Robina’s Blog

3 June, 2021

The Buddha’s view is that actually the basis, the source, of our day to day suffering is attachment. If that’s true, then clearly we’d better know what he means by it. Otherwise, as Lama Zopa Rinpoche says, when you hear that Buddha says you’ve got to give it up, you’ll go, “Oh, I’ve got to give up my happiness? I’ve got to give up my heart?”

I remember Lama Yeshe saying one time, “I could tell you about attachment for one whole year, but you’ll never begin to really understand it until you start to look deeply inside.” This is interesting. Attachment: it’s such a cute word, a simple word. We use it in our culture, but in a very different way. So it’s really important when we hear Buddha’s views about attachment we understand clearly what he means by it.

For us it’s virtually synonymous with closeness, love. But for the Buddha it is very, very different. If you want to understand what Buddha’s saying, you’ve got to know what his definition is. And we’re not used to thinking this way, you know? If think about it, even just the word “love” – if everybody in this room gave their definition, we’d have as many meanings as people, and we tend to think that’s okay. No wonder we don’t communicate! 

I mean, if everybody had their own view about what one plus one was, we’d all be in serious trouble, wouldn’t we? “I’m allowed to think it’s seven!” We wouldn’t say that. We communicate nicely when it comes to numbers; you can’t get it wrong. But if I say “I love you” and you say “I love you” – wow, we think we’re communicating! But we’re not, because we have different definitions, different assumptions. When it comes to emotional stuff we’re very wishy-washy in terms of what we mean by words.

Attachment is one of the deepest neuroses, for the Buddha. But why and how? When you say, “My god, she’s so, needy, straightaway we know that’s not pleasant. “What a control freak he is.” “Oh, she’s so possessive.” Well, these are some of the characteristics of what Buddha refers to as attachment. It’s multi-faceted. 

Attachment is the source of most of the other unhappy emotions we experience in daily life – like anger and jealousy and all the rest. It’s deep in our bones. At the most primordial level it’s the deep feeling of dissatisfaction. We’re never satisfied: no matter what I get, not enough; no matter what I do, not enough; no matter what I achieve, not enough; no matter what I eat, not enough. As my mother used to say to me in relation to food, “The more you get, the more you want.” That’s profound. That’s the very energy of attachment, actually. It’s a driving force within us. It’s at the deepest level, it’s so instinctive. 

So, just naturally, on the basis of this deep feeling of dissatisfaction comes the next level of attachment, which is the obvious one, the hankering after something – because if you feel dissatisfied, something’s missing, isn’t it? So, if something’s missing, you’ve got to look for something to fill up the gaping hole – pretty obvious. At this level of attachment, attachment goes out to the objects of the senses: the food, the bodies, the handbags, the houses, the things, the sounds, the smells. It’s obvious. And that’s the very world we occupy: it’s nothing other than all the objects of the senses. 

Some people are more into getting a beautiful body; other people want the delicious food. Well, actually we crave both, don’t we? As Lama Yeshe says, “you people are ridiculous! You can never work out whether it’s the food you’re more attached to or your body!” 

It’s pretty obvious that the motor that drives us is this craving, this hankering, this yearning for the things out there, assuming totally that when we get them, we’ll get happy, get satisfied. That’s the philosophy of attachment. 

So there’s this feeling of not having. What’s missing? Then the thought comes – chocolate cake! Now there’s the next level of attachment, the manipulating to get it, the anticipating, the expectation. And now what happens is – and this is the killer – we get the cake and how does it appear to us? Totally divine! It looks unbelievably delicious. In fact, it looks way more delicious than it really is. The attachment tricks us. It makes the cake look so divine we can’t believe it, isn’t it? That’s attachment’s job: to grossly exaggerate the deliciousness of the object. 

Next, of course, we totally believe that when I get the cake, I’ll get happy. It’ll fill up the gaping hole. It’ll make me satisfied. Well, we all know it’s not true. Although it’s so painful, we notice that, after having got the object, actually we’re still dissatisfied. So then we try again, we keep going, each time hoping satisfaction will come. And not only that. From experience we know that not only does it not satisfy us, it actually causes us to crave even more next time. In other words, the more we get, the more we want. 

We’re all addicts, it’s just a question of degree and the object

In our contemporary models of the mind, when this attachment is severe we call it addiction. Well, Buddha says, “I’m sorry, guys, you’re all addicts. It’s a question of degree and the object.” The low levels of the dissatisfaction, the everyday yearning, the craving, the neediness – for us it’s just normal and we don’t even call it a problem until it’s too late.

And that’s Buddha’s point. If we start to know our minds well and look more deeply before something dramatic happens, then we can really do the work that he would suggest we can do, which is to fundamentally change our minds, you know. This is what he’s saying.

Attachment, then, is a honey-covered razor blade. We know it’s true that the more we get the more we want. Just test the last time you kept trying to get happy from eating cake. Temporarily, it tasted pretty good. But if you keep eating it – and you do, because you’re not satisfied yet – it becomes revolting. But we forget that. We go to the toilet, we go to sleep, and then the next day, having forgotten the belly ache, the acid reflux, the indigestion, again we hunger for the cake even more, again trying to get happy. Of course, eating the cake did bring some pleasure, but it’s probably just the first mouthful – it’s downhill from there!

It seems a bit depressing and a bit shocking to talk about our pleasures like this, but we need to look into these experiences, trying to understand how attachment lies to us, cheats us, fools us.

We think happiness is what we get when we get what attachment wants

The trouble is, the only way we know how to get any good feelings at all – and that’s a bare-bones way of saying what “happiness” is –is to get an object of attachment: a nice house, nice clothing, nice body, nice husband, nice family, nice job, nice money in the bank, nice food, nice this, nice that. It’s never-ending. This is the only method we know for getting happy. 

In other words, what we think happiness is is getting what attachment wants. That’s the motor that drives us. And it’s the way the world is. The mice and the dogs are the same – check their behavior. Because it’s universal, it seems so normal, so it seems a bit mean and cruel of Buddha to point it out, isn’t it? Is he trying to make us suffer or what?

Buddha says happiness is what we get when we give up attachment

Not at all. He’s actually trying to show us how to get happy. It’s just that he has different methods. What he has found from his own inner work, in the depths of his own mind, is this: happiness is what you get when you give up attachment. This is shocking! 

If this is so, we had better be clear about how to identify it. We don’t want to chuck the baby with the bath water. 

So, slowly, slowly, one step at a time. It won’t go away over night!