http://askthelama.tumblr.com/post/1167889768/emotional-attachments
Tammy W: My biggest struggle is with overwhelming emotions and
emotional attachments. I am a solo practitioner with no access to a
dharma center in the US. I am also fairly new to Tibetan Buddhism
so I am struggling with many aspects, but this seems to be the
major one. What daily practices can I do to help with
this?
Lama Surya Das: This is a huge question, and one of
the most important issues we all face in life, whether or not we’re
on the spiritual path. No simple answer will do, although too may
are availible. Let go and let God? Let go, let be? Acceptance has
it’s own transformative magic. See everything as like a dream, a
fantasy, echos, mirages, like rainbows in the sky, as it says in
Buddhism’s Diamond of Wisdom Sutra. Does this kinda pithy one-liner
instruction do it for you, my friend?
First, I think it’s helpful to assess the situation— your precise
situation, as you experience and understand it, as you seem to have
already begun to do. That’s good!
Then, honestly and conscientously introspect and observe the cost
in terms of dissatisfaction and frustration, anxiety, pain
and suffering of continuing to be overly entangled by the
conflicting emotions and habitual, conditioned states of mind and
moods of the heart— called klesha, in Buddhism, or obscuring
defilements, which includes mosty if not all the jumbled up stuff
of consciousness in connection with outer reality as well as your
internal, subjective state. Buddhism talks about being wary of
letting yourself contuinue to be blown about by the 8 worldly winds
of pleasure and pain, loss and gain, fame and shame, praise and
criticism. Through self-awareness and spiritual realization wisdom
arises within, and we become masters rather than mere victims of
circumstances and conditions. This is spiritual freedom and
self-mastery, the realization of autonomy within
interdependence.
You might benefit by trying to learn to meditate and practice
contemplating these things without attachment and aversion, as they
appear in and effect you/your consciousness: seeing as they are and
observing them come and go, arise and fall, appear and disappear,
along with all other things (phenomena and noumena) in this
evanescent world. You could learn and practice on a daily basis
the mind clearing-and-calming concentrative serenity
meditation (shamatha), or utilize the mantras, prayers and lojong
(mind training and spiritual refinement) practices taught at every
Tibetan center and in accessible and practical modern Dharma books.
(These things, including centers and small sitting groups, are
pretty ubiquitous today, so do check around. Also online.) Patience
furthers, and effort is also called for on this journey of
awakening.
“It is not outer things that entangle us, Naropa, but inner
fixations and attachments which entangle us”, as an enlightened
master of old once sang. Our inner kleshas— greed, hatred and
delusion, pride and jealousy in the Buddhist formulation— must be
dealt with, personally and first hand. Freedom and liberation of
awakening is an inside job.
Submitted by Tammy W. via Facebook on September 21st.