The theme I'd like to speak about tonight is about attachment, detachment, and non-attachment; and sometimes its misunderstandings around what these words mean and what the nature of practice is. But as many of you probably read or/and experienced; in Buddhism, attachment is seen as being the source of our dissatisfaction and suffering in life. So we grasp after the things we want and we avoid the things we don't like and we hold on to the things that we think are going to make us happy in life. And it's the actual holding on that creates the problem, it's a kind of resistance to life because life (don't have to read it in a book, you just have to experience it) life is changing all the time, life is impermanent transient, everything is in flux. So if we try to hold on to something and make it a thing and make it your possession, whether it's a thought, or an idea, or a thing, or a person, try to hold on to it, you're out of step with the nature of life.
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What we need to keep in mind is the whole point of doing this practice, where you you break out of being caught in the self-centered dream, is that you cultivate love and compassion and joy and equanimity.
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So, remember that your practice is about forgetting the self and throwing yourself into life. You know, throwing yourself into the stream of life and into the relationship of life. It is not about keeping yourself separate from them.
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Attachment, Detachment, Non-attachment, talk by Geoff Dawson, June 20, 2023, Ordinary Mind School of Sydney
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