Chagdud Gonpa

For us as human beings, attachment so thoroughly pervades our minds and so consistently determines our actions that our state of existence is known as the “desire realm.” We ourselves fabricate this realm by fixating on both the coarse appearances of the outer environment, and the more subtle appearances of the mind’s inner environment of concepts and emotions. From such fixation we create a great spectrum of experience. At one end, a hellish existence arises from fixation on objects of anger and hatred - attachment inverted to total aversion. At the other end, fixation on certain states of meditation – an extremely subtle yet powerful type of attachment - results in an existence that is blissful, yet temporary and still conditioned by desire.

Our attachment arises from not understanding the empty nature and impermanence of phenomena. This fundamental misunderstanding is endowed with enormous potency by our mundane desires, which simultaneously seduce and frustrate us. Not understanding that there is nothing permanent or even reliable in our ordinary experience, we have wishes and longings for the things of this world. Desires arise ceaselessly and we feel frustrated by not getting what we want, not getting enough of it, getting it but not wanting it anymore, or getting then losing it. For people who are more introspective, the very process of fixating, forming attachments, and striving to fulfill desires becomes profoundly wearying.

Wearying too is the recognition that the momentum of our attachments, the strong habit of them, has propelled us through countless past lifetimes and will propel us through countless future lifetimes unless we find release. And we are not alone in this predicament. It is shared by every other sentient being, including those we hold most dear. All of us alike find ourselves beguiled by the mirage of fulfillment, and entangled in our self-spun webs of attachment. This insight in itself becomes a source of compassion.

Extricating ourselves from our web of attachment follows a certain pattern for most of us. Events of sorrow and pain turn our minds toward the larger questions of life, questions that can only be resolved through spiritual endeavor. The forces of impermanence bring about continual re-alliances in friendships, marriages, romances, and family ties; reversals in careers and bank accounts; changes in possessions, residences, and projects; improvements and declines in health and well-being. And, at some point, we know we will face the exhaustion of our youth and the deterioration of the body itself through old age and death.

If we are fortunate enough to encounter an authentic spiritual teacher at this point, and if that teacher has wisdom born of hearing, contemplating, and meditating on the lineage teachings of Sakyamuni Buddha, he or she will advise you not to distance yourself from the truth of impermanence, but to look into it deeper, more directly. Looking inward, we find that our mental events are likewise impermanent, that thoughts and emotions come and go like the weather, that the very characteristics of our personal identities are variable. If we are looking inward through the lens of meditation, most of us are astonished by the proliferation of our mental phenomena, by their restless movement, by their countless points of fixation followed by endless demands, digressions, imaginings, and moods. We find it difficult to sit still and watch them! For someone who is serious about spiritual development, the first question becomes how to tame these unruly aspects of one’s own mind.

Awareness of impermanence remains key to working through attachment, a process that encompasses many spiritual levels, from the beginner’s subduing coarse attachments to self-interest, right up to a great bodhisattva’s severing the last vestiges of attachment to certain subtle habits of mind. At each stage, the increase of compassion serves as a measure of how much the bonds of attachment are loosening.

Freeing ourselves from self-centeredness allows our natural qualities of compassion more espontaneous expression. Especially, we develop the heartfelt wish that our fellow beings in the desire realm find freedom from grasping at their outer and inner worlds as true and real, and release from wearisome pursuit of their desires that leads them only further into delusion and suffering. For ourselves too, this is what we wish.