Until we’re highly advanced practitioners, it’s impossible to enjoy an object of the senses without attachment because attachment is so deep in our mind. You can’t just make it go away overnight – it’s an ancient, ancient habit – but we can start to practice. This is the point, what practice is.
If you like, there are four levels of how to approach the cake, a simple example.
At the very first level of practice in the lamrim – the junior school, entry level of controlling your body and controlling your speech – there’s no practice there of trying to enjoy the cake. At this level there’s no discussion of the mind yet – it’s just control. You’d have one or two pieces, that’s it.
And you might even decide to see the cake as kaka, see it as disgusting! When I first heard this, I thought, well, what a waste of time, why would you bother then, you know, why would you bother? But it’s a good method because you’re trying to, you know, in a very gross way, break your habit of seeing it as divine, because what attachment does is make the cake look utterly divine.
And then the practice would be to think that you’re eating in order to live – you’re not eating just for the pleasure. You would get some pleasure – you would have that, you would have the pleasure – but you’d use control because you’re trying to harness the energy of attachment.
This first level of practice is to control the servants of attachment – in this case, the body, the hands – and this already is a tremendously powerful practice: it eventually calms the attachment down.
Then at the next level, high school, the middle scope of the lamrim, you observe your mind and try to work on the attachment itself: seeing all the anticipation, all the excitement before you get the cake, you know?
You know what it’s like: you’re anticipating, excited, excited, waiting, waiting, and you know that’s attachment energy, because what it’s really thinking is, “Now I’m going to get happiness, and that happiness is going to last for eternity.” Attachment believes the happiness will last because we’re seeing it as permanent.
So that’s two delusions there: attachment is getting what it wants, which is wonderful, but we’re very nervous because we’re terrified it won’t last, so then we lie, we put this other lie on top of it: the pleasure will last.
And then we can start to think about how it’s not possible for sensory pleasure to last – this is scientifically true! As Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, the pleasure that comes from attachment cannot grow. In fact, we realize it can only diminish and eventually turn into the suffering of suffering.
And at this level we do the crucial job of analyzing the lie that attachment tells us about the cake, how it exaggerates its deliciousness. We learn not to believe in the fantasy.
Now at the next level, on the bodhisattva path, you can kind of have your cake and eat it too, basically. That’s where Lama Zopa gives all these techniques for thinking about the cake before you shove it in the mouth.
Even just to offer it, even just to think – even just to think – “Well this food, you know, was made in the kitchen by those people, how kind, and the animals who died for it, and the people who grew it,” and you just think that and you have gratitude and you thank them in your heart – already that can calm your mind down, already you’re seeing the cake differently, you’re seeing it through the lens of compassion. And you see it as empty of existing from its own side.
Already we’re creating so much virtue!
Finally, from the tantric point of view you see the cake as in the nature of bliss, you see it as empty, and you offer it to all the buddhas. And you offer the pleasure; you offer the cake – you offer the thing – and you offer the pleasure.
And not only that, as Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, according to tantra, the essence of the meaning of the word “offering” is to imagine the recipients – in this case the guru buddha – experiencing the joy of receiving it.
With all these techniques we put atomic bombs under our attachment!