Attachment/clinging

How do you know whether you are enlightened? On the one hand, grasping for attainments can block our progress along the Path. But on the other hand, many of us have a legitimate curiosity about what enlightenment might be like. The early…

One of the most counterintuitive and powerful aspects of early Buddhist thought is the practice of not clinging to views and opinions. What does this really mean? And why is clinging to views and opinions so dangerous?

In Buddhism craving is understood to be the source of our suffering. But what about healthy aspirations and ambitions? We'll look at differences between craving and healthy aspiration, and how to cultivate aspiration while reducing…

We crave attachment, and yet attachment brings suffering. The way out is through a practice of letting go. After describing the phenomenon of attachment, we'll discuss some practices of letting go as well as some of their benefits.

Affection can be dangerous, this is some of the surprising and even shocking advice the Buddha gives in the early suttas. I'll look at what the Buddha said about some of affection's problematic role in lay and monastic life, as well as…

There's a paradox of ownership in early Buddhist dharma. I'll consider that paradox, and why we should try to avoid looking at the world in terms of possession and ownership.

The parable of the raft is one of the most famous early Buddhist parables. We'll look at it in context in this video, illustrating its place in a particularly profound early sutta.

One of our unskillful underlying tendencies of mind in early Buddhism is that of clinging to rules and rituals. We'll discuss what that is, as well as its potential historical development, and how it may manifest in us today.

What lies behind our idea of self in Buddhism? We'll look at the building blocks of it all, the so-called "five aggregates of clinging". We'll also consider ways that we can cling to each of the aggregates, and so create suffering.

According to the teachings of early Buddhism, one of the main sources of conflict is our attachment to views and opinions. We will look at three practices that can help us relax around our views and hence live a wiser, kinder, and calmer…

We'll look at three ways that desire "makes the world" for us, from the traditional Buddhist understanding of cosmology to a more down-to-earth way, and finally to a deeper, more fundamental understanding of the role desire and attachment…

The practice of non-attachment to all things is at the heart of Buddhism. How can we work with such a practice though when it comes to those closest to us: our friends and family? We will consider this problem and how in fact a…

Non-attachment is at the heart of Buddhist practice. How is it different from mental "detachment"? We will look at what non-attachment means in early Buddhism and how it differs from detachment.

We often feel that the more we have, the happier we will be. Is that really so? We will take a look at the paradox of greed using a story from the Buddha's teaching.

Does kindness require emotional attachment and identification with one another? Several prominent ethical systems promote the idea that our altruistic tendencies are based on emotional closeness and familiarity. We'll look at a few of…

We all like nice things, but our pursuit of them has important drawbacks. We'll look at some of those here, as well as evidence of a transmission fluid leak that I've been dealing with for the past year.

The Buddha's early teachings on non-clinging to beliefs, views, and opinions are some of his deepest and most profound, as well as being a little tricky to understand. For those interested in a very detailed look at the Buddha on views,…