Desire and Attachment

My most dear one,
I am very very, very sorry, very, very sorry it took so long to reply to you; it took almost a year to write back.

I checked and if you can, do 100,000 prostrations by reciting the names of the Thirty-five Buddhas and normally every day do one hundred prostrations by reciting the Thirty-five Buddhas. Sometimes this may be difficult due to your situation, but do it every day if you can. This is best, but if not then do as much as possible.

Also do Vajrasattva practice at night-time, to protect the mind. The perfect powerful purification is the remedy of the four powers. Do the purification practice and collect merits, and try to live the life with bodhicitta as much as possible, with a good heart to others.

Every day try to do Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga and the lamrim prayer, to plant the seed of the whole path to enlightenment. If you can, meditate on the lamrim every day: guru devotion, the path of the lower capable being, the path of the middle capable being, and the path of the higher capable being, bodhicitta and emptiness.

I am very, very sorry it took a long time to reply to you.

Then also dedicate after you create merit. Dedicate, also dedicate for him to purify, to not be reborn in the lower realms and to achieve enlightenment as quickly as possible.

With much love and prayers...

PS. Sex is for a very, very short time, maybe not even for a full minute, however by meditating, we can achieve samadhi, calm abiding. We achieve physical ecstasy, then extremely refined mental ecstasy. We achieve this bliss through meditation. Of course, even in sutra as we go higher and higher on the path, there is greater and greater bliss and happiness, so it’s incredible, incredible, incredible.

When we achieve arhatship after abandoning delusion, then we achieve the blissful state of peace. Can you imagine? So ordinary sexual pleasure is really only suffering. It lasts for just one or two minutes, even just for one minute, but really even that is only the suffering of change.

Then through the Mahayana five paths and ten bhumis, then wow, wow, then the tantric path, the Six Yogas of Naropa. When we have [practiced] the Six Yogas of Naropa, when we experience the four blisses, so the fourth bliss is being able to keep the kundalini. For a man this means in the penis, without losing. This is what I heard from the meditators living in Dharamsala on the mountains, they say it is one hundred times greater bliss or maybe even one thousand times greater bliss than sex. So, sex is nothing.

The bliss generated in practice goes higher and higher, amazing, amazing. The transcendental wisdom, nondual bliss, is unbelievable, unbelievable, greater, greater. It is like an atomic bomb to cease the delusions, the subtle obscurations. Then that makes to achieve enlightenment, not just in one life—even in lower tantra we can achieve enlightenment in one life, even in the lowest tantra, and in highest tantra within a few years. What does that is the transcendental wisdom, the non-dual bliss and voidness, then we achieve the dharmakaya. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable. Compared to these, even shi-nä or the Six Yogas of Naropa, unbelievable. So sex is nothing, it’s only suffering in nature.

Then one useful thing, we have had this experience so many times before. This is not the first time, this life experience, this sex. We have had it numberless times with every sentient being. Every sentient being has been our wife, our husband, our parents and so forth, so it’s not the first time. This experience of sex is not the first time. We think we never had that experience with that person before, but actually we have had it numberless times in the past, and the result is suffering nature, so we are still in samsara suffering.

[We can achieve] all the great bliss in the Mahayana path, the clear light, the Six Yogas of Naropa, if done with bodhicitta, only for the sake of sentient beings.

Please enjoy my comments and advice.

That’s good advice for everybody. Everybody needs to simplify their life. That’s why there are so many problems, because people don’t simplify. It’s the answer to everything. The problem is everybody wants more and better of everything. Always wanting more and better brings expectation and people become competitive. If it’s competition to benefit others, that’s okay. But people are not satisfied with what they have, for example, they have one friend, then they want another friend. They never find satisfaction with anyone because of following desire. Even if they find the most beautiful person in the world, a person who generally people would regard as being the most beautiful, they may be happy at the beginning but, after some time together, there are problems.

I wonder if there’s anybody who is so happy with the person they’re in a relationship with that they never want to look for anybody else? Of course, there are different reasons that people don’t go after others. They might have desire for others but they stay in the relationship they’re in to preserve their dignity or because they don’t want a disaster. Reasonable people want to avoid disaster.

The student said to Rinpoche that her mother used to have the opposite view; not that Buddhism was too simple but that it was too complicated. Rinpoche replied as follows:

Complicated is not the point, ignorance is: the mind not knowing, not understanding. What is complicated is not the text, it’s the mind. But once you know, it’s not complicated. It’s like a computer. If you don’t know anything about computers, computers are complicated. But, once you know about them, they’re not complicated. It’s like counting to ten. It’s difficult to count to ten for those who don’t know how to do it. Once you know, it’s not difficult. What is difficult is ignorance, not knowing.

In life, if you don’t know how to make decisions, that’s due to ignorance. Knowing what is right, what is beneficial to practice, and what helps others, and knowing what is wrong and brings harm to yourself and others is Dharma wisdom. The most important thing is Dharma wisdom. Even if you have ordinary clairvoyance, if you don’t have Dharma wisdom you can’t make the right decision, because to make the right decision you need knowledge of karma. Here, I’m not talking about the clairvoyance that the Buddha or high-level bodhisattvas have. Ordinary clairvoyance is limited. With ordinary clairvoyance you can tell what will happen in the future, but to make the right decision you need more than that—it has to be made based on Dharma, by understanding karma. What we need is to create the cause of happiness: virtue.

My attachment wants to prevent me from enlightening numberless sentient beings, from achieving enlightenment, from achieving all realizations, and from achieving liberation from samsara for myself and a good rebirth in the next life. It destroys my happiness.

There is a quotation from the Vinaya (oral transmission):

Craving for small pleasure
Cannot achieve great pleasure

By craving for small pleasure, it is impossible to achieve great pleasure. Renounce the happiness that produces suffering, and cherish the happiness that comes from suffering.

Think: Now I will bear hardships to have good morality, then I can achieve enlightenment.

Attachment obscures the mind from realizing emptiness. It creates negative karma, like the ten non-virtuous actions, and causes you to break the three vows: the Pratimoksa vows, which are the foundation, the ground, the earth from which liberation comes, the bodhisattva and tantric vows, which enable you to achieve enlightenment quickly.

Attachment cannot cut the root of samsara, and one will abide in samsara endlessly, suffering. Therefore, I must win over my delusions and defeat my enemy—attachment.

Attachment keeps me in samsara and has from time without beginning, and lets me suffer in the six realms of suffering.

Attachment is like a cannibal, like honey on a sword, appearing to help me but in fact destroying and cheating me.

With attachment, your whole life is so tremendously painful. You have so many projections, so many worries, and fears, and if something changes or happens to your object of attachment it is worse. 

Regarding what you said about attachment being challenging for you while you’re on retreat, desire is very sneaky, like a snake. We think it’s our friend, but all it does is cause us suffering. Anger is more obvious, because we can see that it makes us unhappy, and also causes a lot of destruction, but desire looks like our friend, but like a thief, it steals our happiness. Olympic athletes train for 40 years only to receive some praise, or their name on the TV, or a big trophy to put on a shelf in their home. They train for 40 years out of attachment, thinking that pride and recognition is what life is about.

If you want to take ordination, but have obstacles to this, or want to keep that wish alive, but can’t take the vows, in order to keep that wish alive, and to make sure that when you take the vows you keep them purely, you should do Tara praises and protector prayers every day, with a strong wish for ordination in your heart. Also, you should take the five lay vows and the eight Mahayana precepts as much as possible.

You should do lamrim meditation every day, starting with the small scope and continuing each day for a certain length of time, for instance for three months, then should move on to the medium scope and do a meditation every day for a few months, and then spend a few months on bodhicitta, then a few months on emptiness, and then repeat the cycle over and over again until you gain realization of the topics. Every day, you should do some guru yoga practice in order to receive blessings so that you have a fruitful meditation.

You don’t always have to be in a formal meditation session to do lamrim meditation. You should keep your mind in the topic all day long, so it’s mixed with your mind in whatever activity you do.

It’s good to contemplate the suffering in the lower realms when you recite OM MANI PADME HUM, and it’s good to do tong-len while you’re reciting it.

Regarding how one meditates on bodhicitta while meditating on emptiness, or how one arouses bodhicitta if everything is merely labeled, in emptiness, bodhicitta is seen as dream-like bodhicitta, your bodhicitta motivation and thoughts are seen as if you are dreaming. 

Especially for us beginners, one of the most powerful ways is to think of death and impermanence. Think: “I can die any time. So too the object, the person, can die at any time.”

Death is one thing but other changes can come about too. The object can change and become undesirable. Any day, any moment, this can happen. There are other changes besides death. An accident can happen, the body can get damaged or can become deformed. The body can change at any time. It can contract leprosy, which changes the body. Many things like that can happen.

One other very effective thing for us to think is that, any day, any minute, that person can become your enemy, by doing something that your attachment doesn’t like. The person can say or do something your self-cherishing doesn’t like. For example, that person may come to like another person, follow another person, and lose interest in you. This can happen any time.

I told him also it’s very useful to think that if you allow attachment to arise, that leaves a negative imprint on the mind that makes attachment arise again and again. So that makes it more difficult to handle attachment in the future. The more imprints are left, the more attachment will arise strongly over and over again, causing many difficulties in the future.

It is also good to think that this makes one’s life very uncontrolled.

If you are performing the daily actions of your life with two attitudes, you are getting close to enlightenment. The two attitudes are: 1) having a sincere heart, doing social service with compassion (working for others); and, 2) meditating on the lamrim (the gradual path to enlightenment). This may not mean actually meditating, but living your life with lamrim, in order to purify and collect merit, and then on top of that practicing tantra, in order to achieve enlightenment quickly, or at least to prepare the mind, by leaving positive imprints every day. Social service means doing something for others, doing it from your heart. Even if it is only a little help that you give, you still get real satisfaction, like you have done something meaningful in your life. You have done something positive. Then, every day, every moment, every second, you are getting closer to enlightenment.

Otherwise, if you just live your life only thinking about your own pleasure, trying to achieve it for yourself, with attachment, then the main aim of your life is you. You are looking for pleasure for yourself, sexual pleasure and so forth, with attachment, and from this comes only pain. Everything just becomes painful.

There is the pain of separation, where you can’t stand to be away from the person you are attached to. Then, each day, your feelings becomes stronger, until the attachment becomes unbearable. Then there comes the pain of jealousy toward others. You don’t want others to have a connection. You have so many worries and fears, and it becomes so much suffering.

If your life does not have these two things in them (social service or lamrim) then no matter how much you meditate, if it is not done with lamrim, or by doing social service, doing work for others, then instead you are only doing it for yourself, and your whole life gets tied up with attachment, to sex and other things. Then there is nothing positive in your life, now or in the future. Your life will become dark, because your whole life is lived with the self-cherishing thought, with desire, attachment and clinging to this life, and all of these are non-virtues. So when you die, you don’t have any positive thoughts, and you are not able to renounce life.

With attachment, your whole life is so tremendously painful. You have so many projections, so many worries and fears. If something changes or happens to the person you are attached to—for example, he or she is no longer interested in you, or leaves you, or goes with someone else—then there is unbelievable pain. An incredible disaster happens in your mind. It is like war that you see in a movie; it is the same in your mind, and this can also actually happen in your life. You begin the war, and are attacked by your own hallucinations, fears, and so forth, and you actually harm each other. Your life becomes this huge movie of violent negative karma. Then there is nothing to rejoice in, and nothing to dedicate. Your mind is very sad and dissatisfied.

With attachment, you recognize that your life has been totally wasted. You didn’t do anything meaningful, and you die with great regret, because your life had no purpose and now it is finished. You die with all the negative karmas that you have collected every day in your life, every minute, every hour, every day, every year, because nothing has been purified. Not only that, but the negative karma has also grown, so you go to the lower realms.

All this happens even though you have taken this most precious human rebirth, with all the qualities and endowments, with so many good things that you could have used to create peace and happiness and even ultimate happiness for numberless sentient beings. At least for yourself, you could have caused long life and happiness, the temporal happiness of future lives, having a peaceful mind in daily life, and even your own ultimate happiness. You could have performed spiritual practice, meditation, purified negative karma and collected merit, and especially you could have meditated on the lamrim and on that basis practiced tantra. But instead you followed attachment.

Most people in the world do not know about this. They have no idea, and their whole life is spent living in pure attachment, in sexual pleasure, and that’s it. When you live with attachment, all the suffering comes from this, and you cannot achieve happiness in this life or in your future lives. From this, you can see how the world is suffering. You can see how much people who do not have any idea about this are suffering and creating more suffering. If you don’t apply the meditations, then even if you have a small attachment arising, there is so much suffering. When you think of people who are never involved in doing something positive—offering service for others, having compassion—you can see how their whole life is wasted, and how much they will suffer. Even their future is wasted. If they spent their life pursuing only this life’s happiness, such as being a famous singer, actor, president, or king, in reality, their life is totally wasted. It is without meaning, and there is nothing positive at all in their life.

If you are not able to renounce life one hundred percent, which means to renounce desire and clinging to this life in your daily life, and if you are not able to perform social service (working for others) or practice the lamrim, then your life has no meaning. Your life is totally empty and wasted. Not only that, but it also becomes negative, and creates all the future sufferings, one after the other. You will have to experience them by yourself. It only comes back to you.

However much peace and happiness there is depends on your attitude. If you have attachment and your main goal is to obtain freedom for yourself, then you are creating negativity all the time, and you are not creating positive emotions, like compassion and loving kindness. If your main goal is desire, attachment, and clinging to this life, and if other sentient beings are not important to you, then that means you are creating more negativity and a more unhappy life. However, if your Dharma practice is to benefit others, then there will be more peace and happiness, even if you are not completely renounced. If others are the most important thing in your life, then you will have happiness. If others come first, in your heart, then there will be so much peace and happiness, and so many less emotional problems.

Basically, it all depends on how much you are able to guard your mind—guard it from attachment, and also from the thought of self-cherishing. How many positive attainments and positive actions you have depends on how much you are able to guard yourself from following these negative thoughts, and how much you keep the mind in a positive attitude. With this, there is a big difference in enjoying your life, even enjoying sex. There is a difference if it is done with the thought of benefiting others, even that one other person that you are with, rather than enjoying just for your own pleasure, just for yourself.

So these two attitudes make an unbelievably huge difference in your life. With one, the sun is shining; with the other it is dark, and obscured. Life is dark because of attachment, and you have a dark, obscured attitude, a negative attitude.

The difference is like sky and earth, like black and white.