wise kindness

Posted on February 29, 2024 by tiramit

Ajahn Amaro

Excerpts from “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” Chapter 5, a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link at the end of the text.

I don’t like to teach loving-kindness meditation as a separate feature of spiritual practice. I find that it’s far more skilful to cultivate loving-kindness as a background theme, as a kind and loving presence that informs and infuses every effort that is made in our spiritual training. The way that we pick up any aspect of the training needs to have this quality of loving-kindness in it. As a preface to that, it’s also important to understand that loving everything doesn’t mean we have to like everything. Sometimes it’s misunderstood that to have lovingkindness we need to attempt to make ourselves like everything. For instance, we may try to convince ourselves that we like pain, grief, unrequited love, an overdraft, decaying sense faculties, or an ex who continues to haunt us. This is a misguided way of practicing loving-kindness.

It is better understood as “the heart that does not dwell in aversion.” Not dwelling in aversion towards anything, even our enemies. Someone quoted me a passage in one of the Dalai Lama’s recent books where he was talking about the Chinese. He referred to them as “my friends, the enemy.” So loving-kindness is that quality whereby we are able to refrain from piling on aversion, even toward that which is bitter, painful, ugly, cruel, and harmful. It’s a matter of realising that place in our hearts where we know that this too has its role in nature. Yes, including the whole spectrum of the seemingly unlikable, the repulsive, and the utterly despicable.

Loving-kindness is the quality of allowing and accepting these things as part of the whole picture. It’s not about saying we approve of everything or we think things like torture, deceit, and malice are good. It’s about accepting that they exist and fully acknowledging that they are a part of life’s panorama. Here they are. When we establish loving acceptance as a basis for practice, then whatever we’re dealing with in terms of our own minds and our world, there’s the fundamental quality of accord. And for myself, I find that that needs to be there whether I’m doing concentration practice, insight practice, or the nonduality practice of Dzogchen—completely letting go of everything in the subjective and the objective realms. We need to recognise that there is no enemy. There is Dharma. There is no them or that or it. It all belongs. Fundamentally, everything belongs and has its place in nature.

The brahma-vihāras chant that we do in English appears in the Buddha’s teaching called “The Simile of the Saw.” What he teaches there is that, “If you were captured by bandits and they were sawing your body into pieces, limb by limb with a twohanded saw, anyone who gave rise to a thought of aversion towards them on account of that would not be practicing my teaching.” (M 21.20)

I realize that some people find this an incredibly daunting and unrealistic teaching. But to me it is actually extremely helpful and skilful. It’s saying that hatred cannot be in accord with Dharma and is therefore never justified.

The Buddha used an extreme, almost absurd example where it would seem utterly reasonable to feel some aversion toward those sawing you up bit by bit. One would think a little irritation, just a snippet of negativity here or there, would be quite allowable. But the Buddha didn’t say that, did he? He said, “Not one hair’s tip of aversion is appropriate.” As soon as the heart lurches into, “No, this doesn’t belong, this shouldn’t be. You are evil. Why me?” then the Dharma has been obscured, lost. That’s the fact. Something in us may revolt, but the heart knows it’s true. Any dwelling in aversion points it out very clearly, and because of that, the aversion is a unambiguous sign that “the Dharma has been lost.”

As soon as we find ourselves judging our own minds or the people around us with harshness, cultivating justifiable hatred for the government or our thinking minds or our erratic emotions or our damaged lives, there’s no vision of reality; it’s obscured. The attitude is not in accord with truth. So that hatred, that aversion becomes a sign for us that we’ve lost the Path. This standard of training described by the Buddha may seem totally impractical, but it is doable. I think it’s helpful to recognise this because what we think we’re capable of is very different from what we actually are capable of. We might think, “I could never do that. That’s impossible for me.” Yet I tell you, it is possible. That potential is there for all of us. And when we find that quality of total acceptance and absolute non-aversion, where there’s kindness and compassion, then there’s a tremendous quality of ease and release, a real non-discrimination at last. For what kind of wisdom are we developing if it packs up and departs as soon as the going gets rough—as soon as the weather gets too hot, the “wrong” person is put in charge, or the body gets sick and uncomfortable?

A sincere spirit of loving-kindness is the most challenging thing to establish in the face of extreme bitterness and pain because to do so requires finding spaciousness around these experiences. This is where the heart most easily contracts and impacts itself. But we can pick up that quality and say, “Yes, this too is part of nature. This too is just the way it is.” Then, at that moment, there’s an expansion around it. We feel the space of emptiness that surrounds and pervades it and we see the whole thing is transparent. No matter how dense and real the feeling of “I and me and mine” is in that holding, we see in that spaciousness that not only is there space around it, but there is also light coming through.

Link to the source:

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/423-small-boat-great-mountain

compassionate intention

Posted on February 22, 2024 by tiramit

Ajahn Amaro

Continued selected excerpts from Chapter 5, “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link at the end of the text.

I was a very zealous young monk. And, although my mind was often extremely busy and all over the place, after three or four years of monastic training, I found that meditation came quite easily to me and that I could attain quite strong states of concentration. This was also the early years of our community in England, when Ajahn Sumedho would be giving two or three Dharma talks a day and it seemed like there was a constant stream of high wisdom. It was a very inspired time. There was a feeling that enlightenment was just so close, that it was an obvious reality. It was just a matter of cutting through the last few defilements and, boom! It would all be there.

We developed a tradition of having a winter retreat during the cold, dark months of January and February. About three weeks into one of these early retreats, I was working very diligently and was extremely focused on the meditation. I wasn’t talking to anyone or looking at anything. Every lunar quarter we would have an all-night meditation vigil. This was the full moon in January. I was really charged up and was convinced, “Okay, tonight’s the night.” It was a crystal-clear evening in the middle of an English winter. There were brilliant stars in the sky, and the full moon was blazing brightly. I really had the juice going. We came to the evening sitting, did the chanting, listened to the Dharma talk, and so forth, and then, once those were over, the rest of the night was open—just walking and sitting meditation, as one chose.

So, I’m sitting there with a very bright and clear mind and this thought keeps floating in, “Any minute now, any second now.” We all know that one: “Left a bit, right a bit, okay, now relax a bit, straighten up a bit, looking good, okay, hold steady, don’t do anything, all right, all right.” It’s very familiar terrain to everyone, I’m sure.

This was going on for hours. My mind was getting more and more energised, brighter and brighter, cutting through defilements and obscurations left and right. The clues were getting more and more prolific, like: “Something big is about to happen.” At about two in the morning, noises began to filter into my consciousness: thump, thump, thump, rumble, rumble, rumble, doors opening and closing, heavy footsteps in the hallway. I thought, “Shoes in the hallway? Who’s wearing shoes in the hallway?” Thump, thump. “What’s going on out there?” As you can tell, there was a little interference to my enlightenment program. But I decided just to ignore it, telling myself, “It’s only a noise [humming]. Just me and the moon humming our way to nibbāna.” Even though I tried my best to ignore the noise, I then noticed there was a presence in front of me. I opened my eyes. One of the monks was leaning down and saying, “Um, could you come outside for a moment?” And my first thought was, “What do you mean, ‘come outside’? This is my big night. I’m busy.” I resisted the impulse to act out my thoughts, left the room, and found policemen in the hall. “Police? What’s going on here?”

What had transpired was that one of the novices, a very erratic young man called Robert, had got himself into some trouble. All the meditation during the winter retreat, coupled with never having done that kind of concentrated practice before, could send many people to the wrong side of the border. Young Robert not only had gone over the border but had traveled many miles. He also had emptied the petty cash box before leaving. Down at the local pub, Robert had bought everybody drinks and was discoursing to the entire assembly. Because he was in a slightly crazy but hyperlucid state, he also found he now could read people’s minds. He was eyeballing people in the pub and saying, “You’re doing this and you’re thinking that; I know what you’re up to.” So, people were seriously freaking out. Remember, this was England, and English village life really isn’t ready for shaven-headed young men in white coming into the sanctity of the local pub, offering gifts, and revealing people’s inner secrets. The English really are not very good at revealing secrets in the best of times. But to have someone behave so strangely and to divulge people’s thoughts was distinctly unacceptable. So, they called the law. The police, with equally great English common sense and compassion, understood this fellow was a little bit off and brought him back to the monastery. By then he really had lost it. He started raving and ranting, saying he wanted to kill himself.

The monk standing above me said: “Robert’s in deep trouble. He’s in a very weird state and wants to throw himself in the lake. Can you go help him? You’re the only one who can do it.” This was true. Because I was one of the most junior members of the Sangha, like him, I had been quite close to this novice and was one of the few people in the community who could relate to him at all.

At the time, Robert was living in a kutī in the forest. Most of the community lived either in the main house or at the nuns’ cottage, and the kutī in the forest was about a half-hour walk away. Part of my mind was going, “ut, but, but, look, this is my big “enlightenment night.” And so, my first impulse was to say, “Not tonight.” But then something in me said, “Don’t be stupid, go, you have no choice.” So, they loaded me up with thermoses of hot chocolate, candies, and other allowable goodies that monastics can have at that hour, and I went charging up to the woods. To cut a long story short, I spent the next three hours or so in his company drinking tea and cocoa and trying to talk him down. I let him talk and talk and talk and talk and talk. Finally, he exhausted himself, and around dawn he wanted to sleep. I realised he was okay and knew he was not going to do anything stupid. So, I left him and set off back to the house.

I was charging down the hill when I suddenly thought, “What’s the hurry? Why am I racing?” I slowed down and slowed down and finally I just stopped and looked up. There was the full moon setting on the other side of the lake. And then, all of the voices that had been going on in my mind during the first part of the night started coming back to me: “Any minute now. This is my big night. I’m really going places.” And it also came to me that, throughout that entire scenario, I hadn’t for one second thought about anyone but me—me and my enlightenment program, me awakening, me getting liberated. I realised I hadn’t had a vestige of concern for practicing for anyone else’s benefit. I felt about this small. [Holds finger and thumb a quarter inch apart.] How could I have been so incredibly stupid?

Just through having been in the presence of one suffering being, I could now see how my attention while meditating had shrunk so much that all other beings had been completely shut out. What started with a good intention—wanting to develop spiritually and be liberated, which seemed like the finest thing anyone could do with a life—had narrowed, narrowed, and narrowed until it became a matter of me winning the big prize. The incredibly shallow motivation of my practice was revealed. I wondered, “What was all that effort really for?”

It then struck me deeply how important the altruistic principle is. For even though one might be doing a lot of inner work and developing very good qualities and skilful means, that kind of neglect of others undermines the true purpose of our practice. Other beings aren’t just a token reference. Our community used to chant the “Sharing of Blessings” every day, and it was only after this incident that I realised, “Oh, real people really suffering. Oh, right, real people . . . oh.”

Having been so close to Robert when my mind was in a very alert and sensitive state, this notion of practicing for the benefit of all beings really sank in. From that time on, I started paying a lot more attention to the whole element of altruism and to consciously bringing in a concern for other beings. This wasn’t just a concept. I really internalized it.

At that time, many of the Mahāyāna teachings started to make considerably more sense to me. I saw how that narrowing emphasis on enlightenment for the individual had become one of the driving spirits behind what I was doing. Through that “personal enlightenment” perspective, the mind naturally starts to drift towards a neglect of the greater picture.

Click on this link for the source:
https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/423-small-boat-great-mountain

cessation (part 2)

Posted on February 15, 2024 by tiramit

By Ajahn Amaro
The concept of cessation is sometimes put forth as some event that we’re all seeking, where all experience will vanish and then we’ll be fine. A story from the time of the Buddha might help to expand our understanding of what cessation means. One night while the Buddha was meditating, a brilliant and beautiful devatā named Rohitassa appeared in front of him. He told the Buddha, “When I was a human being, I was a spiritual seeker of great psychic power, a sky walker. Even though I journeyed for 100 years to reach the end of the world, with great determination and resolution, I could not come to the end of the world. I died on the journey before I had found it. So, can you tell me, is it possible to journey to the end of the world?

And the Buddha replied, “It is not possible to reach the end of the world by walking, but I also tell you that unless you reach the end of the world, you will not reach the end of suffering.” Rohitassa was a bit puzzled and said, “Please explain this to me, Venerable Sir.” The Buddha replied, “In this very fathomlong body is the world, the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the way leading to the cessation of the world.” (A 4.45, S 2.26) The world, “loka,” means the world as we experience it through sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, thought, emotion, feeling. That’s what “the world” is—my world, your world. It’s not the abstracted, geographical planet, universe-type world. It’s the direct experience of the planet, the people, and the cosmos. Here is the origin of the world, the cessation of the world, and the way leading to the cessation of the world.

He said that as long as we create “me and my experience”— “me in here” and “the world out there”—we’re stuck in the world of subject and object. Then there is dukkha. And the way leading to the cessation of that duality is the way leading to the cessation of suffering. Geographically, it is impossible to journey to the end of the world. It’s only when we come to the cessation of the world, which literally means the cessation of its otherness, its thingness, will we reach the end of dukkha, unsatisfactoriness. When we stop creating sense objects as absolute realities and stop seeing thoughts and feelings as solid things, there is cessation.

To see that the world is within our minds is one way of working with these principles. The whole universe is embraced when we realize that it’s happening within our minds. And in that moment when we recognise that it all happens here, it ceases. Its thingness ceases, its otherness ceases. Its substantiality ceases.

This is just one way of talking and thinking about it. But I find this brings us much closer to the truth, because in that respect, it’s held in check. It’s known. But there’s also the quality of its emptiness. Its insubstantiality is known. We’re not imputing solidity to it, a reality that it doesn’t possess. We’re just looking directly at the world, knowing it fully and completely.

So, what happens when the world ceases? I remember one time Ajahn Sumedho was giving a talk about this same subject. He said, “Now I’m going to make the world completely disappear. I’m going to make the world come to an end.” He just sat there and said: “Okay, are you ready? . . . The world just ended. . . Do you want me to bring it back? Okay. . . welcome back.”

Nothing was apparent from the outside. It all happens internally. When we stop creating the world, we stop creating each other. We stop imputing the sense of solidity that creates a sense of separation. Yet we do not shut off the senses in any way. Actually, we shed the veneer, the films of confusion, of opinion, of judgment, of our conditioning, so that we can see the way things really are. At that moment, dukkha ceases. This is what we can call the experience of rigpa. There is knowing. There is liberation and freedom. There is no dukkha.

Continued next week: 22 February 2024

Excerpts from Chapter 4, “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link below:

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/423-small-boat-great-mountain

cessation (part 1)

Posted on February 8, 2024 by tiramit

By Ajahn Amaro

The translation of terms can be very interesting, especially out on the borders where words expire. I remember years ago looking in the glossary of a collection of Vedanta teachings. Where the Sanskrit had a one-word term, the English explanation was a paragraph long. In refined areas of consciousness, English is pretty impoverished. Our language is great at emotions. We’ve got scads of words for every shade of feeling. But for the fine details of the inner reaches of consciousness, it’s hard to find words that really give an accurate and complete picture and that do not cause us to lose our way.”

Attending to the Deathless

In the Theravāda teachings, one of the ways the Buddha talked about how to be liberated is very similar to a central principle of Dzogchen. As far as I can gather, both traditions emphasise that at a certain point we need to let go of everything and awaken to the presence of the Dharma. Even the most skilful states must not be clung to. This principle is translated in various ways, but the one that feels most accurate is “attending to the deathless.” In Pali, that last word is “amatadhātu.”

A great passage in the suttas (A 3.128) presents an exchange between two of the Buddha’s elder monks. Venerable Sāriputta is the Buddha’s chief disciple, the one most eminent in wisdom and also in meditative accomplishments. Although he had no psychic powers whatsoever, he was the grand master of meditators. The other elder disciple of the Buddha, Venerable Anuruddha, had spectacular psychic powers. He was the one most blessed with “the divine eye”; he could see into all different realms.

The two disciples were an interesting mix. Sāriputta’s weakness was Anuruddha’s great gift. Anyway, shortly before his enlightenment, Anuruddha came to Sāriputta and said, “With the divine eye purified and perfected I can see the entire 10,000- fold universal system. My meditation is firmly established; my mindfulness is steady as a rock. I have unremitting energy, and the body is totally relaxed and calm. And yet still my heart is not free from the outflows and confusions. What am I getting wrong?”

Sāriputta replied, “Friend, your ability to see into the 10,000- fold universal system is connected to your conceit. Your persistent energy, your sharp mindfulness, your physical calm and “your one-pointedness of mind have to do with your restlessness. And the fact that you still have not released the heart from the āsavas and defilements is tied up with your anxiety. It would be good, friend, if rather than occupying yourself with these concerns, you turned your attention to the deathless element.” (By the way, the Pali Canon has a lot of humor in it like this, although it’s rather similar to English humor and sometimes is easy to miss.) So, of course, Anuruddha said, “Thank you very much,” and off he went. Shortly thereafter, he realised complete enlightenment. This was very understated humor.

The point of their discussion, however, is really quite serious. As long as we are saying, “Look at how complicated my problems are” or “Look at my powers of concentration,” we will stay stuck in samsāra. In essence, Sāriputta told his colleague, “You’re so busy with all of the doingness and the effects that come from that, so busy with all of these proliferations, you’ll never be free. You’re looking in the wrong direction. You’re heading out, looking at the meditation object out there, the 10,000-fold universal system out there. Just shift your view to the context of experience and attend to the deathless element instead.”

All it took was a slight shift of focus for Anuruddha to realize: “It’s not just a matter of all the fascinating objects or all the noble stuff I have been doing—that’s all conditioned, born, compounded, and deathbound. The timeless Dharma is being missed. Look within, look more broadly. Attend to the deathless.”

There are also a few places in the suttas (e.g., M 64.9 and A 9.36) where the Buddha talked about the same process with respect to development of concentration and meditative absorption. He even made the point that, when the mind is in first jhāna, second jhāna, third jhāna, all the way out to the higher formless jhānas, we can look at those states and recognise all of them as being conditioned and dependent. This, he said, is the true development of wisdom: the mindfulness to recognise the conditioned nature of a state, to turn away from it, and to attend to the deathless, even while the state is still around. When the mind is concentrated and very pure and bright, we can recognise that state as conditioned, dependent, alien, or something that is void, empty. There is the presence of mind to reflect on the truth that: All of this is conditioned and thus gross, but there is the deathless element. And in inclining toward the deathless element, the heart is released.

In a way it is like looking at a picture. Normally the attention goes to the figure in a picture and not the background. Or imagine being in a room with someone who is sitting in a chair. When you look across the room you would probably not attend to the space in front of or beside that person. Your attention would go to the figure in the chair, right? Similarly, if you’ve ever painted a picture or a wall, there’s usually one spot where there’s a glitch or a smudge. So where does the eye go when you look at the wall? It beams straight in on the flaw. In exactly the same way, our perceptual systems are geared to aim for the figure, not the ground. Even if an object looks like the ground—such as limitless light, for example—we still need to know how to turn back from that object.

Incidentally, this is why in Buddhist meditation circles there’s often a warning about deep states of absorption. When one is in one, it can be very difficult to develop insight—much more so than when the mind is somewhat less intensely concentrated. The absorption state is such a good facsimile of liberation that it feels like the real gold. So, we think: “It’s here, why bother going any further? This is really good.” We get tricked and, as a result, we miss the opportunity to turn away and attend to the deathless.

In cosmological terms, the best place for liberation is in the human realm. There’s a good mixture of suffering and bliss, happiness and unhappiness here. If we are off in the deva realms, it’s difficult to become liberated because it’s like being at an ongoing party. And we don’t even have to clean up afterwards. We just hang out in the Nandana Grove. Devas drop grapes in our mouths as we waft around with flocks of adoring beings of our favorite gender floating in close proximity. And, of course, there’s not much competition; you’re always the star of the show in those places. Up in the brahma realms it’s even worse. Who is going to come back down to grubby old earth and deal with tax returns and building permits?

This cosmology is a reflection of our internal world. Thus, the brahma realms are the equivalent of formless states of absorption. One of the great meditation masters of Thailand, Venerable Ajahn Tate, was such an adept at concentration that, as soon as he sat down to meditate, he would go straight into arūpa-jhāna, formless states of absorption. It took him 12 years after he met his teacher, Venerable Ajahn Mun, to train himself not to do that and to keep his concentration at a level where he could develop insight. In those formless states, it is just so nice. It’s easy to ask: “What’s the point of cultivating wise reflection or investigating the nature of experience? The experience itself is so seamlessly delicious, why bother?” The reason we bother is that those are not dependable states. They are unreliable and they are not ours. Probably not many people have the problem of getting stuck in arūpa-jhāna. Nonetheless, it is helpful to understand why these principles are discussed and emphasised.

This gesture of attending to the deathless is thus a core spiritual practice but not a complicated one. We simply withdraw our attention from the objects of the mind and incline the attention towards the deathless, the unborn. This is not a massive reconstruction program. It’s not like we have to do a whole lot. It’s very simple and natural. We relax and notice that which has been here all along, like noticing the space in a room. We don’t notice space, because it doesn’t grab our attention, it isn’t exciting. Similarly, nibbāna has no feature, no color, no taste, and no form, so we don’t realize it’s right here. The perceptual systems and the naming activity of the mind work on forms; that’s what they go to first. Therefore, we tend to miss what’s always here. Actually, because it has no living quality to it, space is the worst as well as the best example, but sometimes it is reasonable to use it.

Continued next week: 15 February 2024

Excerpts from Chapter 4, “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Link below:

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/423-small-boat-great-mountain https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/423-small-boat-great-mountain

overlooking this to get to that (part 2)

Posted on February 1, 2024 by tiramit

By Ajahn Amaro

[Excerpts from Chapter 3 in “Small Boat, Great Mountain,” a free Dhamma publication available as PDF EPUB MOBI. Look for the link at the end of this text.]
Fear of Freedom
The Buddha said that the letting go of the sense of “I” is the supreme happiness (e.g., in UD. 2.1, and 4.1). But over the years we have become very fond of this character, haven’t we? As Ajahn Chah once said, “It is like having a dear friend whom you’ve known your whole life. You’ve been inseparable. Then the Buddha comes along and says that you and your friend have got to split up.” It’s heartbreaking. The ego is bereft. There is the feeling of diminution and loss. Then comes the sinking feeling of desperation.

To the sense of self, being is always defined in terms of being some thing. But the practice and teachings clearly emphasise undefined being, an awareness: edgeless, colourless, infinite, omnipresent—you name it. When being is undefined in this way, it seems like death to the ego. And death is the worst thing. The ego-based habits kick in with a vengeance and search for something to fill up the space. Anything will do: “Quick, give me a problem, a meditation practice… or how about some kind of memory, a hope, a responsibility I haven’t fulfilled, something to anguish over or feel guilty about, anything!”

I have experienced this many times. In that spaciousness, it is as if there’s a hungry dog at the door desperately trying to get in: “C’mon, lemme in, lemme in.” The hungry dog wants to know: “When is that guy going to pay attention to me? He’s been sitting there for hours like some goddamn Buddha. Doesn’t he know I’m hungry out here? Doesn’t he know it’s cold and wet? Doesn’t he care about me?”

“All saṅkhāras as are impermanent. All dharmas are such and empty. There is no other. . . .” [makes forlorn hungry-dog noises]. These experiences have provided some of the most revealing “moments in my own spiritual practice and exploration. They contain such a rabid hungering to be. Anything will do, anything, in order just to be something: a failure, a success, a messiah, a blight upon the world, a mass murderer. “Just let me be something, please, God, Buddha, anybody.”

To which Buddha wisdom responds, “No.”

It takes incredible internal resources and strength to be able to say “no” in this way. The pathetic pleading of the ego becomes phenomenally intense, visceral. The body may shake and our legs start twitching to run. “Get me out of this place!” Perhaps our feet even begin moving to get to the door because that urge is so strong.

At this point, we are shining the light of wisdom right at the root of separate existence. That root is a tough one. It takes a lot of work to get to that root and to cut through it. So, we should expect a great deal of friction and difficulty in engaging in this kind of work.

Intense anxiety does arise. Don’t be intimidated by it. Leave the urge alone. It’s normal to experience grief and strong feelings of bereavement. There’s a little being that just died here. The heart feels a wave of loss. Stay with that and let it pass through. The feeling that “something is going to be lost if I don’t follow this urge” is the deceptive message of desire. Whether it’s a subtle little flicker of restlessness or a grand declaration—“I am going to die of heartbreak if I don’t follow this!”—know them all as desire’s deceptive allure.

“There is a wonderful line in a poem by Rumi where he says, “When were you ever made any the less by dying?” Let that surge of the ego be born, and let it die. Then, lo and behold, not only is the heart not diminished, it is actually more radiant, vast, and joyful than ever before. There’s spaciousness, contentment, and an infinite ease that cannot be attained through grasping or identifying with any attribute of life whatsoever. No matter how genuine the problems, the responsibilities, the passions, the experiences seem to be, we don’t have to be that. There is no identity that we have to be. Nothing whatsoever should be grasped at.