death-defying dogma, but rather through the embrace of the very stuff that will destroy us. The route to true happiness, he argued, was to achieve a visceral understanding of impermanence, which would take you off the emotional roller coaster and allow you to see your dramas and desires through a wider lens. Waking up to the reality of our situation allows you to, as the Buddhists say, 'let go,' to drop your 'attachments.' As one Buddhist writer puts it, the key is to recognize the 'wisdom of insecurity.

Moreover, emancipation is termed that which severs all conditioned phenomena [samskrta-dharmas], gives rise to all untainted [anasrava], wholseome qualities / phenomena and eliminates the various paths/ approaches, that is to say, Self, non-Self, not-Self and not non-Self. It merely severs attachment and does not sever the view of the Self/ the seeing of the Self/ the vision of the Self [atma-drsti]. The view of the Self is termed the ’Buddha-dhatu’ [Buddha-Nature]. The Buddha-dhatu is true emancipation, and true emancipation is the Tathagata.

Connect with People Who Support You Identify friends and family who care about you, and try to spend more time with them. When you’re apart, visualize being with them and take in the good feelings. Companionship, even if only imagined, activates the brain’s attachment and social group circuitry. Physical and emotional closeness to caregivers and other members of the band was a necessity for survival during our evolutionary history. Consequently, activating a felt sense of closeness will probably help you feel safer.

The Gnostic Christ (and the historical Jesus), like the Buddha, like Krishna, like Lao Tzu, taught that all material things are impermanent—whether they be riches, or one’s own body. Attachment to that which is impermanent causes suffering. Give up attachment and suffering ceases.

All things are transient and subject to decay. To become attached to things leads to suffering. One can not truly say this belongs to me, or this is what I truly am. The answer to all things cannot be found in the outer world of things or self-concepts.

The second of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths states that the root of suffering is attachment. Everything in the world is transient, so it’s wise not to get attached to anything or the way anything currently is. The Buddha

Each set belonging to a pair of feet, attached to a person who walked the earth and had their own tale to tell – no doubt a tale of love, loss and longing: the universal themes. And a tale that ended in death because this was how all of our stories ended, whether we liked to acknowledge it or not. She had once read a quote, which she had since heard attributed to Buddha, Gandhi and Stephen King, that had stayed with her. The trouble is, you think you have time.

All cravings are the mind seeking salvation or fulfillment in external things and in the future as a substitute for the joy of Being. As long as I am my mind, I am those cravings, those needs, wants, attachments, and aversions, and apart from them there is no “I” except as a mere possibility, an unfulfilled potential, a seed that has not yet sprouted. In that state, even my desire to become free or enlightened is just another craving for fulfillment or completion in the future. So don’t seek to become free of desire or “achieve” enlightenment. Become present. Be there as the observer of the mind. Instead of quoting the Buddha, be the Buddha, be “the awakened one,” which is what the word buddha means.

To remedy the perception of something impure as being pure, one meditates on the fact that one’s own body and others’ bodies are impure. As a remedy for the wrong concept consisting of the attachment to a truly existing self, one meditates on the non-existence of a self. To remedy the attachment that takes suffering to be happiness, one meditates on the fact that the entirety of samsara is of the nature of suffering. As a remedy for the perception of permanence, one meditates on impermanence. Thus according to the shravaka tradition the four remedies for the four wrong concepts of the children are the meditations on impurity, non-existence of self, suffering, and impermanence. Yet, in the light of the ultimate nature of phenomena these four remedies of the shravaka tradition imply a fault as well. Though through the recognition of impurity, non-existence of a self, suffering, and impermanence one achieves the reversal of the four wrong concepts held by the children, these recognitions do not correspond to the ultimate nature of phenomena and thus represent in their turn wrong concepts of a subtler kind.

If, for instance, while dreaming one sees the attractive physical appearance of a man or woman and develops attachment, viewing this body as being pure, this belief is wrong. If one reflects upon it as being impure and meditates accordingly, so that finally it actually appears as an impure phenomenon, this is a wrong vision as well. The dream appearances of one’s own and others’ bodies, no matter how they may be, are beyond the extremes of both purity and impurity. They represent a state of peace in terms of freedom from any conceptual elaboration. They are spacious and relaxed, movements of clear light, which is the mind itself. They are in the state of emptiness, beyond purity and dirt. This emptiness is not an emptiness in terms of “non-existent,” as is a rabbit horn, nor is it nothing at all like sky. It is a state of utter peace, of complete freedom from any conceptual elaboration.

While one applies the methods of the Shravakayana and reverses the four beliefs of the worldly beings by means of the four antidotes taught in this system, one will develop an attachment to these remedies.

Worldly beings are attached to happiness and mistake suffering for happiness. Shravakas counteract this belief by means of the understanding that all feelings of ordinary happiness are in fact suffering. Thus they meditate on the entirety of samsara as being of the nature of suffering. In the tradition of the Mahayana one gains the understanding that the fruit is beyond any extreme, that it is beyond both happiness and suffering and as such free from all conceptual elaboration. Thus it is the perfection of true happiness.

If those who study the Tao do not awake to this mind substance, they will create a mind over and above mind, seek the Buddha outside themselves and remain attached to forms, practices and performances–all of which is harmful and not the way to supreme knowledge. (3)

their souls still cling to this attachment and are

The teachings of Buddhism which delve into the various causes of suffering identify greed or lust – the passion for indulging an intemperate appetite – as the first of the Ten Impurities2 which stand in the way of a tranquil, wholesome state of mind. On the other hand, much value is attached to liberality or generosity, which heads such lists as the Ten Perfections of the Buddha,3 the Ten Virtues4 which should be practised and the Ten Duties of Kings.5 This emphasis on liberality should not be regarded as a facile endorsement of alms-giving based on canny calculation of possible benefits in the way of worldly prestige or other-worldly rewards. It is a recognition of the crucial importance of the liberal, generous spirit as an effective antidote to greed as well as a fount of virtues which engender happiness and harmony. The late Sayadaw Ashin Janaka Bivamsa of the famous Mahagandharun monastery at Amarapura taught that liberality without morality cannot really be pure. An act of charity committed for the sake of earning praise or prestige or a place in a heavenly abode, he held to be tantamount to an act of greed. Loving

Soen-sa said, "The universe is infinite; all people are infinite. So the Bodhisattva's attachment is infinite. A Bodhisattva attachment is no attachment. No attachment is a Bodhisattva attachment.

The Buddha had a number of wealthy patrons who were earnest spiritual seekers. One of them, Anathapindika, listened carefully as the great teacher taught his monks about the virtues of letting go of attachment to worldly goods. Moved by this idea yet puzzled, the rich man went to the Buddha and asked if he should give up all his wealth, renounce the world, and become a monk. The Buddha replied, “A person who possesses riches and uses them wisely is a blessing to humanity,” encouraging Anatha-pindika to honor his own destiny. You don’t have to give away all your material wealth in order to be generous. You can use it in such a way that you become a channel for good. The