Quotes About Attachment

It's hard to let go. Even when what you're holding onto is full of thorns

Kill your darlings.

She was thinking about how quietly you could grow to depend on a person, almost like a junkie with a habit.

What heart I have is yours.

She was just a year old, but she had wanted me to stay longer. That's how you know you're home, I think, no matter how far you've gone from it or how long you've been in some other place. Home is where they want you to stay longer.

Note which states of mind accompany each moment of like and disliking. When we recall the statement, "Physician, heal thyself," this is where the healing begins. It is particularly important to notice that this constant liking and disliking that leaves us exhausted at the end of the day. It is from this mechanical response / reaction that our actions and reactions arises.

Money is easier to dispense than affection, even for the most miserly.

Desire and aspiration are two different things. The idea that you want to achieve something in Zen meditation is basically selfish. 'I want to get enlightened' means 'I want to get enlightened.' But aspiration is not for myself, it is not a merely individual desire, it transcends the idea of self. It is desire without attachment. If enlightenment comes, good. If enlightenment does not come, good. Actually, this is enlightenment.

So if you are thinking, words are very bad. But if you are not thinking, all words and all things that you can see or hear or smell or taste or touch will help you. So it is very important for you to cut off your thinking and your attachment to words.

Soen-sa said, The universe is infinite; all people are infinite. So the Bodhisattva's attachment is infinite. A Bodhisattva attachment is no attachment. No attachment is a Bodhisattva attachment.

If my sense of security lies in my reputation or in the things I have, my life will be in a constant state of threat and jeopardy that these possessions may be lost or stolen or devalued.

Without involvement, there is no commitment.

If our sense of emotional worth comes primarily from our marriage, then we become highly dependent upon that relationship.

Al morir un amigo común, un hombre le preguntó a otro: «¿Cuánto dejó?». La respuesta fue: «¡Lo dejó todo!».

The idea that his wedding band was some kind of talisman nauseated him like the smell of attar.

By nature, memory is more monogamous than desire.

We may also notice … each feeling … is transitory and impermanent. Eventually, through simple observation, our feelings, while no less vivid, will become less urgent, and will cease to have such a firm hold on our emotions and actions. We will be able to see each feeling as it arises without feeling compelled to act on it.

Buddhist writings (including this book) can be likened to a raft. A raft is a very handy thing to carry you across the water, from one shore to another. But once you've reached the other shore, you no longer need the raft. Indeed, if you wish to continue your journey beyond the shore, you must leave the raft behind. Our problem is that we tend to fall in love with the raft.

Clinging to any entity—including self, other, cat, or God—puts us into a conceptual prison. This is true of all beliefs, all grasped concepts. They all obstruct true Religious Experience—direct experience of Reality.

this desire to hold on, to somehow stop change in its tracks, is the greatest source of woe and horror and trouble in our lives.

When we latch on to an identity, it's easy to take offence. But we offend ourselves. We lock ourselves into very rigid ways of seeing and thinking and reacting.

Usually we hold a frozen view of ourselves as well as of the world 'out there.' … We identify with groups, behaviours, habits, and beliefs.

When we cease to be bound by our concepts, our paradigms, our grasping, our inclinations of mind, our doubt ceases as well, because our knowledge is no longer dependent on anything beyond immediate, direct experience.

In fixing] on the idea of a universe full of separate, unchanging, persistent things … [w]e also necessarily conceive that each thing must die, must one day come to an end. … [W]hen that thing is the imagined 'I', this prospect naturally terrifies us.