Exploring Attachments

This talk introduces the topic of our attachments through the Attadanda Sutta, the discourse on being violent. The Buddha talked about his dismay and talked about how he became afraid. We actually know this as human beings. We know about struggles and difficulties. We see the violence and we see that everything's changing.
This is the first of two talks on attachment.

Transcript

So today I wanted to start by reading to you from a very early Buddhist text.

There are poems considered to be among the earliest literature in Buddhism and what's unique about this particular poem,

It begins with the Buddha talking about what motivated him to practice or how he felt before he started practicing.

So what I've read about the Buddha in the ancient literature,

He mostly appears and seems like a pretty even minded guy,

You know,

But in this poem you might get the sense of his inner struggle,

His inner angst,

Maybe like yours and like mine.

And I've always touched when I come across the humanity in these teachings and the humanity of the Buddha and how even in our modern life we might feel the same way.

So this discourse,

This poem is called The Discourse on Being Violent.

So it's from the Ata Danda Sutta.

Violence gives birth to fear.

Just look at people and their quarrels.

I will speak of my dismay and the way that I was shaken.

Seeing people thrashing about like fish in little water and seeing them in conflict with each other,

I became afraid.

The world is completely without a core.

Everywhere things are changing.

Wanting a place of my own,

I saw nothing not already taken.

I felt discontent at seeing only conflict to the very end.

Then I saw an arrow here,

Hard to see embedded in the heart.

Pierced by this arrow,

People dash about in all directions.

When the arrow is pulled out,

They do not run and they do not sink.

Don't pursue what the world's knotted up in.

Having fully pierced sensuality,

Train in your own full release.

So the Buddha talked about his dismay and how he became afraid and we actually know this as human beings.

We know about struggle and difficulties.

We see the violence and that everything is changing.

And you know sometimes that distress that we experience,

It's associated with a time or an age.

Like you know things were much better in the past,

Right?

So one of the common refrains that seems to come up in every generation is people nowadays are just so selfish.

Those people.

Maybe you know maybe it goes in waves,

People's selfishness.

But I think probably every generation looks back to see the next generation and says to themselves on some level,

How could these people be so self-centered and so caught up in their own desires?

So in some way we feel like things are getting worse.

And so the Buddha,

He felt this dismay and he felt afraid and that's a common reaction,

A very human reaction to looking around and seeing what's happening in the world.

I think it's appropriate to have a lot of care and respect and compassion for the strong impact that the world has on our human hearts.

But then he says at the end,

Then I saw an arrow.

Then I saw an arrow here,

Hard to see embedded in the heart.

Pierced by the arrow,

People dash about in all directions.

But when the arrow is pulled out,

They do not run and they do not sink.

So what the Buddha is doing is really kind of a dramatic shift.

Rather than looking at the problems outside of himself or the solution in the world outside,

He's turning around and looking at his own heart.

And that's where he finds something that was very significant.

What the Buddha offered was he's able to find in his own heart the arrow that was piercing it.

And more importantly,

That he saw it was possible to take it out.

So as long as we had the arrow in us,

Then he speaks about people running about,

Like dashing in all directions.

Or the earlier image,

Which was stronger for me,

Was the image of a fish kind of flapping about in just a little bit of water.

Like it's kind of dramatic.

So people are this way.

And what triggers the fear,

The thrashing about,

The running around?

So for some people,

There's a deep sorrow.

There's a wound.

There's some discomfort.

There's something that they don't want to look at that causes the running about.

So what happens is when we don't want to look at something,

We kind of run around in circles or get involved with addictive behavior.

Or some people get really,

Really busy.

Very busy with work or busy with social relationships or busy with entertainment.

Anything really just to kind of keep running around busy all the time.

But to turn around and to look at what's embedded in our hearts,

What's embedded in there.

And perhaps for each of us,

It's something a little different.

But the point being that the fear,

The dismay,

The arrow,

That discontentedness resides in our own hearts,

In our own minds.

And so the task and what's really useful is to take it out.

And whether you can go a little bit in there and pull the arrow out a little bit,

Or you go all the way in and you extract it.

The fact that people turn towards the arrow and look at it,

That's a beautiful thing.

It doesn't matter how deep you go.

It's a powerful thing just to turn.

It can be a source of tremendous joy to know that there is this practice that can help us do this.

And one of the ways I believe that we can help the world and the dismay of the world is to do this inner work so that we can meet whatever is presenting the world more calmly and peacefully.

So we can meet what's going on and support people,

Help people through our own ability to become more peaceful in the midst of our difficulties and in the midst of distress.

In the opening of the Dhammapada,

Which is,

It's kind of like the Buddhist version of Genesis.

So in the Bible it says,

In the beginning there was light or there was God.

So that's where the whole story begins.

And that's the emphasis.

And so the focus in Genesis is to turn towards God in a certain way.

And in Buddhism,

The Dhammapada begins with saying,

The mind is the forerunner of all things.

It begins with the mind and the mind is associated as heart-mind.

There's no distinction.

So there's a way of seeing then.

And that's very familiar.

So the God,

The heart-mind,

They might be similar in a way.

So you have the God in Genesis and the heart-mind in Buddhism.

There's some similarities there,

But it's a different approach where the emphasis in Buddhism is not to look externally for truth,

For salvation,

For answers,

But to look for the answers in your own heart.

Look in yourself.

These are where the answers reside.

And so this is one of the functions in our meditation.

We sit still in order to go deep and look here at what's presenting.

One of my teachers describes meditation as kind of like putting yourself in a wind tunnel.

So if you put yourself,

Or if you put anything really in a wind tunnel,

Then you can see where all the resistance,

Where the drag is.

So if you put yourself in meditation,

In the meditation wind tunnel,

Sooner or later,

You really start to see where the wind drag is.

You start understanding where the wind drag is,

Where you're attached,

What you're holding onto,

What you're clinging to,

What you're resisting.

And there's a variety of things that can cause this drag that can slow us down.

So on Thursday,

We'll explore a little bit more our attachments,

This wind drag.

This is where the arrow resides.

The arrow is on some level our attachments.

So the invitation over these next couple of days is to reflect on and maybe even write down your attachments.

Like if you have a journal,

Write down your physical attachments,

Your attachments to people,

To things,

Our mental attachments,

Our attachments to views,

To ideas,

To political positions,

To really start to see what that arrow is all about,

Who and what we're attached to.

So thank you for your kind attention this morning and to this inquiry and to really our attachments.

Reviews

This is a great talk! Meditation is like a wind tunnel for sure.

Lisa is amazing. Heartfelt, knowledgeable teachings.

Excellent, thank you