Attachment

by Ven. Thubten Gyatso

Among the three poisonous mental attitudes that bring unhappiness and spoil our enjoyment of pleasure, ignorance is difficult to recognise as a problem but when it is we are inspired to discover reality, anger is easily recognised as a problem that we want to abandon, but attachment is different. Even if we recognise attachment as a problem we are reluctant to give it up because we fear missing out on the pleasure to which we are attached. Attachment, however, only pushes pleasure away, it is a disturbing mental attitude that exaggerates the qualities of ordinary objects of pleasure and does not want to separate from them.

Attachment arises towards every object of pleasure, but the attachment that causes us most suffering is attachment to another person. At a party, when we meet and become interested in an attractive person, attachment exaggerates their good qualities - their body, their mind, their voice, their personality - so that they appear more attractive than they actually are. We believe this exaggerated appearance to be true, not realising it comes from our own mind, and despite our friends asking what we see in such a person we become obsessed and desire to be with them.

One thing leads to another and we find ourselves living with them and, inevitably, finding out that they are not as perfect as we had thought. Unfairly, either consciously or subconsciously, we blame them for not living up to our expectations and discord arises in the relationship. We too are unable to meet the projections of their attachment towards us and the relationship becomes progressively worse.

Attachment also clings, we see our partner as our permanent possession or as an extension of ourselves and, again, either consciously or subconsciously, we manipulate or coerce them into conforming with our projections of how my partner should look and behave, thereby suffocating them, allowing no space for them to be an individual, and unrealistically demanding them to be what they are not.

Disharmony increases until, at another party, we meet the next attractive person, the fire of our attachment is lit and we abandon our current partner and embark on the whole miserable journey once again, like a donkey chasing a carrot on a stick, forever pursuing an unattainable goal.

It is not just with our partners; attachment exaggerates good qualities, or superimposes non-existent good qualities, upon our possessions, our children, our parents, and our friends. Not only do we believe attachment's projections to be true, attachment blinds us to our friends' negative qualities. Anger operates in a similar way, it blinds us to good qualities and exaggerates negative qualities or superimposes non-existent negative qualities upon those who displease us.

With anger and attachment we believe the good or bad appearance of our friends or enemies to be true, we do not realise it is a projection of our mind. Satisfaction and peace in life are impossible to achieve because we are always blaming others for our problems and driving them away. Believing the fault to lie with others, we abandon our partner, trade-in the car, get a new job, move to another neighbourhood, on and on until we die, still dissatisfied.

The paradox of experiencing the heights of pleasure and the depths of despair when we are "in love" occurs because attachment poisons love. Love, unconditional delight in the happiness of another and the wish to give them pleasure, is an emotion to be cultivated. It is the opposite of anger and, by nature, love always makes our mind happy. It is impossible to be unhappy when we are loving another, the unhappiness in our relationships comes from attachment, a totally different emotion that we confuse with love because the two come together, not at the same time, but one quickly following the other. They can even be distinguished physically: attachment is an unhappy longing associated with a feeling of constriction in the throat and chest whereas love is a delightful effervescence of openness and warmth arising in those regions.

When we are in love and our physical sensations indicate that attachment is manifesting, we should apply its antidote. Cultivate detachment by first contemplating the folly of attachment, its exaggeration, superimposition, and clinging, and then seeing the object of attachment as it is in reality - a transient phenomenon that is empty of our projections. Only when detachment frees our mind from the fog of attachment can we be free to experience the bliss of love.

Romantics may complain that this clinical approach to the experience of being in love is a dispassionate destruction of a true and spontaneous emotion whose pleasure is necessarily inseparable from its pain. But the cemeteries are full of frustrated romantics, there is no fault in consciously cultivating love and detachment simultaneously. This is, in fact, the only way to have truly spontaneous love, the vehicle that takes us beyond suffering and death.

Gyatso

This teaching is by the Venerable Thubten Gyatso (previously Dr Adrian Feldmann), an Australian monk and old friend now working in Mongolia. One of the senior students of Lama Yeshe, Lama Zopa Rinpoche (and also Geshe Roach) he is currently teaching at the FPMT centre in Ulaan Baatar. These teachings originally appeared in his local English language newspaper in Ulaan Baatar and arereproduced with his permission.

Thanks to Diane Olander (pelmo@got.net), these teachings first appeared on the Internet on the website (www.gepeling.org) of
The Jangchub Gepel Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies,
6960 Highway 9, Felton, CA 95018, Tel: 01 (831) 335 1217
where you can find many more teachings and other interesting material.