Releasing the mind of attachment

Examining attachment

• Learning to look at the mind realistically
• The disadvantages of attachment
• Working with the mind to decrease attachment

The three poisonous attitudes (download)

Questions and answers

• Helpful ways to counter attachment
• Working with attachment to friends
• Handling pressure due to the expectations of others

The three poisonous attitudes Q&A (download)

Use it wisely and do our best to make it meaningful. So doing our best doesn’t mean we have to be perfect, whatever perfect means. It simply means that we have to do what we can and with a happy mind that puts our energy in a good direction. Not with a pushing mind of “shoulds,” but with a joyful mind—then we engage in our Dharma practice for the benefit for all sentient beings.

Three poisonous attitudes

Yesterday we talked about the self-grasping ignorance and the self-centered thought, those two being the George Bush and Dick Cheney. [laughter] Today we’re going to talk about the rest of the State Department and the other things that come off as the culprit and his apprentice and so the things we’re going to talk about today are called the three poisonous attitudes. They’re sometimes just the three poisons: ignorance, clinging attachment, and anger/animosity.

Different forms of ignorance

Now here, ignorance [inaudible] the three poisons, ignorance means something different than when we talked about the self-grasping ignorance yesterday. The self-grasping ignorance misapprehends things, thinking that they exist in a way that they don’t exist, and that ignorance is the root of cyclic existence.
We have to realize the incorrect mind and cut off the object it apprehends: the truly existent object. [We have to] prove to ourselves that such an object does not exist at all. That is how we uproot that innate kind of ignorance that is the root of cyclic existence. From that ignorance the other three poisons appear. Ignorance is at the root of the trunk of the tree and then we get these three branches. [There is an] ignorance that is a branch, and actually the Tibetan word is different, but then sometimes the Tibetan word means the same thing as the other Tibetan word that means ignorance. Gets a little confusing.

Ignorance of karma

Anyway, this ignorance in the three poisons is the ignorance that does not believe in cause and effect. It can be a mind that is obscured about understanding karma and its effects. Or it could be a mind that completely apprehends the opposite of karma and its effects. In terms of the mind that apprehends the opposite it would be a mind that says for example that there are no future lives and so there are no repercussions from our actions in future lives. In which case why worry about what we do, because it’s not going to have any repercussions.

Or a mind that just says our actions don’t have any effect at all in this life. Whatever you do doesn’t have any effect. It could be a mind that says everything is God’s will so why make an effort to keep good ethical conduct. Or it could be a mind that says there’s no good, there’s no bad, so killing does not bring unhappy results and generosity does not bring happy results.

Or it could be a mind that says the opposite; generosity brings unhappy results and killing brings happy results. These are the viewpoint that many people in the world have, “Generosity, that makes you poor, you better hold onto it, and killing your enemies brings happiness [inaudible]” kind of view. Sometimes it could mean people thinking that things are just fatalistically predetermined. Or that things happen without any cause at all.

“It’s just all chance, all chance!” Or that our actions have absolutely no ethical dimension at all. A lot of what I’ve just been going over are distorted views, because they misapprehend things, and construe a system of “cause and result” that is like really way away off base.

But if you look, a lot of people have these kinds of views. They may not state it as a philosophy, that they learned in school, “here’s my philosophy,” but if you watch how they talk or how they act, these kinds of attitudes towards things. “Oh, everything’s just chance, so no matter what you do,” or, “There are no effects from the cause, so do whatever you want to do as long as you don’t get caught. Just don’t get caught!”

Well, aside from getting caught by the police then you’re free to do whatever you want, it doesn’t matter. Or you find people who have wrong ideas of ethical conduct, and generosity is bad because it makes you poor and killing is good because it destroys your enemies.

On that view, people are like, “Well, it’s all planned out in advance. I’m just this character here, what I do doesn’t make any difference. There are no repercussions for what I do.” Very fatalistic, predetermined. “Things are just predetermined. Why try?”

You do find a lot of these kinds of views, just seeing how people talk and how they handle problems and how they explain the problems they have, how they explain the good conditions they have and then you just listen to what kind of view lies behind that and how they’re conceiving the world.

Obscurations to karma

That ignorance gives you this completely distorted view or it could just be an obscuration like you have never thought about it. You don’t think. You’re about to tell a lie and it just doesn’t enter your mind that lying has bad consequences. It just doesn’t enter your mind. You’re totally in la-la land somewhere. The mind that is very obscured regarding cause and effect.

The faults of ignorance

We can see the harmfulness of that kind of mind. It is sometimes translated as confusion, that ignorance, or sometimes as bewilderment, because we are confused and bewildered over karma and its effects.

Even those of us who believe in karma and effects—that our actions do have ethical dimensions, that they do bring future results and that there are future lives in which these results appear—even those of us who believe that, on a day-to-day basis in making our decisions, we don’t always act like we believe that. We don’t always act that way. Or when there’s an opportunity to be generous, we fall back into our old habits and holding onto the money is better.

“If I have to give something, I’ll give just enough so that I don’t look cheap because I don’t want a bad reputation,” but my motivation is to avoid looking cheap, there’s not any kind of generosity. We fall so easily into this kind of view. Or, “I’m at a Buddhist place, so I guess I’d better not be angry and I’d better look like I’m practicing patience.”

But inside we hold onto the anger, and we’re stewed up about it and we’re ready to kind of hit the other person when they’re not looking. At that moment, actually in our day-to-day behavior, we don’t even behave like we believe in cause and effect. Because the wrong views, the animosity and stinginess, overwhelm us. It is quite interesting to see. Or when we have suffering and somebody, a Dharma friend, says, “Oh well it’s the result of negative karma.” And we get furious. “It’s not negative karma, so-and-so is doing this to me. We better stop them, they’re my enemy, they’re harming me, forget karma.”

It is an interesting thing to take stock of our life. We act as if we believe in karma. When it comes time in the evening to do purification, “I’m so tired, I just want to go to bed. It doesn’t really matter, anyway prostrations, it only takes five minutes and how much purification am I going to do in five minutes? Just forget it.” So, these kinds of things that happen, they’re just part of how we live, aren’t they? That is what we call confusion and bewilderment.

Clinging attachment

Another result of this self-grasping ignorance and it’s [inaudible] the self-centered thought is clinging attachment. This term is sometimes just called attachment, some translators call it desire, but I think desire is a very confusing word and what it means is, it’s based on, it’s not the mind that exaggerates, but it’s based on a mind that exaggerates the good qualities of someone and something and then attachment clings, holds, grasps at the object.

Evolution of attachment

So the actual evolution is, first you have the ignorance grasping at true existence, that thinks there’s a truly existent me, there’s a truly existent object and based on that then you have this thing that Tibetans call [inaudible] inappropriate attention or sometimes it’s translated as pre-conceptions or superstitious thought, but what it means is our mind is doing its creative writing. We are exaggerating the good qualities of someone or something and there’s thinking going on in the mind.

We don’t realize it at the time, but we are actually sitting there, telling ourselves all the good qualities of this thing and then immediately we get attached, “Oh this thing is really good. I don’t want to be separated from it, I want to have it and hold onto it.” This mind very much thinks that happiness is outside, and I just have to hold onto it.

Types of attachment

This kind of attachment is of two kinds. One kind is to objects in what we call the desire realm, and the other kind is objects in the form and formless realms.

We talk about different realms of existence, the form and formless realms and you’re born there by virtue of deep states of samadhi, but still the mind has attachment to the delight of samadhi and attachment just to be born there.

Desire in the desire realm

The big problem for us is the other kind of attachment that belongs to the desire realm. Our realm is called the desire realm, because we’re full of desire, aren’t we? Here desire means attachment. Let me just backtrack, I don’t usually use the word desire, but in this case, [since] we’re calling it the desire realm I do, because the English word desire can have two connotations. One is you desire, you’re lusting, you’re clinging, you’re craving, that’s the one we’re talking about by desire. The other English connotation of desire is that you aspire for something.

“I desire to attain enlightenment; I desire to get a good education.” Those kinds of things don’t necessarily involve attachment, so maybe accurately seeing the good qualities of something and desiring them because you accurately see the good qualities. That is not what we’re talking about as meaning desire and attachment.

Attachment is not aspiration

Do not get that confused, because a lot of people do get it confused and then they think that anytime they want anything that it’s attachment. And any time I want anything is attachment. Where does that lead us? We can’t even want to get out of bed in the morning cause that’s attachment. It’s a completely wrong view thinking that aspiring for anything or going towards anything is attachment. Attachment is definitely based on exaggerating the good qualities of someone or something. So, when you’re hungry and you want to eat, that’s not attachment. When you’re sleepy and you want to sleep that’s not attachment unless your mind’s going, “Oh I really need this, I can’t live without it, it’s going to bring me happiness,” then you’re clearly exaggerating.

Our body has definite needs and fulfilling those needs is not attachment, it’s just keeping the body healthy. Similarly, if you want to get a good education, a good education has a virtue, and it has merit. So that’s not attachment, wanting to get a good education. If you’re sitting there, “Oh I want to get a good education so I can make a lot of money, so people will think I’m smart, so that they’ll honor and respect me.” Well, then yes that’s inflated.

But education has value, you want an education, or you want to do Dharma practice? Yes, it has value, you’re not exaggerating the good qualities of it. You want to go on a retreat, you want to go to teachings. You would prefer to do that rather than go to the movies, that’s not attachment. Yes, Dharma practice has those good qualities, and you see them and you’re going for it. If you go, “Oh, Dharma practice is my one and only thing and I’ve got to do Dharma practice and I can’t do anything else,” somehow, your mind’s just off base. Kind of clinging in that way, “I’m going to do Dharma practice and next Tuesday, I’m going to be a Buddha!” [laughter] That’s exaggerated. Just wanting to do your practice, wanting a good environment to do it in, that’s not attachment. These things have certain advantages and qualities, and we see them.

Identifying attachment

What we do exaggerate a lot is sense pleasure. We do exaggerate a lot about that. So, the latest music, this mind that wants the latest music, “I’ve got to listen to this song again and again. I love listening to this music and I don’t want to not listen to it. I’m humming the tunes all day.”

Whether it’s the latest music or whether it’s Beethoven, your mind is stuck, and there’s no space in your mind for anything else, because it’s just completely stuck on that. Or “I really want a soft bed, oh I want a soft bed, give me a soft bed. Give me an airconditioned house and give me a boat by the river, I really want that it is so much fun, a boat by the river and an airconditioned house. Except in the winter, then I want it heated and I want it heated to 72° and I don’t want it just heated to just 68°, that’s too cold, it’s got to be 72.”

This kind of stuff, it’s really attachment, isn’t it? Most of what we call romantic love, a good deal of it is attachment. “This person is so wonderful! Finally, somebody loves me unconditionally, now he’s going to make me happy. We have such good sex, and he understands me, and I feel good, and I’m nobody without them, and I can’t live without them, and I always want to be near them.”

Attachment is conditioned

That’s exaggerated. Yes. But that’s what’s flaunted in our society as normal behavior, isn’t it? That’s what everybody’s supposed to do.

You’re supposed to meet somebody and go completely berserk and a friend of mine pointed out to me that even the language we use about this, there’s this element of we don’t have any control like, you’re falling in love, you have no control. You’re just falling in love, uncontrollably. It does give that feeling, doesn’t it? [laughter] Actually if you look at that whole process behind it, it’s crazy, our ego is very deliberate. “Because he’s the one. Oh look at that person, their eyes are like diamonds, [inaudible] they are really good looking, they are athletic, they’re artistic, they understand me through and through. Finally, someone loves me unconditionally. Whatever mood I’m in they are going to match that mood, except when I’m depressed and then they’re going to be happy and joyful and pull me out of my depression instantaneously, and when I am in a fine mood, they will be funny and when I’m in a serious mood they’ll have a nice, long, deep conversation with me. And we’ll get married and we’ll live happily ever after because they’ll never disappoint ever and ever.” We believe in that don’t we?! We were raised to believe in that, we were raised that this is the ultimate bliss, and you find the one and only person who is going to fulfill every single need you ever had. Or haven’t had but will have in the future and that will be it.

We’re taught from the time we’re kids that we’ve got to have this, this is the meaning of your life. And then you watch all the movies. What are all the movies about? They’re either about falling in love or killing each other. And, sometimes doing both. [laughter] I’m not lying, am I? And we listen to the music on the radio and what’s it about? It’s all about sense pleasure. Sometimes, it’s, forget the love part, just jump in bed, and have as much sex as much as we can, as quick as we can, and that’s supposed to be happiness.

Everlasting. Forget the fact that it was everlasting. If it were everlasting, we wouldn’t need to do it again. Sex is the ultimate everlasting happiness, if it were why do we have to keep doing it? Something’s wrong with what they’re teaching us, and the difficulty is not so much that they’re teaching us that, it’s that we believe it. We just follow along, like the donkey with the ring in its nose, the person tugging on the rope tugs the ring in the donkey and the donkey just goes. That’s the way we’re led around by our attachment.

And we’ve got to have all these possessions. What is the definition of success that we grow up with? Think about what success is. Possessions are going to make you happy, status is going to make you happy. We are taught all this stuff, and we just buy into it, we don’t think about it, we just follow along like a good donkey.

Then when it doesn’t come through for us, then we get really upset don’t we?

Anger/Animosity

Attachment is based on exaggerating positive qualities, and the animosity is based on exaggerating the negative qualities. “You left your socks on the floor, who do you think you are? You think just because I married you, I’m going to pick up your socks every day? You got the wrong idea, buddy.” Then this is like a big tragedy, a big deal, he left his dirty socks on the floor. And then the day you are in a good mood, and he is depressed, or you’re depressed and he’s in a good mood and then you say, “Wait a minute, what happened to you? Part of our agreement was that you meet my every need, how come you’re not doing that? Part of the agreement is that you are what I want you to be when I want you to be it, how come you’re not that? You were when we were dating.”

Then we get really upset and all these things become a huge deal. Somebody criticizes us, it’s a big deal. We don’t get what we want. The more attachment we have to something, the more animosity and anger we have when we don’t get it or when we’re separated from it. Because as much as we exaggerate the good qualities of somebody or something, that much we are going to exaggerate the negative qualities of not having it or being separated from it.

The yo-yo mind

Here you get what Lama Yeshe used to call the yo-yo mind. Up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down and that’s what we call normal. As long as your ups and downs aren’t too extreme, then we say, you’ve got to do something else. And then everybody up and down, up and down, up and down. And then people develop whole philosophies. If you didn’t have the down parts, you wouldn’t have the up parts! But they only say that when they’re happy. They don’t say that when they’re in the down parts. When they’re in the down parts, miserable, they don’t say, “Oh, you need the down parts to really appreciate the happiness.” They don’t say that, do they?

The evolution of affliction

What we have are two mental states that are based on exaggeration, especially exaggeration towards sense objects, objects that we touch. That includes hunger and thirst and soft and smooth and hard and soft and sex and the whole thing. And it includes sight. You want to see beautiful things. You want to see people who look like the people in the magazines. We don’t want to see people who look like the people in the magazines after 60 years. We want to see them when they’re young, not when they’re not young.

We want to see the things that we find pleasing. We want to hear the music and sounds that we find pleasing. You want to smell nice things; we don’t want to go to India and smell the pee on the street. We want to taste good food. We spend hours talking about food, what kind of food we’re going to have today, what kind of food we want, what we like, what we don’t like. All these sense objects, we really get entangled in them.

Then based on the sense objects we develop a lot of conceptions, and we can also get really attached to all of our thoughts about different things too. We get attached to our ideas and our ways of doing things. There is one way to wash the dishes and it’s my way. There’s one way to vacuum the floor and it’s my way. We get really attached to our ideas. My ideas have got to be carried out cause they’re the best ideas. Why are they the best ideas? Because I believe in them and I’m certainly not going to believe anything that’s not the best, even if I change my mind the next day.

Yes, very attached to our ideas. We get very attached to our positions and our roles, “I am this role in this situation and everybody better regard me as such and respect me, you’re not treating me like that.” We get very habituated to our roles and then we change roles, and move on to identity crisis. Like parents when their kids grow up. “Who am I?”

We are very attached to all our roles, all our positions, our jobs, our duties, our ideas. We just cling onto all of these different things and use them all to construct an idea of who we are. There we very clearly fall into the mind of attachment and then [inaudible] the mind of animosity, the mind of aversion.

Countering afflictions

Then the question comes, “Well, what do we do with those minds when they arise in us, how do we handle them?” One thing is to recognize them when they are very small, because the bigger they get, the more difficult it is to recognize their disadvantages. When attachment is small and you are just beginning to exaggerate the good qualities of someone or something, if you realize what is going on it is much easier to cut than after you’ve fallen in love. When you’ve fallen in love, it’s like this person has no fault, absolutely no fault.

You finally have met somebody who’s perfect, they have no faults. And then if somebody comes along and tries to point out this person has character faults, [inaudible] you don’t want to hear it do you? “Oh, you’re just jealous and you don’t like them, and you’re down on my case and you don’t want me to be happy.” Or, “What’s wrong with this person, you don’t understand this person, they are actually the best thing, you don’t understand them.” And we just get completely entranced. We cannot hear any criticism about the person that we have fallen in love with. Or we cannot hear any bad thing about the new computer we’ve got or the new whatever we got. It’s just wonderful and we’re sure this thing is really it.

Once the attachment’s full-blown, it’s really hard to catch. What’s especially difficult about attachment is that usually our mind feels happy when there’s attachment in it. Now don’t get mistaken here, don’t think that every time you feel happy, you’re attached. That’s not the way pervasion goes. It’s not if you’re happy there’s attachment. That’s not true. Put that in big letters. But when you are attached sometimes there’s a neutral feeling in the mind. Sometimes there’s a happy feeling in the mind.

Examine the mind

If you look at your mind when you’re happy for a virtuous reason, the feeling of happiness is different than when you’re happy due to attachment. Because when your mind’s happy for a virtuous reason, there’s a sense of joy and there’s a sense of peace. When you’re happy for a reason of attachment, I find in myself that there’s feeling of kind of giddiness. There’s a special kind of feeling about it, “Ooooooo!” That kind of thing.

That’s when attachment is really far gone. “Oooooooooooooooooo!” But what you can do is just check the difference in the quality, because it might be a happy feeling but then with attachment the mind is going like this, “I am grasping, and I want more. And “Gimme,” and “Get away.” [inaudible]

Identifying attachment

If we look, when there’s a lot of attachment there’s very often restlessness in the mind and a kind of fear, because what happens when the thing I’m attached to goes away?

“I really am very attached to my income. What happens if I lose my job?” “I am very attached to this person. What happens if they leave?” “I’m very attached to my image as being this and this and this, what happens if I’m no longer that?” Sometimes under the attachment we can find this kind of fear, fear of losing whatever it is we’re attached to.

Disadvantages of attachment

Right away we can see the mind isn’t completely happy, is it? There’s this fear in there, and then the way attachment operates, is that it leads to dissatisfaction because we’ve built up the thing so much that the only other thing that can happen is you see its faults. When Rinpoche went to the top of the Eiffel tower, he said, “What’s such a big deal about this? The only place to go from here is down.” It is kind of when you’ve made this, “Ah this woow oooooooo,” then the only possible way is that it’s not going to meet your expectations.

Because the mind can never see the object as it really is and the mind is also never seeing how our attachment operates and how fickle our attachment is, how it’s attached to one thing one day and on thing the next day. We are just in this space now forever, this is really it, I don’t care how many Dharma teachings I heard about how attachment works, they are wrong. This is it for sure, I have the one person forever and this is going to make me happy.

That mind is a total set up, a disappointment, because whatever we’ve projected on the person, the situation it’s never going to come out like that. Never going to be like that. It is a real setup for disappointment, dissatisfaction, and that’s why you hear in the love songs, “I can’t live without you, you are wonderful” to “You have abandoned me and I’m destroyed forever because you used me.” People go through these extremes because the mind is not seeing things accurately.

What to adopt and discard

For our own happiness in this life letting go of attachment is beneficial and for our happiness in future lives letting go of attachment is also beneficial because when we’re under the influence of attachment we often do many unethical things. We will lie to get what we want or lie to cover up things. We will talk badly about people who talk badly about the person we’re attached to, unwise sexual contact, so many things we just get involved in when the attachment gets out of hand. That just creates the negative karma that brings suffering in future lives.

Important to remember

We are not saying that attachment is bad. Write this in big letters. We’re not saying attachment is bad and we’re not saying that you are bad when you’re attached. Write that in big letters: YOU ARE NOT BAD WHEN YOU’RE ATTACHED. The reason I say that is because the words good and bad are so loaded in the English language that as soon as we say attachment is bad then we say I’m bad because I have it and that’s not the case.

Antidote #1 to attachment

We investigate, is attachment beneficial or not? No, it’s not beneficial. Is attachment realistic or not? No, it’s not realistic. But let’s not get into this thing of blaming ourselves for having a particular emotion, because that just falls back into the “I shouldn’t be feeling what I do and I should be feeling something else, what a bad person I am because I’m feeling what I’m feeling.” That way of thinking is not very realistic and not very beneficial at all. It is not a thing if it’s good or bad or I’m good or bad, it’s just ok maybe there’s a lot of attachment, but you step back and you say is this a beneficial mind? In the long run is this mind going to lead me to happiness?

Look at it that way and step back from the attachment and just say, “In the long run, is this going to lead me to happiness?” or “In the long run is this mind realistic? Is this thing really as wonderful as it appears to be?” Doing that kind of analysis is very good for reducing the attachment. Is it realistic? Is it beneficial?

Antidote #2 to attachment

Another good way that I found very helpful for attachment is I imagine getting everything that I’m sitting there desiring, and I’m so attached to.
And I make this whole video of you know there’s a whole perfect scene and the perfect person and the perfect place with the perfect food and the perfect music and the perfect everything and I got it and then I say am I everlastingly happy now? I just put that question to myself. I imagine getting the whole thing that I’m craving and then I say, “Am I going to be everlastingly happy?” And that’s a good reality check for me. Because automatically I can see no, it’s not going to cut it. It’s not going to do it.

Antidote #3 to attachment

Another thing for working with attachment is seeing how impermanent the thing is. I remember one day we went down to the [Coeur d’Alene] creek, and we took the niece of one of our friends with us. We had a picnic in the park. She was 13 and completely like you know, boy hungry. All she could think about was seeing guys. There were some guys playing basketball and I said, “Megan, you know in a few years these guys are all going to be old men,” She looked at me like, you could see the light bulb went on. Oh, it’s true. “They’re all going to look like your grandpa.”

They’re going to have grey hair and they’re going to have pot bellies, they’re going to limp and have bad breath and I said that is just the reality they’re not always going to look like that. And it’s real interesting because she came up in May, and she came to open our house and we were talking and she mentioned that, and said, “You told me that all those guys were going to be old men.” She remembered.

It is true isn’t it, and then all those who are sexually attracted to, attracted to women, they all will look like old ladies soon with old bodies. Look at the impermanence of whatever it is you’re attracted to. It’s in the process of decaying and aging moment by moment by moment by moment.

You are marrying this old guy or this old woman. Just a few years before they happened to look like that, but then that’s definitely the direction they’re going in. Isn’t it? We get so infatuated with people’s appearances. Like when you look at your family photo albums, isn’t it amazing to see pictures of your parents when they’re young. Doesn’t it just blow you away? We have this idea that they were never young, they were always, they came out of the womb as adults, looking the way we remember them. We never imagine, can’t imagine them being young.

We see young people, it’s hard to imagine them being old. When I was looking at my brother yesterday, and remembering what he looked like as a kid—because I still look the same, I didn’t age a bit. [laughter] It’s just if we think of the impermanent nature of whatever it is we’re clinging and craving. How long is it going to be like this? Getting into perfectionist tendencies, we’re painting the meditation hall. It’s got to be, and I see one part doesn’t have the pink paint on it. “It’s not pink, it’s peach!” [laughter] You can even be attached to the idea of what color the paint is. Forget that it changes color when [inaudible] light on it.

We just look at whatever it is we’re attached to and then how long is it going to be like that? Why do we go so nuts about things, “Oh, this has a scratch on it.” There’s so much we can relax about.

Review of the antidotes

Contemplating the impermanence. Asking yourself if that attitude is beneficial and realistic. Making the drama about how you think it’s going to be and asking yourself if you’re going to be happy everlastingly. Those are some of the antidotes you can use for attachment. I think I’ll pause with attachment now, and then you can ask some questions and then tomorrow we’ll get into animosity and anger.