'Letting Go of Attachment' Process

Some of the disciplines involved in the nitty gritty process of weakening and uprooting attachment, with patience, humility, and inspired determination.

Transcript

I just wanted to talk a little bit about the general process of our meditation development when we are practicing forgiveness,

Contemplating death and impermanence.

So these are delicate areas,

It's not necessarily the case that we forgive and then we feel happy and bright and spacious.

It's not necessarily the case that we contemplate death and impermanence and there's a sense of letting go of everything and we feel space and detachment,

Let go of our attachments because attachment is something very deep in our minds and we've made a lot of karma with attachment.

So these are very powerful remedies and it may be the case that sometimes when we forgive there's a beautiful opening in the heart and a sense of lightness.

Other times we can forgive and there might still be a feeling of grief or a feeling of sadness and this is probably partly just due to the various karmas that we're all working with.

Similar with the contemplating death and impermanence.

There can sometimes be a beautiful sense of clarity,

Of sharpening,

Of being really present in the moment.

Other times there can be again some sadness or some aversion.

We understand that we're taking strong medicine and very powerful medicine.

The important thing to understand is that over a period of time,

So I'm suggesting years,

Over a period of time when we practice and meditate in these ways,

Overall the mind will become more spacious,

More light,

More bright,

More happy.

But it's not the case the mind doesn't work like a computer.

It's not just pressing in a function key and getting the result according to the software.

It is complex,

Like I said we all have layers of attachment and different types of karma.

But in general I wanted to say that I'm very pleased with the quality of effort that everyone made today.

And even though I warned you that I'd be bringing you into some painful spaces and talking about death again,

You all came.

So you all came,

That's good.

Can you give some example of how to learn the level of attachment?

Well this practice that we're all doing,

So that's the threefold training.

Being generous is part of this practice of letting go of attachment.

So in a Buddhist context to be practicing dhāna as a spiritual training,

Then that means,

It's a funny thing to say,

But that means it has to hurt a little bit.

So whatever we have that we think is ours we have to be sharing,

Maybe just a little bit more than we think we can.

Because understanding that we want to cut our attachment,

That's why we're giving to others.

So it's not that the others are saying you should be generous,

It's that you're saying to yourself,

I want to weaken my attachments,

Because of that I'm going to be giving away a portion of my property,

A portion of my wealth,

As a practice consistently.

You do have to take care of yourself of course,

But just talking in general,

That as a training,

That one is training in being generous.

And then the five precepts.

So when you keep the five precepts strictly that means that you'll come up,

The mind of desire,

You'll come up against a boundary.

You really want to do a thing and the precepts don't let you do it.

So when you practice patience at that point and you don't do it,

You're weakening attachment.

So it's by being patient in that moment and not breaking the precept,

Your attachment to that kind of pleasure.

Similarly,

Precepts also restrain forms of aversion,

So not killing,

And it's like you don't kill the mosquito,

You don't kill the cockroach,

You're restraining and you're weakening that attachment.

Something's irritated you or you have a perception that something's unclean,

You want to harm it and you don't.

You weaken those forms of aversion.

Same with the intoxication one.

So we have a habit of being attached to being intoxicated.

Partly that's just to get a break from the painful realm that we live in.

We want a break,

We want to have some fun,

We don't want to be serious.

But we understand that that kind of break is temporary and it usually makes things worse in the big picture.

So it's being patient at that time when we want to lose ourselves and we want to get intoxicated and we don't.

This is training ourselves to be not attached to that,

To greed,

Hatred and delusion.

And then it's in meditation,

Isn't it?

That sometimes the Maitreya Chah would say,

With regards to meditation,

When you want to do it,

You do it,

When you don't want to do it,

You do it.

When you're feeling diligent you do it and when you're feeling lazy you do it.

When you're peaceful you do it,

When you're not peaceful you do it.

So that's the instruction about meditation.

And this is letting go of attachment,

Isn't it?

When you come and you just have to sit with it,

Whatever it is.

Okay,

No,

I don't want to be,

I want to watch Master Chef.

Or whatever.

It's like whatever,

Or whatever.

And you don't,

If you don't watch Master Chef and you meditate,

You're letting go of an attachment aren't you?

So I want the extra hour's sleep.

Get up.

Then you're letting go of your attachment to that sleep aren't you?

So again,

The meditation discipline,

Very good for bringing that attention to bear with those various types of attachments that we have.

And then going against them in a way which is firm but gentle.

So it's like getting up out of bed in the morning.

Of course you want to sleep more,

I do too.

But it's not leading onwards,

As the Buddha says,

It's not leading away from samsara.

So we get up.

And sometimes you're just sitting with the grumpiness and sitting with the sleepiness.

But that is,

Although it doesn't feel like it,

It is weakening your attachment to sleep.

And if you just let yourself sleep as much as you like,

You don't weaken the attachment to it.

Then yes,

Sometimes the,

If you have a meditation discipline,

Then you're doing it every day.

Whatever it was that upset you,

You have to see the pain of the aversion.

And if you don't meditate every day,

You'll only meditate when you're in the mood,

You won't notice.

You won't notice the pain of aversion,

Of reaction,

Of anger.

But if you meditate every day,

Then you see it is hurt.

Attachment hurts,

Aversion hurts,

Hatred hurts.

And so you consciously let go,

And Ajahn Chah says this all the time in his teachings.

It's like letting go when something isn't wholesome,

That we actually have the intention to let go.

And sometimes we can't,

But sometimes we can.

And so the more we meditate,

Sometimes we can let go and sometimes we can't,

Isn't it?

But at least when we have the daily meditation practice,

We can see what we're attached to.

Now this is,

In the beginning stages of meditation,

This is an important stage because if we don't meditate,

We won't be aware of how much attachment we have.

When we do meditate,

Sometimes it seems like we have more attachment than before.

That's actually not the case.

All of that attachment was there,

But we weren't noticing it.

So when you bring your mindful awareness to bear with your mind as it is,

You will see the various types of attachment that are there.

And then just in this process of coming back to the breath,

Letting go of whatever the mind state is,

Craving for or craving not for,

Whatever it is,

This is weakening attachment.

And we're attached to these five hindrances that are an obstruction to peacefulness.

We're attached to restless thinking,

We're attached to sensual craving,

We're attached to our irritation and aversion,

We're attached to our doubts.

We've made a lot of karma with them.

We're attached to sleepiness,

Sloth as well,

So those five hindrances.

So it's like every time we're making an effort to fall away from those things and be mindful and clear and present in the moment,

We're weakening our attachment to that.

And then hopefully when samadhi develops,

You're going to,

For periods of time,

Letting go of,

Eventually,

For periods of time,

Letting go of the lower realms of samsara.

It's like being in a Brahma realm if a person has jhana.

So this training,

One trains in letting go of course of sensuality and the mind experiences a very profound,

Refined peace.

That's when people start to get real samadhi.

And then one has to weaken one's attachment to that through wisdom and learns how to use samadhi,

As how my teachers have explained it.

You learn to use the samadhi to cultivate insight,

Not just delight in samadhi,

Actually use the power and the clarity that you get from it to investigate conditions,

To weaken your attachment to them.

So it's with the mind that has that real samadhi can literally start cutting through these deeper layers of attachment.

But all of this that we've been doing today,

This is it.

This is weakening our attachment.

And often our practice is just a bearing with,

With an attitude of patience and kindness.

Ajahn Chah said 95% of practice is patience.

That's a lot.

And he said a lot of practice is knowing what you should be able to let go of and not quite being able to.

So it's not that practice is going wrong,

If that's our experience.

That is practice.

There's a knowing,

Yeah,

These thoughts are unskillful.

Yeah,

That reaction is unskillful.

I wish I could let go of it.

And then pulling back to some degree,

But it's still there.

That's a lot of our practice.

It's not incorrect.

We have to bring an attitude of kindness and patience to it,

Understand it as a process,

Give it a few years,

A few lives,

But keeping on going.

I was pleased with everyone's effort today.

Lots of people came.

Did anyone feel like they generated some loving kindness towards themselves and others today?

Can I see a show of hands?

This is encouraging for the teacher,

You see.

Did anyone feel like they had some success in forgiveness of themselves and others?

Very nice.

Okay.

Did anyone become more accepting of the possibility of death?

Even him.

Okay,

Good.

And did anyone have a few moments of peacefulness,

Deep peace?

Okay,

Good.

So now we can just cruise on the momentum of all of this good effort.

Can you please explain how to end suffering at the time of dying?

How to go beyond suffering at the time of dying.

Okay,

Somebody kill me and I'll explain.

It's very difficult I think.

But my kind of sense is more like having that sense of refuge.

So there's most probably going to be suffering at death,

Isn't there?

If we can glimpse at what happens in our life when we're separated from things that we don't want to be separated from.

So suppose that's a loved one.

We have a lifetime or half a lifetime of attachment to that person and they die.

We get to see grief.

Or a piece of something that we like that we lose and then we see.

There is longing for it.

There is something that breaks.

So we can see that at the time of death it's going to have to be your body,

All of your possessions and all of your relationships,

All at once.

So there is probably going to be attachment manifesting in the mind.

All you can do is try,

What I would say is try to place your attachment on something else.

And this is why we have to train in attaching to the skillful first.

And eventually we can let go of all of our attachments.

But that's why I like to talk about refuge a lot.

So that at the time of death you want to be able to.

If we really know we're dying,

I think maybe it's even easier than if we lose something or if a friend or a loved one dies.

Because we know this is it.

Hopefully we have the time to know that.

This really is it.

You have to put it down.

You can't take any of it with you.

I'm assuming that that kind of clarity would be helpful.

That we know.

Hopefully we have enough mindfulness to really talk to ourselves.

Like,

Look,

You have to drop it all.

And then it's really just thinking of Buddha,

I think,

And Dhamma.

And then recollecting the good things that you've done.

So this is I think a tradition in Sri Lanka.

If someone knows that they're dying,

People will come and read to them all of the good deeds that they did that they can remember.

That's very skillful.

To have people around you chanting,

To have people around you reminding you,

You went on pilgrimages,

You offered katinas,

You chanted your parittas every day for 50 years,

Whatever it is.

That's very helpful.

But if someone isn't there doing that for you,

You have to be able to do it for yourself.

Isn't it?

So you need to do your buddhanusati and your cakhanusati,

Recollect the Buddha,

Recollect the sangha,

The monks and the nuns,

The well-practiced people that you've paid respects to,

Made offerings to,

Listened to.

And then the meditations,

The pujas,

The pilgrimages,

You have to recollect that,

That force of positive energy,

That merit that you've generated.

At the time of death we have to train in being able to recollect it so that hopefully that merit will be there to support that moving on.

But in terms of letting go of all attachment and all suffering,

I think very difficult.

I think more realistic,

We have to accept that there's going to be some.

This is another reason why Ajahn Chah is saying,

The thing about patience and the thing about consistency,

Because that's the only thing that would really prepare us for that,

Is it means that when we're tired we've sat,

When we were grumpy we sat,

When there was pain we sat,

When we wanted to we did and when we didn't want to we did.

So what we're training when we practice like that is being able to bring mindful awareness to the situation in the mind as it is,

With some quality of patience.

So that if we train in that way that when we are dying we can bring that quality of awareness that the mind won't completely fall into depression or fear.

So it's quite important to try to prepare for that.

We can have one last meditation.

Ajahn Chah is not going to talk anymore.

We can have a nice peaceful sit.

Reviews

Very insightful and encouraging, thank you again🙏🏼💝!

Very encouraging talk and great insight received from your teaching and meditations. Thank you with heartfelt gratitude 🙏

Thank you. The reminder to be patient was very helpful.

Very good teaching on attachment and letting go, commitment to practice, and patience in the process. Thank you!

Always very wise talks from Brother Ajahn. Thank you.

Thank you 🙏🌸

I’ve listened to this three times now. It’s profound. Wise, true. Deep gratitude.

How can I join your retreats? You are amazing. Thank You!🥰🥰

How attachments lead to grief, sorrow and pain. The importance of refuge, patience and bliss-emptiness to realise the empty, illusory nature of samsara. The realm of desire and the consequently suffering.

This was very insightful, and it’ll definitely change the way I choose my time to meditate. Thank you!

Lovely and realistic talk on the process of letting go of attachment. Most helpful.

Thank you for providing clear instruction with which to start my day.
If I feel inspired to come back, I’ll be listening to more of your lessons; if I don’t feel inspired to come back, I’ll be listening to more of your lessons. 😊

Outstanding brief talk on why we sit, and how the practice weakens attachment.

I was at Amaravati Monestery many years ago. Wonderful to hear teachers from there

Simply Beautiful! 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽

So simply explained, on the most difficult topics. There, my friends, is a path to true happiness.

Very supportive, thank you.

I just listened to this a second time some months later and got so much more out of it. Will be back again! I think sometimes of the Buddha's original disciples who got to trail around after him for 30 years and listen to him give the same teachings over and over from different angles and I think that this is what must have been like. We are so lucky that when we are not ready for what our teacher tells us that we can come back in the spring and. . . oh! That's what that means!

These talks and meditations have been life-changing. Thank you 🙏🏼

Beautiful teachings, thank you!