The term attachment is often misunderstood by people when concerned with Buddhism. For there to be attachment there must be the attacher, and the thing to which the attacher is attached. A great example of this is a car, a Camero I owned in the late 1970′s. I had become so attached to the vehicle that I actually had nightmares of it rusting!

Attachment in other words,  requires self-reference, and it requires seeing the object of attachment as separate from oneself. The Buddha taught that seeing oneself and everything else this way is a delusion. Further, it is a delusion that is the deepest cause of our unhappiness. It is because we mistakenly see ourselves as separate from everything else that we “attach to.”

Since Buddhist believe that everything is connected, separation is impossible, therefore the delusion that come with attachment.

Zen teacher John Daido Loori said,

“According to the Buddhist point of view, nonattachment is exactly the opposite of separation. You need two things in order to have attachment: the thing you’re attaching to, and the person who’s attaching. In nonattachment, on the other hand, there’s unity. There’s unity because there’s nothing to attach to. If you have unified with the whole universe, there’s nothing outside of you, so the notion of attachment becomes absurd. Who will attach to what?”

When we think we have an intrinsic existence because we have a body we grasp at things in the ‘outside’ world and try to possess them. Instead we should realize that all things are subject to change and learn to enjoy them instead of trying to possess them

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1. … My-buddha-nature.info…

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