Taking the ache out of attachment

How to bring about real happiness and eliminate suffering

• The importance of investigating our assumptions and opinions
• The false assumption that happiness comes from outside
• Attachment causes suffering
• Real happiness comes from letting go of attachment

Open Heart, Clear Mind 02a: Taking the ache out of attachment (download)

Questions and answers

• The difference between positive aspiration and attachment
• Seeing through romantic attachment

Open Heart, Clear Mind 02b: Q&A Discerning Love, Attachment, Positive Aspiration (download)

Guided meditation on attachment

• What are you attached to?
• How can you relate to these objects of attachment in a more realistic way?

Open Heart, Clear Mind 02c: Meditation on attachment (download)

Before we do the teachings, let’s reflect on our motivation and look at our lives from a large perspective that goes beyond simply our temporal happiness at this moment and let’s consider ourselves as beings caught in cyclic existence under the control of ignorance, mental afflictions, and karma and wanting ourselves to have lasting happiness and actual freedom. Let’s develop the aspiration to attain liberation to be free of the ignorance, afflictions, and karma that keep us bound in a cycle of misery. And then, recalling it’s not only us in this situation, that every other living being is as well, and that we are interrelated and interconnected with each and every other living being. Let’s expand our motivation so it has space for everybody and aspire to obtain full enlightenment so that we can be of the greatest benefit to all living beings to contemplate and generate that motivation.

Beyond “Me”

This process of enlarging our motivation is a very important one and we can see that it takes some energy to do it, doesn’t it? It doesn’t come naturally to us. Most of the time, what are we thinking about? Ourselves and how we can have pleasure ASAP. That is what is going on in our mind most of the time.

Misperceiving others

When we do look at other people, they seem very real and concrete to us. We think we know who everybody is. Our opinion factory works overtime effortlessly to spew out incredible opinions about other people, and we think we know who everybody is. Even strangers—we look at their face, look at their clothing, look at their body language and then whoop—we know what this person is all about and how we are going to relate to them. Haven’t spoken a word, but that doesn’t matter.

Then even if we know somebody and we get to know their habits, live with them for a while, we think “I know exactly who that person is.” They appear like a real person, who they are, they are in this kind of body and this and this and this and this and we know all these things about them and that’s what they are—we think. But is it? No, do we really know very much about that person? To really know who somebody is you have to be them.

Understanding ourselves

But do we even understand ourselves and know who we are? Forget it. We don’t understand ourselves. Do we know why we go to sleep and I’m not talking about some scientific explanation that you read in The New York Times science section. Do we understand why we go to sleep; do we understand why we wake up? Do we understand what we are, why this life happens, why we’re in this body? Do we understand our emotions and our thoughts? We don’t understand ourselves very well and yet we look at other people and think we know all about them.

Somehow, we are off the mark. Even the way we look at people and the way we think of ourselves, and it feels like there’s this thing that’s me. We never question me: this is who I am, this gender and this race, this religion, this sexual orientation, this socioeconomic background, this ethnic group, this career. I am this kind of person that likes this kind of hobbies, I like these movies, I’m nearsighted or farsighted and whatever it is, we have all these identities, and we think that’s what we are. There is a person there who is all these things. But is that really true and how did we get to be all those things. If we think we are all those things, how did we get to be them?

The joy of being wrong

When we start to investigate a little bit deeper, scratching the surface of all of our assumptions and opinions, we see that we really don’t know very much. Some of our ideas, believe it or not, could even be wrong. I know that’s very presumptuous. [laughter] I remember Jeffrey Hopkin’s talking about the joy of being wrong and how wrong we are and how good it is that we are wrong because if we were right, then boy we’re really stuck. When you think about it, if we were right all the time, then how are we ever going to get any better? We are just stuck where we are. There are kinds of advantages to being wrong.

Investigating assumptions

We think that we’re this concrete person and we look at other people and they look like concrete people. But are we a concrete person, and are they concrete people? If we are, then how come we change and age and get old and die. There are all these things to think about and in the process of doing that, it makes us investigate what our life is about, and look more deeply instead of just making general assumptions that we know what’s going on. I think that this sort of questioning is quite important. In the process of investigating like this, we may come to actually know something, understand something.

The Buddhist approach

Last week we talked about meditation and talked a little bit about the Buddhist approach and how the Buddha recommended to us that we always investigate and that we keep that alert, questioning, curious mind very prominent. But we don’t just believe things because some authority said them or because they are written in scriptures or because they seem logical when you deal with dubious kinds of logic or because that’s tradition or custom, habit, or because that makes sense to our comfortable ego. None of those are good reasons for believing everything, yet there are a hundred reasons that we use. The Buddha encouraged us to think clearly, to investigate and try something out and test it from our own experience, because when we experience something for ourselves, then we really know that it’s true. Especially in the case of learning the Buddha’s teachings, we listen, and we try and get an understanding of them and see if the path that the Buddha is talking about makes sense. We want to practice something that makes sense, that seems to be going in a good direction. Then when the intellectual understanding is not sufficient, we have to contemplate and put it into practice—that’s the next step of practicing the things that we’re learning and see if they actually work to transform our mind.

Uncovering the source

Today’s topic is taking the ache out of attachment and there’s a lot to practice in this topic to see if it works. This topic is a real button-pusher. Before we can even talk about attachment per se, we have to look at where our happiness and suffering comes from and also where we think it comes from. Because in our usual life in the way we usually speak, it seems as if happiness and suffering come from outside of us. Doesn’t it? I’m so happy because somebody gave me a present and I am so happy because I got a promotion. I’m happy because somebody said I look good. I’m happy because I see something beautiful and happy because there is some good food or there are some beautiful things to look at or I’m lying down on a comfortable bed, or I get to see nice movies and listen to good music. It seems as if happiness comes from outside of us. We are always trying to arrange our lives so that we are near the people and things that we think are what provide us with happiness.

This is just a basic assumption that we’ve probably never questioned in our life: that happiness comes from having the things that we want and being near the people we care about, and being in the place that we like. This is just what we assume and then the purpose of our life becomes controlling the external world, so that we can always be in the kind of environment with the things and people and situations that give us happiness. Wouldn’t you say that from morning till night that’s basically what you’re doing, is trying to rearrange the environment, so that you have everything you like. It’s basically what we do all day. I mean it also appears to us as if our suffering comes from outside. When we talk to people, or we are unhappy.

Well, why are we unhappy? Well, it’s mostly other people’s fault, isn’t it? My husband and wife did this and that, my parents did this and that, my kids did this and that, my colleagues betrayed me, my neighbors left the garbage on my lawn, my kid’s teacher didn’t pass him in his exam, the government’s all screwed up and they’re drilling in Alaska, and they are dropping bombs in Iraq, and the price of gas is so high, and it seems like all of our suffering comes from outside. In order to be free from suffering, we have the same strategy. Let’s just change the environment and get rid of everyone and everything that we don’t like. As soon as we don’t like something we will get rid of it. As soon as we don’t like somebody, kick them out and get rid of them. It would be an interesting experiment. You start out with the whole world in your mental room and every time somebody does something you don’t like you kick them out. After a while, who’s going to be in your mental room. It gets pretty lonely, doesn’t it? Every time somebody bugs us, we kick them out. There are no second chances.

The ache of attachment

You see our basic life is arranged around getting rid of or destroying everything we don’t like because it seems like our unhappiness is due to that and conversely getting everything we do like, bringing it all in. That is what we do most of the day. Something is displeasing, I’m getting away from it and something is pleasing, I’m going toward it. And that becomes the meaning and purpose of our life. This wouldn’t be a problem except for a few minor details. One is, have you ever succeeded in arranging the environment so it’s the way you want it to be? Have you ever succeeded in getting everything you want and then getting rid of everything you don’t like?

Sometimes when you first fall in love it feels like “oh wow” but how long does that last? Until he doesn’t do his dishes, so not very long. [laughter] Because the true character comes out quickly. One of the difficulties with this vision of happiness and suffering coming from outside, is that we’ve never attained it no matter how hard we work. Do we know anybody else who’s attained it, anybody else who has a 100 percent happy life with no complaints about anything? Do you know anybody like that? We might think that somebody rich and famous lives like that. Well, all you do is wait six months and you keep reading the tabloids and you wait six months, and you find out a person that you thought must be everlastingly happy is now a drug addict and getting a divorce. Be careful who you are jealous of because sometimes their lives are not very good. The difficulty with this vision is that it’s impossible to obtain and we don’t know anybody who’s ever done it.

The second difficulty with this vision is even if you could get everything around you that you like and get rid of everything you don’t like, you still get old and sick and die. That still happens and we are not able to reverse that, that’s still a given. Then in the process of trying to get everything we want and get rid of everything we don’t want, sometimes we create more suffering for ourselves and others, don’t we? Think of how hard you have to work to get what you want and how sometimes it’s so miserable doing what you need to get what you want. Then we try to get rid of the things we don’t want and that becomes a real drag. Because sometimes to do that we say nasty things and we harm somebody else, and we feel pretty lousy about ourselves afterwards. This worldview that happiness and suffering come from outside really doesn’t work. On a practical level it doesn’t work.

An unrealistic vision

Is it realistic, do things really work that way, that happiness and suffering come from outside? Is that vision according to reality? Have you ever been in a gorgeous place with people you care about and been totally miserable? I have. Have you? Can you think of instances in your life where it sounds like the things that they talk about in the love songs, or songs in the movies and you are in that situation, and you are so miserable. Because one small thing is wrong, and then the whole thing is. It’s not a realistic vision and in the process of trying to get it, we create a lot of negativities.

Investigating the vision

What the Buddha said is question that vision that happiness and suffering come from outside. We need to look deeply into our own experience and see if that is actually a correct realistic vision. One thing that I think helps in starting that investigation is an experience that we’ve all had which is waking up in the morning in a bad mood. Anybody who has not had that experience? [laughter] It’s kind of a universal one, some people have it more than others. We wake up and we just feel crummy, we’re in a bad mood. What happens on that day when you’re in a bad mood? Does anything go right that day? No, everything goes wrong and just in that day when you’re in a bad mood and you could really use a hand and really use somebody to say something nice to you, everybody seems so rude [laughter] so self-centered, so blaming. It’s true isn’t it? Even if somebody comes up and says good morning, you go, why are they talking to me in that tone of voice, they must want something from me.

When we’re in a bad mood nobody can do anything right. What do you think, is it true or not true? I think I first learned that as a kid watching my parents. When Mom and Dad were in a bad mood, anything I did as a kid was wrong. At least that was my experience. Better not do anything but that’s still doing something. Then lo and behold I found out that I was just like my parents, that when I’m in a bad mood anything everybody does is wrong, it’s bad, it’s insufficient, it’s inconsiderate. There’s something for you to pick on and that’s telling us something, that whenever we’re in a bad mood we’re miserable. Everything around us looks miserable and is that actually true or is that the creation of our bad mood? Then when we’re in a good mood, and we just got something that we really like, everything looks really good, and we often whitewash red flags. Have you ever noticed that? We are also distracted by, “Oh I feel so good I got my chocolate cake.” Then in another situation there’s a big red flag and we say, “Oh what a beautiful flag” [laughter] and we keep going, right into a ditch. Our mind paints things and it creates things to be what we want them to be at a certain time. This vision of happiness and suffering coming from the outside isn’t very realistic.

What Buddha taught

What the Buddhist teachings are all about is changing what’s going on in our own mind, our own heart, because we begin to see, as we watch our lives, that whenever there’s anger in our mind, we’re unhappy. Whenever there’s discontent in our mind, everything everybody does is wrong. We begin to see that we’re creating our own unhappiness. Conversely if we’re able to free ourselves from the anger, the complaining mind, the discontent, the judgment that we have of other people, we might have a way to actually be happy. The Buddha taught a method on how to identify what mental factors are conducive for happiness and what mental factors bring misery and then he taught how to increase the ones that bring happiness and how to decrease the ones that bring misery.

Attachment

One of the main ones that he pointed out as bringing misery is the mental factor of attachment. This also includes clinging, craving, desiring sense objects. It’s what you could call the bubble gum mind. What’s the chief attribute of bubble gum? It sticks. What’s the second chief attribute of bubble gum? You get a big bubble, and it pops in your face. [laughter] Well, this is exactly how attachment actually operates.

Blowing the bubble

What is attachment? It’s a mind that is based on exaggerating the good qualities of someone or something. That’s blowing the bubble. We have exaggerated these good qualities. This person is wonderful, this job is the best thing, the new roof is stupendous. [laughter] I can visualize, can’t I? [laughter] I pray it does rain everywhere except on the new roof. We exaggerate the good qualities of someone or something and we blow that bubble, and we feel happy inside. This is sometimes what makes it difficult to see that attachment and craving are problems, because in the beginning, we feel very happy when we get what we want. We get this kind of giddy feeling. You know the feeling I’m talking about, that we have had since we were three years old, and we keep having no matter how old we are. Some little thing and you go “ooooh.” I can still remember [laughter] Then you get older, and it starts changing. [Laughter].

When the bubble pops

So, we are blowing a bubble of this wonderful thing. If we look back in our life, it is a very interesting research project. Look back in our life at everything we thought was so stupendous and so wonderful. What happened to it? We can start with our tricycle when we were three years old or our bicycle with training wheels. Do you remember that? How exciting it was, your bicycle with training wheels? How long did that happiness last? Well, until we fell off. Until we graduated to a bike or until the neighbor across the street got a prettier bike with training wheels. Remember everything in our life that we thought was stupendous. A good meal, a good this or a good that. Nothing lasts forever even if it brings some temporary happiness. None of it lasts forever and sometimes the process of getting it is really a lot of work. You can have a lot of problems getting it. Then in the end we are always left feeling a little bit out of sorts, a little bit disappointed.

We had this wonderful thing, it lasted for a while, we thought it was going to last forever, but it didn’t and then at the end we’re just kind of sitting there going, ‘well now what?’ It’s a very good research project in our life, to look inside about that and look inside about the short happiness’, the happiness that is a piece of cake or a good meal or a good time with friends and look at the longer happiness’, a relationship, or a job or whatever. See that we blew a big bubble, and we thought the bubble was going to last forever and what happened? It went away, and what do we have remaining? We have bubble gum all over our face. Then we go out and we look for the next thing that’s going to bring us happiness.

The junkie mind

This is what American culture is all about: we are taught to consume. We are taught to be dissatisfied and to be craving something new and better all the time. It’s like we have a junkie mind. We’re looking for the next bit of happiness and the shopping center is supposed to give it to us, isn’t it? What do we take refuge in, in America? The shopping centers. The shopping center, the refrigerator, and when you’re lazy and don’t want to drive to the shopping center, you go to the refrigerator first. Then you go to the shopping center and get more stuff to fill up the refrigerator. We take refuge in our car; we take refuge in alcohol and drugs. We take refuge in the Internet and computers, television.

We find it totally distasteful to be friends with ourselves. What’s the first thing you do when you get in a car after you turn on the ignition? Turn on the radio. I bet you turn on the radio before you put your seatbelt on. Why do we turn on the radio? Because this is going to make us happy. Now we’re going to hear something that’s nice, that’s interesting, that’s pleasant, and that’s entertaining. We can’t stand to be alone and just be peaceful and happy with ourselves, we have to have something outside. You get home from work, and you walk in, if you are the first person in the house, what do you do? You turn on the TV. You turn on the TV to get some entertainment, you head for the refrigerator then back to the TV with something in your hand. We are taught to have all this unsatisfied desire that leads us to go out and get the next big thing that is going to fill up the empty hole inside. We run here and there trying to fill up the empty hole. The empty hole inside here. It usually makes an empty hole in our wallet, and you get into credit card debt and then you have more problems. Isn’t that incredible? You get into so much credit card debt and have very little to show for it, but the hole is still there, and you keep on trying to fill it up.

The mind of craving

Attachment doesn’t work as a strategy to fill up the hole inside, because not having external things is not the problem. The reason we are unhappy is not because we lack the latest widget, the reason we are unhappy is because we have the mind of craving and desire. As soon as we have that mind of craving and attachment, its nature is to look for something to glom on to, to stick to, that’s the bubble gum mind. So we keep on doing the same thing again and again and again and again, trying to be happy, not getting the happiness we want and thinking that it’s still the problem of the object or the person. I just didn’t buy the right whatever it was, I didn’t marry the right whoever it was. So, I have got to get a new one.

Finding happiness within

The real source of happiness is in here. The real source is in here. You might be saying, “Well, she’s painting this dismal view of life, that all the things that I thought are going to make me happy aren’t going to make me happy.” What a pessimistic view of life! I can’t go to the movies anymore, I can’t go out drinking and drugging, I can’t go to the shopping center.

I didn’t say don’t do all those things, I just said look at your mind when you do them. You might think Buddhism is so pessimistic, there is no happiness anywhere [laughter] and then you go to like one of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s public talks and here’s His Holiness. He’s been a refugee. We haven’t been refugees. I don’t think many of us have been, maybe a few. He has been a refugee since he was 24 years old. He’s celibate, can you imagine? [laughter] [inaudible] He doesn’t have a lot of money. He gets up at 3:30 in the morning, goes to bed at 8:30 at night, doesn’t eat in the evening, doesn’t watch movies, doesn’t go lying on the beach, and you go to one of his talks and watch him in the room and here’s this human being who is so happy. Right or wrong?

Many of you have been to His Holiness’s address—what’s your impression? Does he walk into the room like, “Oh God.” [laughter] He is not like that. Here is this human being who is completely happy. He doesn’t do any of the things that American culture tells us we need to do in order to be happy. In fact, he looks even happier than we do and he is not in credit card debt. [laughter] And you sit there scratching your head. How can this possibly be. How can you be happy without having all these things?

Transforming the mind

Well, that’s because the happiness comes from inside, comes from transforming what is going on inside of us. The more we let go of the attachment, the anger, the dissatisfaction, then the happier we are. We can see that from our own experience.

Finding true peace

Sometimes if we look inside, we can see that the issue isn’t that we don’t have something. What’s causing our misery is that we’re craving having it. As soon as we can get rid of the craving, then the mind is peaceful. It’s not whether we have it or not, it’s whether we are craving it or not. It’s that craving that makes us quite miserable.

Questions and comments

We will pause here and see if you have any comments or questions.

Audience: [partially inaudible] but we get so confused about that. It’s hard to separate those two and I’ve been thinking about that just a little bit. It seems like the experience itself should have the quality of difference but maybe we are just so confused about what brings happiness and what brings suffering that we don’t even discern it there. Then in the reading it says our attachment is based on wrong assumptions [inaudible]. I was thinking about this this morning and thinking about these things that are going to bring us happiness. Then there are other things we’re going to do, that actually are going to bring us happiness. We can’t separate them out at all. Even in the experience of the moment, would a person be able to discern that? If you are madly in love with somebody you have this experience but even in that moment you will see the suffering, if you have certain level of understanding. Is that accurate or is that possible?

Venerable Thubten Chodron (VTC): There are a few questions here. One is the question about the difference in terms of your experience between having a positive aspiration and having clinging attachment.

Audience: the experience of these

VTC: Then the second question was it would seem that when you’re madly in love with somebody that it should be possible to have that mind that sees through that. Let’s start with the second one.

Seeing through attachment

When you are madly in love with someone there is this kind of giddiness. I know for myself whenever I feel that kind of giddiness, that’s a sign that there’s attachment. You know the kind of giddiness I am talking about? That’s a sign of attachment and I know that for my own mental health what I need to do at that point is to remember that this thing is not going to make me happy. Then I say, “If I get it, it’s very good and if I get it then I will mentally offer it to the Buddha Dharma Sangha” and I’m not going to think that this thing is going to be the be-all and end-all because it has its own set of problems that it’s going to bring. Audience: And that remembering is a kind of mindfulness, and that’s the problem. We don’t have that.

That’s right and that’s why we are stuck in cyclic existence.

Craving is the culprit

When the Buddha talked about the second noble truth, the origin of our Dukkha, our unsatisfactory conditions, although it mirrors the root of cyclic existence, the Buddha pinpointed craving as the main culprit. Why? Because craving makes the world go round. Because we’re craving, craving, craving, craving. When the craving is strong, you’re absolutely right—we don’t even question that mind, we’re so convinced it’s going to make us happy. We are like junkies with an emotional experience of that buzz that we get when we’re initially happy. That certain kind of mental/physical experience. We’re junkies for it and so anything that looks like it’s going to give us that, we go for it and then we fall flat on our face. But never mind, we pick ourselves up and we go look for something else.

Observe that feeling

What we’re trying to do in Buddhist practice when we have that feeling is a very interesting mindfulness practice. When we have that surge of “woooh, happiness is coming,” sit down and pay attention to that feeling, observe that feeling of happiness. Observe that part of your mind. This is part of the practice of mindfulness of feelings. Just sit back and observe that feeling of happiness. What does it feel like? How does it arise? What does it do when it is there? How does it end? What happens after it ends? Just investigate and watch. I ask myself when I have that kind of “wooh.” Why do I call this happiness? It is a very interesting question. I’m feeling this thing that I’m such a junkie for but then why do I call this a happy feeling? What about it is happy? It is very interesting.

Mindfulness of feeling

When we start being aware of that experience and everything around it, we see it for what it is. We don’t get so caught up in it. We let it be. We can experience it when it’s there but when it goes away, we’re not all broken up because we are not counting on it to last forever and be everything for us.

Remembering impermanence

Then of course we remind ourselves about the nature of whatever it is that seems to be bringing that experience, that it is not permanent. We don’t count on it to always be there. It is impermanent.

Attachment and desire

What’s the difference between attachment and a useful kind of desire or noble aspiration? First, I have to explain that the word desire is a little bit tricky as it can mean two different things. Actually, desire means many things in English. We can talk about sexual desire. That’s one kind of desire or a desire for sense pleasure. You want jewelry or sports equipment or whatever. We can also use the word desire in a positive way. A desire to calm our mind down, a desire to free your mind from attachment. In the second instance, desire means something like a positive aspiration.

Attachment

What’s the difference between attachment and a positive aspiration; between the negative kind of desire and the useful kind of desire? Attachment is based on exaggeration. That’s one of the things that we have to investigate in our own lives and see how attachment is based on exaggeration, because we don’t always believe it when we are in the middle of it. You say, “I’m not exaggerating here, this person really is that fantastically wonderful and this holiday in the Caribbean is really going to be the be-all and end-all.” We often don’t notice the exaggeration until afterwards. This is why it is useful to reflect on our life and previous times, and even learn to look through it and see the previous times where we would be troubled by how things appeared and didn’t realize the exaggerated appearance. And then we carry that over to the future, when we encounter things that are similar and think, “oh, this could be another exaggerated experience.” In fact it probably is. Attachment is based on exaggeration.

Positive aspiration

A positive aspiration is not based on exaggeration. When you aspire to develop equal-hearted love and compassion for everybody, that’s something that is possible to do, is something that’s beneficial, so it’s not exaggerated. If you think you’re going to do it tomorrow, that’s exaggerated. That’s why you see people who met the Dharma and are booted by next Tuesday, then they are really unhappy afterwards and they didn’t really understand what the path was about. If you have a positive aspiration in your life now, that’s really useful and it’s good and it’s realistic, and it is going to bring good results for yourself and it’s going to bring good results for other people.

The qualitative difference

The kind of happiness that you get from having a positive aspiration like that is a different qualitative kind of happiness. You’re not going to get this “wooh” happiness; you will get a different kind of happiness. When you do something that in your heart you know you should do, but it’s hard to do, isn’t there a certain kind of satisfaction and happiness that comes? Is that kind of satisfaction anything like the happiness you get from sense pleasures? It is completely different, isn’t it? Qualitatively it is very different. Because the happiness from sense pleasures has a certain amount of agitation. It’s not peaceful and calm. It’s agitated and it’s wanting. I want more, I want better, I want more, I want better.

Whereas when we have a positive aspiration, even if we haven’t fulfilled that aspiration, even if we just have it and it’s a steady thing in our lives, if you aspire to practice Dharma and transform your mind and develop compassion and that’s your long-term goal, that’s an important thing you remember each day that you’re trying to do. Even if you haven’t actualized it completely, just having that aspiration brings a certain kind of peace in the mind. It does, doesn’t it? It brings some kind of steadiness in the mind that experientially that attachment does not bring. Attachment does not bring steadiness. In fact, if we look, I don’t know about you, but in my life some of the stupidest decisions I’ve ever made were made under the influence of attachment. The next set of stupid decisions were made under the influence of anger. The two are very related. It’s easy to see the angry ones but sometimes think about the times when you have very strong attachment and the decisions you made under the influence of attachment, where did those decisions guide you? So then we can see why attachment is a bit of a liar. That was a long answer to your question.