How Can We Free Ourselves Of Suffering Caused By Attachment?

In this excerpt, Natural Dharma Fellowship's Lama Liz Monson discusses how we fuel our own suffering (samsara) through the Three Poisons of attachment, aversion, and blindness to our impulses, and how we might begin to free ourselves by developing the ability to not get so stuck in our habitual patterns.

Transcript

So what I'm gonna talk about this morning,

I'm gonna talk about non-attachment.

That's really the antidote.

But in order to understand non-attachment,

We also have to understand attachment.

What is attachment?

What's being referred to here?

And why is it that this notion of attachment leads to all the various ways that we create suffering for ourselves and others?

Because this is really kind of a key activity that we engage in that continues to give rise to our different habits and patterns and the way that we react emotionally,

The way that we may create all kinds of conceptual confusion and obsession,

That kind of way that something happens and we start to think about it,

And then it becomes this all-encompassing,

Almost obsessive experience that we return to over and over again so that,

For example,

We could have something that happened to us 20 years ago,

And we find that we still spend periods of time obsessing,

Thinking,

And re-experiencing the difficult feelings from that time so long ago.

So in order to understand non-attachment,

We really do have to understand what is attachment and how is it understood in the Buddhist tradition.

Another word for attachment that might help make it a little bit clearer is the word grasping,

Grasping.

So the way I'm gonna talk about this is I'll first go through and explore a little bit about attachment itself and then we'll turn to non-attachment and ways that we can begin to cultivate living from the perspective of non-attachment,

Which is not detachment,

Right?

Very important to remember,

Not detachment,

But non-attachment,

And I'll say more about that when I get there.

I think many of you who have come to a lot of my teachings,

You know that I like to go to the words in the original languages where they were developed for this particular purpose.

So the Sanskrit word for grasping and for attachment is upadana,

Upadana.

Some of you like to write these down,

So U-P-A-D-A-N-A,

Upadana.

And upadana means fuel,

Fuel.

It's the material cause that keeps an active process going,

Continuing,

And what is the active process that the fuel of upadana keeps going?

It's the process of samsara,

What we call samsara in the Buddhist tradition.

Samsara refers to this experience that we create for ourselves of cycling through different kinds of suffering and of creating for ourselves different patterns of suffering that we don't know how to get out of,

That we get locked into.

And so that every time a certain kind of trigger happens in our lives,

We find ourselves back in that emotional state.

And that's what's known as the process of samsara in a psychological sense.

And really that's the sense that we wanna talk about here.

I mean,

We can talk about it as a more kind of rebirth,

Life after lifetime experience,

But I think that's less useful for most of us than talking about samsara as a kind of psychological habit pattern that has a certain kind of momentum and continues to keep us wrapped up in the ways that we create suffering for ourselves.

So upadana or fuel is what keeps this process of samsara going.

Now the question is,

What does this fuel consist of?

So before I explain that,

I wanna just continue on a little bit with this idea of firing up,

Fueling,

Throwing gasoline on our experience of suffering,

Of grasping,

Being trapped in the fire,

You could say of our own suffering,

Our own delusion.

There is a sutra called the fire sermon.

A sutra is a sermon that the Buddha gave back when he was living.

And this particular sutra is called the fire sermon where the Buddha says,

Monks,

All is burning.

All is burning.

Everything we experience,

He seems to be saying all of our sense perceptions,

Because he uses the visual sense perception as an example,

But he's referring to everything,

Everything we see,

Everything we hear,

Everything we feel,

Our sense perceptions,

Our thoughts,

Our ideas,

Our hopes,

Our fears,

The way we relate to other people.

All of our experience is burning.

And what is it burning with?

It's burning with three things.

The three poisons,

Basically,

What are called the three poisons in Buddhism.

You all know them,

Or many of you know them.

They are the energy of grasping,

The energy of wanting,

Desiring,

Needing to get something and pull it in,

Because we think it will make us happy.

That's the first one,

The first kind of fire.

The second kind of fire is the energy of pushing things away.

Having aversion towards things that we think will make us unhappy,

That we're trying to keep out because they make us feel uncomfortable,

Or they make us feel destabilized,

Or we simply just don't wanna have any,

We don't wanna feel any discomfort.

So we keep everything that we think would cause that out,

Away.

And then the final fire is the fire of simply not having any idea about how it is that we create our own suffering.

We haven't seen enough into our own patterns and the ways that we continue to enact them.

So we're bewildered about what it is that we do or that happens that causes us to have these strong emotional experiences or painful thought patterns or difficult interactions with other people.

We don't know,

We're bewildered.

We're completely overwhelmed.

We're completely unclear.

And what the Buddha is saying here is that these three ways of interacting with our world,

Grasping and having desire to pull things in,

It could even be material objects,

You know,

Of course it is very much so that for many of us,

Or trying to push things out that we don't want,

Or just having no idea,

Being kind of clueless about what's going on.

These are the three fires that continue the energy of grasping and attachment.

So the main issue that we're talking about when we begin to talk about non-attachment or attachment is that it's because of these three energies,

These three ways of relating with our experience,

That we don't see what the world is actually like.

We don't see how we actually are.

We're too caught in these energies.

And that puts us,

It makes us out of tune with the truth of how things actually are.

Not how we think they should be,

Not how we want them to be,

Not how we fear they might be,

But how they actually are.

We're out of tune with the truth of things as they are.

And as one of my professors used to say,

We're trying to live in a way that is impossible because we're not in harmony with the truth of how things actually are.

So when we continue to live like that,

We fan these fires of greed,

Of aggression,

And of ignorance.

So greed is another way of describing this notion of desire,

This kind of greedy,

Grasping mind.

Now,

To go a little further into the ways that attachment unfolds in our lives,

I'm going to go turn to the Tibetan terms for attachment.

So in Tibetan,

There are three words that describe attachment.

The first one is lenpa,

L-E-N-P-A,

Lenpa.

The second one is shenpa,

Z-H-E-N-P-A,

More like you could just say S-H-E-N,

Shenpa.

And then the third one,

Dak-zin,

Dak-zin,

Dak-D-A-K or D-A-G,

And zin,

D-Z-I-N,

Zin,

Dak-zin.

Dak means I or self,

And zin means to grasp,

To hold onto.

So these three words describe three levels of attachment.

Lenpa,

We'll start with lenpa because lenpa is the coarsest level of grasping,

Of attachment.

And this is one that we all recognize,

That we all know because we all enact it on a regular basis.

This is the clinging to and the craving for sensual pleasure,

For worldly things,

For delightful experiences.

And again,

Just to say,

Remember,

It's not that the worldly things,

Like the new iPhone or the new television or the new car or the experience of going to a spa or going on vacation,

There is nothing wrong at all with those experiences or with those things.

The problem is our relationship to those things.

And lenpa is describing the relationship,

The distorted relationship we have when we think to ourselves,

We build up all this anticipation.

I'm going to go on this vacation.

It's going to be the most wonderful,

Blissful thing I've ever experienced.

I'm going to be so happy.

And then,

Well,

Things don't really go that way.

It doesn't quite happen like that.

And then we feel this tremendous sense of disappointment and being let down,

That our plans didn't work out the way we wanted them to.

So this coarsest level of grasping has to do with the relationship that we make to our world and whether that relationship is based on this unreal ideas about how happy we will be if we could just have that next iPhone,

That next wonderful meal,

That perfect bottle of wine.

I mean,

It goes on and on,

Right?

You could come up with a million examples of this.

And it then also describes the way that once we get an experience or we,

You know,

We,

Like,

Let's say,

For example,

We really feel that when we have a couple glasses of wine,

We just feel so good,

You know,

And we want to,

We really want that experience to go on.

Oh,

It feels just delightful.

Well,

You know,

After your second glass,

Then it kind of starts to fade a little and you think,

OK,

I need another glass.

I need to keep this feeling going.

And then you notice in yourself this kind of desire.

I want my buzz to keep going.

You know,

I really want to feel good for longer.

I don't want it to go.

I don't want it to fade.

Right?

And this is a small example,

Which is describing a much larger habit that we have.

But what it shows,

What it shows is that we don't want our experiences of pleasure or delight or,

You know,

Happiness to change.

We don't want there to be any change.

We want to get that experience and we want it to hang on.

We want to hang on to it.

And it may be that we intellectually,

We know very well that's not the case,

That it won't stay like that.

But there's an emotional part of us that is used to trying to hold on.

And that's where we get into trouble.

That's where we get into trouble.

Right?

So,

And it could also be the opposite.

It could be that we have this ongoing pattern of trying to manipulate our experience,

Our life,

In such a way that we never have,

We never encounter anything we don't want,

We don't like that makes us uncomfortable.

So we have all kinds of strategies for avoiding difficult situations or not engaging in difficult conversations that may need to be had.

We have all these ways that we kind of avoid experiences that don't make us feel good.

Rather than simply allowing what occurs to be present and then relating to it directly,

We find ways to kind of bypass our experience.

So what Lenpa describes then are these various ways that we relate to the things in our lives that is based out of just this,

It's fundamentally based in this idea that we could somehow,

If we just found the right thing and we held onto it in the right way,

We would finally have a lasting sense of happiness and ease and relaxation.

And yet everything that we go after in this way changes,

Right?

The law of impermanence is always there.

And as these things change,

The more attached we are to them,

The more we suffer when they change.

Right?

So that's Lenpa.

Now Shenpa,

Z-H-E-N-P-A or S-H-E-N-P-A,

Shenpa,

Those of you who have studied Pema Chodron's teachings will probably be very familiar with this term,

Right?

She uses this term a lot and she talks about it a lot.

But this is a little more subtle and it begins to explain to us even more how it is that we get caught in this kind of pattern of being hooked by our reactivity,

Being swept up into our emotional difficulty.

So you can even feel this experience of Shenpa in your body.

So let's say you're having a conversation with somebody and that person begins to criticize you for something that you've done or said,

And you feel within yourself this sense of tightening,

Tensing up,

Closing down,

Withdrawing,

Not wanting to be there at all.

You feel this kind of defensiveness beginning to come up.

And then before you know it,

You're defending yourself angrily and you're basically saying that what's coming towards you,

Well,

The person misunderstood or it's their fault that they feel that way or it's.

.

.

And you find yourself kind of in this position of sort of being and reacting,

Purely reacting,

And it's driven by this energy that has come up in you.

That's what's called.

.

.

That's what Shenpa is referring to.

And Pema Chodron says,

You get hooked.

You are hooked by your own emotional uprising.

You get swept into it and then the thoughts begin to proliferate and you're gone,

You're gone.

And you might be gone for 20 years with some particular pattern or something that happened,

Or you might just be gone for five minutes or a minute.

And we constantly find ourselves hooked.

We're getting hooked all the time.

And once we're hooked,

It can be very difficult to let go,

To just drop your fingernails out of that and relax.

Okay,

Okay,

Right,

Okay.

So here's this energy of reactivity coming up.

Let me just allow it to come up.

I can feel it and then I can let it dissolve.

That's not so easy to do,

But that is actually part of the instruction.

So.

.

.

In a certain sense,

The urge itself to get caught,

To get hooked by our emotions is totally involuntary,

Right?

And by saying that,

What I mean is it's very natural.

It's very natural that when a strong emotion comes up,

We're going to get,

We feel this,

We get hooked by it,

We get caught up into it.

But what the Buddhist tradition is saying to us is it's actually possible if you become more and more keenly aware of the ways that you get hooked,

That you can recognize as that pattern is about to happen.

You can feel it coming and you can relax and let go and allow the energy itself to arise without jumping on board the train and going all the way down the tracks,

Right?

You can simply allow the energy to arise.

You might feel it for a while,

But if you don't act on it,

It will dissolve and free itself.

It will simply dissolve and let go.

So.

.

.

One of the ways to work,

Well,

Actually,

I'm not going to do that yet.

I'm going to talk about this when I talk about non-attachment,

Which will be in just a moment.

I just want to explore that final form of grasping and attachment that these Tibetan terms refer to.

But just to say before that,

Both Lenpa and Shenpa are fed by this underlying sense of insecurity or dis-ease that we feel because we know,

We know on some level deep down that we really cannot rely on anything to provide lasting happiness,

Lasting comfort because everything is constantly changing.

It's constantly becoming something different or unraveling or dissolving,

Right?

Relationships come to an end.

People that we love die.

Experiences come to an end.

Vacations come to an end,

Right?

Everything is constantly changing.

And we know that in our bones.

And so it creates this kind of feeling of,

You know,

A kind of sense of subtle insecurity,

Subtle dis-ease because we haven't yet discovered that there is some kind of relationship we could have to ourselves that provides lasting happiness.

And that's what the Buddhist tradition is really holding out to us is that there is a way to be free from this kind of suffering.

And we simply need to learn how to access the part of our being that is not subject to impermanence.

And I'll say more about that in just a minute.

So the third form of grasping that these Tibetan terms refer to,

And this is the one that is dak-zin,

Dak-zin.

This is the subtlest form of grasping and attachment.

And yet it feeds and fuels all the others.

So this form of attachment is the grasping at this idea that we have constructed about I,

Who the I is.

We have a lot of ideas about who we are,

How we want to be seen by others,

Right?

We have a certain sense,

I want to be seen like this.

And when somebody doesn't see us that way,

It can create a lot of suffering,

A lot of pain for us,

Right?

But we also have a lot of different ways,

And it's always changing,

All the stories that we tell ourselves about who we are,

What we need,

How we should be,

Who's judging us,

Who loves us,

Who doesn't love us.

This endless ongoing story that we're telling about the story of me,

I,

Me,

And mine.

This is the most fundamental level of grasping that we have.

And you can feel it.

You can feel it in your body.

You can feel it in your mind,

Especially when you're meditating,

You can feel this,

Because it comes through as a kind of tightness or deep tension that doesn't know how to relax.

You know,

You can take as many hot baths as you want.

You can have as many massages as you want.

And that inner grasping,

That inner tension stays clenched up,

Right?

Because we're still engaging in that process of telling the story of me and then believing that story,

And then discovering that actually it starts to dissolve almost immediately.

It's like building a sandcastle by the side of the ocean.

It's immediately beginning to dissolve.

So we have to expend a lot of energy to keep it going,

Right?

It takes most of our energy to keep these storylines going about ourselves.

And because we are so attached to these ideas that we create about who we are,

How we want to be,

That extends then to these other more less subtle forms of grasping that we just talked about.

Our habit of grasping begins to expand,

And then we begin to become attached to our ideas.

We become attached to our hopes.

We become attached to concepts,

To values,

To beliefs,

To expectations,

To other people,

To places,

To material objects,

To our roles.

I mean,

The list goes on,

Right?

So those are the three levels of attachment that are described through the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

And now I want to talk about non-attachment,

Right?

This is where we really want to get to,

Right?

This is how we're going to be free from all this difficulty.

Two levels of cultivating non-attachment.

How can we go about doing this?

One is on a relative level,

And the other is on what we might call an ultimate level.

So on the relative level,

There are techniques that we can begin to cultivate that will help us to refrain,

To hold back from getting caught in the usual patterns,

The usual habits of reactivity.

And you might ask yourself,

Like,

What would I do if I didn't do my usual habitual thing here?

You know,

You feel that energy coming up to get defensive or to sulk or to blame somebody for something.

What would happen?

What would you do if you didn't actually do that?

What would happen is that you would be left with the urge,

The energy that came up,

And you would be forced to feel that energy and to become more in touch with the basic energy of your own craving and your desire to move away from whatever feels uncomfortable by reacting,

By reacting.

And instead of moving away,

Instead of giving in to the urge,

You discover that it's possible to relax with the urge,

To just let it be there,

To notice it,

And actually to let it,

To begin to give that urge a kind of warmth.

I mean,

This takes a little while,

Right,

Because we have a lot of aversion towards our difficult patterns.

But ultimately,

We are working to begin to host our own experience with compassion and kindness so that when that urge comes up to respond angrily to somebody who you feel has insulted you,

You are able to begin to just notice,

Oh,

Wow,

Here it goes,

Here it comes.

And,

You know,

All right,

That's here.

Let me just be present with this.

Let me let it be here.

Let me actually tell it that it's okay.

It's okay to feel this way.

You don't have to act out of it,

But it's fine to feel this way because everything we feel is fine,

Right?

It's just when we start to act on what we feel in unskillful ways that we cause harm to ourselves and we cause harm to others.

But the feelings themselves are totally normal and totally okay,

Right?

There's nothing wrong with the feelings.

We all have them,

All kinds of feelings,

Everything from wanting to murder your neighbor to,

You know,

The highest pinnacle of joy,

Right?

These feelings come.

And judging them and feeling guilty about them and feeling ashamed about them only adds more suffering to our experience.

It's okay to feel what we feel,

But when we start to act unskillfully out of them,

That's when we get really into trouble.

So first step of working relatively with these urges,

You know,

That are about to lead to some form of grasping,

Some form of pushing something away.

So grasping refers here to both wanting to,

Like,

Hang on to everything and pull it in and to trying to get rid of the things we don't want.

I mean,

The overall umbrella here is attachment.

The first thing to do is to just recognize that that is coming up in you.

And one of the best ways to begin to recognize that is to meditate because you begin to see your own experience much more clearly.

You have a little bit of distance.

You begin to see when things get stirred up,

And you can feel it,

But you're just sitting there with it,

Right?

You're seeing,

You're observing,

You're allowing.

So meditation is a great training ground for beginning to become more and more aware,

Which is the first step.

If we're not aware,

Then there's no hope,

Right?

We're just going to continue to enact the same thing.

So the first thing we do is we begin to recognize what's happening,

And then we can hold back from it.

We can actually refrain from giving into and acting out of those impulses.

It's like,

And Pema Chodron uses this example.

She says it's like having a really,

An itch,

An itch that comes up,

A really strong itch,

And you notice that you're itching,

But that's the first step.

And then you actually refrain from scratching because we all know that as soon as you scratch a bug bite,

It only itches more and more.

It lasts forever.

So you don't scratch it.

You actually refrain from scratching.

And then you relax.

You begin to relax into that urge that has come up.

You know,

You just say,

Okay,

Here it is.

Here's that feeling again,

And I'm going to let myself just relax with this.

And then you might even take it a step further and say that you're going to resolve to yourself.

You're going to,

And again,

This is,

I'm taking this right from some of Pema Chodron's teachings because it's so helpful.

The last thing she says is you start to resolve that you're going to continue to interrupt your own habitual patterns in this way.

You make a resolution to yourself.

Okay,

Now I know how I can do this,

So I'm going to work.

I'm going to practice to begin to interrupt my own flow of samsara over and over again.

Right?

So this is one way that we can begin to work with on the relative level,

How it is that we create suffering for ourselves and for others.

And the real trick here is to begin to develop the ability not to get so hooked,

Right?

Not to get so hooked.

And then if we do get hooked,

So this is also really important because we're going to get hooked.

We're going to get hooked for a long time.

It's not so easy to break this pattern.

We've been doing it from the Buddhist perspective many lifetimes,

Which doesn't mean that you can't make significant progress with this just by beginning to notice.

But what often happens is that we do get hooked.

And then what we do is we turn that realization that we're hooked into blame,

Self-blame,

Or judgment,

Or feeling guilty.

And that's just another hook,

Right?

That's just another way of furthering our own suffering.

Those feelings of blaming ourselves,

Judging ourselves,

Feeling guilty,

They do not help.

They're like,

And forgive my French here,

Trungpa Rinpoche used to say that when you have an experience,

In other words,

You get hooked and then you layer on top of it,

Feeling,

Blaming yourself,

Judging yourself,

Lecturing yourself about what an awful person you are and how could you have been practicing for so long and you still are getting hooked,

All of that.

He says it's just putting shit on top of shit.

So again,

Excuse my,

Those are his words,

They're not my words,

That's just,

It's very evocative,

So I'm putting it out there.

Okay,

So that's really what I wanna say about the relative level of working with this.

And again,

It comes back to definitely meditation practice is a huge skillful means for beginning to recognize our triggers,

Because this is another thing you can do.

Start to recognize what triggers you.

What triggers you into those patterns of reactivity?

Because once you notice your triggers,

Then you begin,

Then you are more aware when that energy starts to come up in you.

And sometimes I even tell people write those triggers down when you see them,

When you realize what they are.

Write them down so that you remember them.

Oh,

I get triggered whenever somebody doesn't seem to be listening to me when I'm talking.

I actually don't mean that,

But that could easily be one,

Right?

I get triggered when my partner looks bored when I'm talking,

Right?

When I feel like I have something important to say and they're not paying any attention.

I'm just one example of thousands,

Right?

Thousands of triggers out there for each of us.

So you write that down.

And then the next time it happens,

You're more aware,

Oh,

You feel that feeling coming up of like,

Wanting to be angry,

You know,

Wanting to,

And again,

It's not the feeling itself isn't the problem,

But what do you do with it?

Are you gonna then lash out at your partner and yell at them for not paying attention to you?

Or are you gonna maybe find a more skillful way to communicate how it makes you feel and meanwhile,

You're able to just be with your own feeling and it's okay.

Okay,

Wow,

Here's this feeling.

What is this feeling showing me that I need to see about myself?

Maybe I don't feel like I've received enough love and attention in my life.

And that's why when my partner does this,

It makes me feel so upset and so angry.

And maybe I could begin to pay,

Find a way to give myself that kind of attention.

To give myself that kind of love that I feel that I didn't received,

You know,

Earlier in my life or whatever.

Again,

Just an example.

But if we don't notice how we get hooked,

What the triggers are,

And as we're getting hooked,

We'll never get to the root of our practice here.

We'll never have,

We'll never develop this capacity that we all have to really see very clearly what's going on.

This is called prajna in Tibetan Buddhism,

Prajna.

Sherab,

Tibetan is sherab,

Prajna is Sanskrit.

It means clear seeing.

And it refers to this innate intelligence that we have,

Our innate wisdom.

As we see,

As we grow that knowledge,

As we see,

As we grow that kind of clear-sightedness,

We are building and developing our own innate wisdom.

And that has the power over time to stop the chain reaction,

To stop that momentum of our own samsara.

So we all have this innate capacity,

This prajna,

This sherab.

And as we begin to look more and more carefully at our experience,

We are strengthening it.

And it has the power to interrupt the flow of our own samsara.

Now on the ultimate level,

On the ultimate level,

In our deepest nature,

In the core of our being,

There is no such thing as I and other.

There is only a unified state of being,

Which we call a kind of vast awake awareness that is both responsive,

In other words,

It allows for action to arise that is appropriate to any given situation,

And it is aware,

It is alive,

It is awake,

And it is very vast.

So in the meditation earlier at the end,

I had you begin to grow your sense of awareness that you can hold so much at once in your own field of awareness.

And that level of awareness,

Which is even bigger than that,

Of course,

It's huge,

Is known by many names in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.

And we sometimes call it Buddha nature,

We call it Rigpa in the Dzogchen tradition,

We call it natural awareness,

Ordinary mind,

I mean,

There's lots of terms for this,

But it is considered to be the truest,

Deepest,

And most awake genuine dimension of who we fundamentally are.

And what blocks us or obscures this part of ourselves from us is this,

All these forms of attachment,

All these forms of grasping get in the way.

It's almost like they're veils in front of our vision.

And as we develop that ability to clear sea,

We start to be able to see through those veils,

And we see into this deep awake,

Fundamentally good dimension of our being.

So the very essence of all spiritual teaching is dissolving attachment to the self and the ideas that we have created and that we latch onto about the self in order to access this deeper,

Most awake dimension of our being.

So ultimately,

We have to begin to dissolve our attachments,

To dissolve these energies of grasping,

To melt these rigid ways of relating to our experience,

To loosen up our ideas,

These fixed ideas that we have about who we are and what we need and what we want and how we're gonna get it,

Right?

And connecting more and more to this deeper,

Quieter,

More awake,

Present,

In harmony,

Or maybe I should say harmonized part of who we are.

And again,

How do we do this?

You know,

I've gotta tell you,

I mean,

The tool of meditation is really one of the most powerful,

Skillful means there is for beginning to do this.

Because that I,

Those ideas,

Those habits,

They're very stubborn and they're very resistant.

And working with them is very much a process of letting go.

Letting go,

Relaxing,

Letting go,

Relaxing,

Letting go of the sense of righteousness that you've gotta get back at somebody who's been unkind to you or critical of you.

You let go,

Really?

Do I really need to do that?

What's that,

What purpose is that gonna serve ultimately?

Can I just rest with and look into and learn from what my feeling is underneath that righteousness?

What's going on in me here?

You know,

Am I feeling not seen?

Am I feeling not appreciated?

Am I feeling not loved?

And how can I,

How can I,

How can I provide,

Give myself some of that?

That's what I need.

Do I really need to react and say something unkind and be unpleasant to another person?

So when we practice,

When we meditate,

We are letting go of grasping,

We're relaxing,

And we're observing moment to moment,

Moment to moment,

Moment to moment.

And in every moment,

That fabricated self is dissolving,

It's collapsing,

It's melting,

Because that's,

Because it doesn't exist.

It's only all these ideas that we have that keep it going.

So as the more you let go of your ideas,

The more that rigidity,

That tension,

That grasping starts to let go,

And you can feel it,

And you can begin to rest,

And you can begin to notice that actually,

You have an innate capacity to relax,

That there is a part of you that is already at peace,

That is already quiet,

That is already in harmony with the beauty and the vividness of this world in its transience,

In its impermanence,

And that you could flow with that river rather than resist that river.

You could flow with that river,

Your life could unfold before you like a carpet unrolling,

And you would be surprised by the beauty of the patterns as that carpet unfolds,

Rather than forcing it or trying to hang on to it or cling to it,

And then you just don't see anything,

You don't notice any of that beauty,

Because you're too caught up,

Right?

So when we leave our experience as it is,

Because it's not real anyway,

Then we begin to relax into the flow of our own experience.

We begin to allow our energy to flow naturally,

To just dissolve and flow,

And I am not taking questions until I'm done talking.

I'll get there in just a minute.

I'm almost done talking.

Essentially,

What we discover when we really start to relax is that we can just stand naked just as we are,

And we can flow intimately with the world as it is,

And that it's okay,

That actually we discover this tremendous capacity within us to experience life as it is,

Ourselves as we are,

And therefore to appreciate both ourselves,

Others,

And this tremendously gorgeous and amazing world that we live in,

Right?

So this is the real gift of practice,

Is that we begin to feel a sense of confidence in being in tune with this fluid energy of ourselves and the world,

And we begin to feel so in tune and harmonized with this innate,

Flowing,

Responsive way of being that we trust and we let go of our lives to that.

We don't have to do it,

Actually.

We really can't do it.

You can't really control this life.

We want to,

But we can't.

So what happens if we stop trying?

It's not like there's nothing there.

There's this tremendous world of richness and beauty just waiting for us to let go into it,

Let's let go into it,

Notice it.

So that's really what non-attachment means.

I mean,

Of course,

We're gonna start,

We gotta start somewhere,

Right?

We gotta start somewhere.

We're not gonna get right there right away.

However,

You've all had that experience.

You've probably had it many,

Many times.

We just don't give it a lot of credence,

Right?

Because we're so habituated to this other way of being,

But you've all had it.

You've had those moments where you relaxed for whatever reason,

And you just let go.

And maybe you were on a vacation,

And you were resting and floating in the beautiful warm water in the Caribbean,

And there was this vast blue sky above you,

And you just realized suddenly that you were,

You felt totally merged with that environment.

And there wasn't a lot of thought,

And there wasn't a lot of busyness,

And worry,

And concern about what was happening,

And what you were getting or not getting.

It was just the sense of openness.

Very simple,

Nothing really exotic,

But just openness and presence.

So last thing,

Just very quickly.

Non-attachment does not mean detachment.

I really wanna make sure you,

Or indifference,

Right?

That's not what it means.

And I'm hoping that everything I said didn't give you any impression of that.

Because detachment or indifference just means that you don't care,

You're not interested.

You're insensitive,

You're dispassionate.

Things don't matter.

But that isn't true at all,

Right?

We might even think,

Oh,

Well,

If I'm gonna be non-attached,

Then I can't love anybody,

Or be close to anybody,

Because that represents some kind of attachment.

Well,

Certainly,

Yes,

Love can be an arena for intense attachment,

And we've all probably had that experience.

But in fact,

It's very possible to love other people,

To love the world,

To feel deeply invested and caring towards everything that needs our attention,

And not be attached,

And not be attached.

We can practice non-attachment and still feel love,

Still feel passion,

Still feel interest,

Engagement,

Excitement,

Anger,

Whatever,

Right?

At the same time,

Though,

We are willing,

What non-attachment means is that we are willing to let things come into our lives,

And flow out of our lives,

Without trying to grasp and hold onto them,

Cling to our experience.

Non-attachment is a state of gentle ease,

Of permitting,

Allowing,

Letting things be as they are.

And it can completely change the way we think about ourselves,

And about others,

And about places.

And you might,

And this question often comes up around talks around attachment and non-attachment.

You might ask me,

So I'm gonna preempt this question,

But if I practice non-attachment,

How am I gonna have any goals?

How am I gonna have any,

You know,

How am I gonna set goals for myself and do anything?

Well,

Okay,

Right,

Goals are important,

We need goals.

They help us work towards accomplishment and fulfillment.

They enable us to make personal contributions to the world.

But one way to think about goals is that we have,

We have some kind of sense of intention.

I wanna do this,

And I wanna do it for this reason.

We intend towards something.

And to practice non-attachment towards that intention is that we accept that if the end result isn't what we desired it to be,

If it doesn't happen the way we wanted it to happen,

That it's okay,

It's okay.

So we're letting go of clinging or grasping at the desired result.

Of course we have the desired result,

But if it doesn't happen,

It doesn't throw us into a state of depression that lasts for weeks or,

You know,

Make us feel like we did something wrong or something was off,

But we do the best we can,

And maybe it happens exactly as we want it to,

As our intention wants it to,

And maybe it doesn't.

And it's okay either way,

Right?

That's really what non-attachment means here.

Not that we don't care,

Not that we don't have any goals,

Not that we don't have goals,

Not that we aren't fully engaged,

But we are less attached to the results,

Right?

Even if they're really important results,

And that's so hard,

That's really hard.

I'm not saying this is easy,

But I'm saying it will lead to being,

Having much less sense of tension,

Much less sense of anxiety and fear,

Being less vulnerable to the things that might make us feel more stressed out,

Having greater emotional stability,

Better relationships,

And a feeling maybe of some inner peace.

You know,

We can get tossed by the waves of our experience,

Or we can learn to ride the waves of our experience.

Reviews

I love the way you explained attachments and aversions. Letting go of disappointment when something doesn’t turn out the way I had hoped ; just letting it go. Thank you

Thank you so much for making concepts that I hear over & over so much more clear & easier to understand so that I may be more successful in learning to "go with the flow"

Wonderful talk on attachments, deep yet concise. Thank you!

A wonderful and quite intuitive way of delivering the truth of how are attachment to our experiences can create a clinging or an aversion to other similar experiences in life and the importance of learning the mastery of being able to be present with and regulated at the same time. Very insightful, thank you.

Very wise; sounds right

This was beautiful and well said. I learned a great deal and will listen to it repeatedly until I really absorb this teaching. I meditated while listening and cared for emotions that came up. Thank you for sharing this.

Thank you 🙏

So much here. Very grateful. I want to go back and listen to the last 15 min again 😊 Thank you so much, Lama Liz!

Absolutely amazing talk. Thank you Liz! This puts so many things into perspective for me