[education]

This might be helpful ....




Attachment

by Ajahn Sumedho

"First, you must recognize what attachment is, and then you let go. That's when you realize non-attachment. However, if you're coming from the view that you shouldn't be attached, then that's still not it. The point is not to take a position against attachment, as if there were a commandment against it; the point is to observe. We ask the questions, "What is attachment?""Does being attached to things bring happiness or suffering?" Then we begin to have insight. We begin to see what attachment is, and then we can let go.

If you're coming from a high-minded position in which you think you shouldn't be attached to anything, then you comeup with ideas like, "Well, I can't be a Buddhist because I love my wife, because I'm attached to my wife. I love her, and I just can't let her go. I can't send her away." Those kinds of thoughts come from the view that youshouldn't be attached.

The recognition of attachment doesn't mean that you get rid of your wife. It means you free yourself from wrong views about yourself and your wife. Then you find thatthere's love there, but it's not attached. It's not distorting, clinging, and grasping. The empty mind is quite capable of caring about others and loving in the pure sense of love. But any attachment will alwaysdistort that.

If you love someone and then start grasping, things get complicated; then, what you love causes you pain".


continued: http://dharmagates.org/attachment_ajahn_sumedho.html



.