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Attachment, or uncontrolled desire, is all about going “out there” and trying to bring stuff – people, things, situations – back “over here”, toward us, to feed the need. If we observe our body and mind carefully when we have attachment, we may even notice our inner energy winds flowing outwards, away from our heart.
When we drop into our heart and develop faith, love, wisdom, and so on, we can feel our energy winds drawing inwards, toward our heart, instead of flowing outwards. We immediately start to feel less dualistic – less of a gap between “in here and out there” – and more peaceful. This is a training, of course, but we may as well get started because it is all good.
In How to Transform Your Life Geshe Kelsang points out a choice we currently have between worldly attainments and enlightenment, using the example of possessing a magical jewel that can satisfy all our external wishes versus the happiness that comes from a pure mind. (Bit like Aladdin’s Lamp, only you get more than 3 wishes.)
Feeding the need
With attachment we are set up from the get-go in a state of need, in lack. We have never managed to satisfy our desires with attachment in any lasting way. As soon as we satisfy one longing — convinced at the time that this is going to solve my problems and make me feel content and whole — it is mere days or minutes before another need arises to take its place. We are all addicted to trying to solve our problems and find happiness through attachment, which is why we are chained to the prison walls of samsara and have made no attempt to escape.
We may try to find happiness in relationships, for example, by controlling the other person or allowing ourselves to be controlled. But with the confident self-contained happiness that comes from within, we need be neither puppet nor puppet master. We can just enjoy each other in each moment.
Careful what you wish for
One of the other problems about desiring things outside us is that these wishes are often contradictory, as Buddha pointed out. For example, we want to lose 10 lbs but also eat pizza, we want to be adventurous but also not wait in line at the airport, we want to be promoted but also not have all that extra work, we want to be rich but also not have to worry about taxes and other complicated financial stuff. Etc etc. Our wishes cancel each other out half the time!
What have I been working for all this time?
And this example of the jewel also makes me think about what it is that we’ve been striving for since beginningless time. What exactly does it amount to? Where exactly has it gotten us?
Close your eyes and think about this for just a moment, if you would. If you were offered the choice of (1) having the most beautiful dream you could imagine, arising seemingly out of nowhere but lasting for ages and containing everything and everyone you’ve ever longed for, or (2) always knowing that you were dreaming …
… which would you choose?
Waking life is dreamlike. Even the most sublime waking dream, however long it lasts, is still fleeting and ephemeral. We have bought into every dream we have ever had, asleep or awake, invested in it all our hopes and fears when the truth is, as it says in How to Transform Your Life:
Impermanence spares nothing and no one; in samsara all our dreams are broken in the end.
When we come to realize how mind is the creator of reality — that everything is mere projection and mere name with no existence from its own side, unfindable upon analysis — we can create any dream we want any time we want. And then help everyone else do the same.
This really is what Buddha is helping us understand through his teachings. He is saying we can gain control over our minds and our reality.
Escape to reality
Some people have the notion that finding all this peace and freedom from within is escapist navel gazing – we get all blissed out while the rest of the “real” world just muddles along having to take care of itself (or not, as the case may be). But nothing could be further from the truth. The deeper we go within, the deeper becomes our understanding of the reality of interconnection and non-duality. We become closer and closer to everyone and everything until our experience of self and other is non-dual. We are not separate from others, but they are us and we are them. 
This growing realization of love and compassion suffuses our mind with more and more actual happiness and ability to benefit others, like a sun naturally radiating wider and wider. Without going within, it is hard to gain those deep insights into the real nature of self and other, and to exchange self with others, understanding that our sense of “Me” can cover all living beings.
We are instead stuck trying to feed the black hole of need, ie, catering to our tiny but rapacious limited self, the real and only and most important Me. The Me whose desires can never end because we have set this up all wrong out of ignorance and attachment – Me over here and everything I want over there.
That is why the most important journey we can ever make is the journey into the heart.
Next and final installment is here.
Your comments, as always, are appreciated (scroll below).
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36 Comments
My problem is I’m too intense – what do you suggest for that? Also – “free from conceptions of the eight extremes” (Eight Verses of Training the Mind) how do you reconcile that with impermanence, since impermanence and permanence are two of the eight extremes?
Good to recognize that you can be too intense — pushing in our spiritual practice doesn’t work, we have to be gentle with ourself and everyone else.
I am not sure what you are asking with the second part of your question.
What world would it be if everybody had equanimity toward pleasant feelings? I say that because I noticed few people, especially catholics, tend to reject pleasant feelings or maybe are afraid of because it’s satan’s deed!? Now too I am afraid of pleasant feeling and even avoiding some activities that give rise to pleasant feeling. Did you write any article on how overcoming fear of attachment, blocking me from doing good activities and even see my family…
I’m not sure if I am clear but thank you.
It is a good question. Pleasant feelings are a result of good karma so we should welcome them. All positive minds are also associated with pleasant feelings. Buddhas have nothing other than pleasant feelings. There is nothing to fear from pleasant feelings, we just need to work on our attachment wanting them to continue for ourself alone, and instead increase our love and other positive minds that increase them.
Thank you for your reply. I struggle with this too.
Hi Luna!
This article has moved me so very much. I’m quite stuck on it, but not in a bad way! I’m stuck on it in a way where I feel like I understand it on some level and there’s something big here, but it just hasn’t quite clicked yet.
I teach Meditation for Kids at our local centre and I follow the Eight Steps to Happiness as my guide. Next month, I’m teaching the eighth step and was thinking that, “We can create any dream we want, any time we want” as the main topic. Does that sound right to you? I took that sentence from this article and wanted to know your thoughts.
As long as you explain how, then I think that’s a good topic 🙂
Thank you so very much!
Pleasure!
Hello Luna,
Thank you for the insightful article!
“The deeper we go within, the deeper becomes our understanding of the reality of interconnection and non-duality.”
I have a question regarding that. When I meditate, I feel all the good things you mention, close, interconnected, loved and non-dual, with the holy beings almost effortlessly but there is not a commensurate increase in my feeling close to sentient beings. That almost sounds like a contradiction but this is what I am experiencing in my mind. I am training in compassion and improving only slightly in that regard over time. Could you help me understand why that is? I just need to train more in cherishing love?
Thank you.
Try offering yourself as a servant to the holy beings, who will then want you to love and serve all living beings as they do. This will help dissolve away your ego capsule.
Will practice that, and report back when I see you next time. Thank you!
Oh yes! (It was actually an ‘oh no’ but Kadam teaches how and why to say ‘oh yes’ instead). I tried what you advised and I was expecting to feel closer to sentient beings (yea, in one meditation!) but I felt distant from the holy beings instead because “I dont want to be anyone’s servant”! There it was, my self-cherishing in its full glory, no longer hidden in a capsule as you put it. Its going to be a full on project I’m afraid.
I was wondering how I fooled myself into the place I am at, just evaluating objectively. I studied Ocean of Nectar, followed by New Guide to Dakiniland and now Great Treasury of Merit, that is, I trained in emptiness and then dived straight into Tantric deities. When I do my Tantric sadhana, there are no sentient beings remaining. If thoughts of my ordinary self would arise, or of other sentient beings would arise, I would dissolve it into emptiness as that would be ordinary appearance and go back into my practice. I am afraid I am making mistakes that have gone under the radar so far. How do I know if I am being nihilistic with respect to sentient beings or training in wisdom of abandoning ordinary appearance?
PS: I checked authentically if I am a closeted Hinayanist and that is not true either as I do care about my mother and family (at least) and I am able to generate compassion in the beginning of the sadhana but it withers away as I move along.
Geshe-la’s advice is to train in pure view and compassion separately to begin with, until we can practice the union of Sutra and Tantra. Maybe spend some time on the great scope Lamrim meditations.
Understood, will do! We just started studying Universal Compassion on Thursdays, and I believe the next book in TTP will be Eight Steps to Happiness.. just the books I need at this point.
Thank you for being the mirror to help me see my mind and then extending your loving arms to clean my (nascent) wisdom face 🙂
Hey Luna,
You opened up a pandora’s box for me to investigate! If possible, could you please write an article on how to offer yourself as a servant? This is the hardest thing I have attempted in life, harder than training in compassion. I want to know the practical fallouts of it in terms of my job, my finances, my enjoyments and my desires. I also have many apprehensions about what if the Guru asks me to do things I am not yet ready for or capable of (yet) like ordain, go teach in Nebraska, stop working, or working out.. I want to train in offering myself as a servant but I’m also scared of it.
Thanks!
I don’t think you’d be asked to stop working or working out! I enjoy those things as well!!! I’ve read that we can act natural (working, working out) while changing our aspirations (cherishing others!!!). If we take cherish others at work. Many opportunities to practice there! And working out makes us strong and healthy both physically and mentally and in doing so, we have more to offer others! We can also practice with the people we workout with. Feeling and looking healthy also makes us good role models!
Yes, we gotta keep our bodies healthy!
When you asked us to close our eyes and choose 1 or 2, does emptiness give us both?
What do you reckon?
That’s exactly how Suma would reply!!!
Suma?
My teacher. She answers some of my questions by asking what I think, encouraging me to find the answers within.
I’m still not sure though.
If you knew you were dreaming, and could control it, what would you dream?
I would create something pretty close to the life I’m living and would want the same for everyone else.
What would YOU dream?
Can I please have one more clue? I’ve read this article so many times, trying to understand it. Do I have more power to control my world than I realize? I reckon you will say yes. But how? By realizing that it is dream-like and choosing the best reaction in every situation. But that’s just making the best of life. It isn’t actually making it the best life.
Yes, you do. When you realize you’re creating everything through conceptual imputation, and you gain control over that process, you can create a world free free from suffering and bring everyone else into that.
What life is there outside of that dream-like life? So you’re not making the best of an inherently existent life but dissolving everything into their true nature, the lack of existing inherently, and creating a pure and blissful life arising from pure and blissful thoughts.
This all feels right to me. I get it on some level, but it isn’t clicking or sinking in…
I think it will over time with familiarity.
The golden nugget I got from this morning’s blog is the idea of “softening the heart.” I had an incident last week that made me angry as a result of another person’s angry response to a problem that had nothing to do with me, and his angry behavior toward me. I could see that in that moment my heart harden…and now thanks to your wisdom teaching, I see that all I needed to do to get over my anger was to “soften my heart.” How powerful! Totally in my control! Thanks Luna once again.
That’s very cool. I think we gotta find ways not to get angry both for our own sake and so we can genuinely encourage others that it is possible to let it go — there is way too much anger and hostility about these days.
thank you…muito obrigado Luna seus artigos são inspiradores e confortam….felicidades
De nada 😄 Gracias.
Wow, what an incredibly clear and powerful description of attachment and its opposite. (Plus, the last line is killer.) Thanks.
Thank you Sharon, that means a lot 💚