The primordial energy of attachment is dissatisfaction. It’s a symptom, if you like, of having practiced attachment for lifetimes. We wake up in this life totally believing we don’t have enough, we are not enough. It’s as if there’s nothing inside and happiness has to come from the cake out there – in fact, happiness is the cake!
So how to be content? That’s the trick. Lama Yeshe says, we need to learn to be content. It’s a mental state, not a function of the senses at all.
The very first level of practice is controlling the servants of attachment – the body and the speech – not the attachment itself, which is the mind. I think we miss this one – even us good Buddhists, we miss this point: we get all excited about meditation and forget about behavior.
If we look in the lamrim, we can see the first level of practice is not about our mind yet: seven of the ten non-virtues are about the body and the speech. The overt practice is controlling the body and speech, but already, implicitly, you’re helping your mind.
That’s why living in vows is so powerful, that’s why discipline is so powerful, that’s why the purification practice is so powerful.
As we learn to control our body and speech, then our mind can learn to become content – but we have to practice it. Attachment is driving the hand to reach out for the third piece – of course it is! – but when we consciously control it, we can then rejoice, be glad for ourselves. And that will bring a happy mental feeling, which is contentment: that is practicing being content.
Working on your body and speech is a profound level of practice, but it’s kind of boring initially. But we can learn, like Lama says, to be content. Not only are we merely not following attachment, nor even reinterpreting the cake, but we are also practicing thinking the thought, “I’m content, I’ve had enough.”
These thoughts put atomic bombs under the dissatisfaction.
As my mother used to tell me, “The more you get, the more you want.” If you keep following the cake, then all you’re doing is creating more attachment: it’s a bottomless pit of unbearable dissatisfaction. Remember: contentment cannot come from cake. Sensory consciousness can never be satisfied.
That’s why we’ve got to practice. Even when you go on a diet, having these thoughts is a good practice because you’ve decided no more than one piece. What we tend to do is use our decision as a weapon against ourselves, and starve and be miserable. But be content with it, which means actually conjure up the thought and say, “One piece is enough and I want to be content with it.”
If you practice being content every day, guess what? You’ll become content. It’s a mental state that has to be cultivated.
And that loosens the grip of the attachment story of the cake existing out there. It’s very internal, you know? Another approach, of course, is not believing the attachment story. As Lama Zopa says, “Bad enough that the cake appears to us as totally divine, through the lenses of attachment, but the killer is we believe the story.” This is a profound one, direct: just know that the way the cake appears to you isn’t true. That’s a direct antidote to attachment.
There’s a multitude of techniques, different methods: controlling your body and speech; and praising yourself; and then rejoicing and being content.
But the main thing I’m emphasizing is that contentment is mental – not sensory!
As a child, I would eat until I was stuffed. Do you understand? Because I thought that was contentment. I didn’t know anything else: you eat until you can’t eat more. No, that’s just being greedy, and then you die of exhaustion, or you want to vomit, you know?
Contentment is mental! Happiness, finally, is mental! So we practice having these thoughts – even though we don’t believe them in the beginning. When you say, “I’m content,” and attachment’s screaming, “I want four more pieces,” you’re not content yet.
But give it time, please. The only reason we believe in attachment is because we’ve been believing its story for forty-two eons. Now we have to start living in contentment. We’ve got to kind of fake it till we make it.