Question: I’m struggling with how to want to achieve something.
Answer: That’s right. And stay steady or whatever. Yeah, yeah, go on, that’s right. So then?
Q: Let’s say that I’m recording an album with a producer.
A: That’s right, exactly.
Q: And I care very much about that album.
A: Of course, yes.
Q: And the result.
A: Right, exactly.
Q: And it’s really hard to work with someone else. . .
A: That’s exactly right. I understand.
Q: And so the question is how can we do both things?
A: I understand your point, totally. I understand, darling. I understand. Yep, I understand, exactly.
The key to success is to understand the neurotic states of mind and distinguish them from the virtuous states of mind. This is not how we think in the Western psychological model.
We’ve got love and kindness and compassion and intelligence and empathy, all of which we need to have – they’re all there, they’re our saving grace. And then we’ve got attachment and anger and jealousy and pride and depression. This is the stuff that makes us miserable, this is the stuff that gets us crazy, this is the stuff that causes our pain – and what makes a mess of our interactions – so we have to be familiar with them.
When it comes to the neurotic states of mind, Buddha says effectively attachment is the main one. This is such a cute word for us, but it’s got profound levels. Attachment is like underneath everything: it’s there completely instinctively, and it’s the main voice of this sense of an I.
Now let’s look at attachment in your scenario: there you are, trying to make a good cake, record an album, whatever. There’s a relative reality of doing it nicely because, say, you want to feed it to some friends. Nothing wrong with that.
But if you’re really attached to making a good cake – you’re completely neurotic, you’re freaking out, you’re getting so anxious, you’re panicking what people are going to think if the cake doesn’t work – you’ll go crazy and you won’t even be able to do it properly. We just assume that’s because I care about the cake. No! It’s because attachment isoverexaggerating everything.
It’s really hard to see the difference between that, which is anxious and worried, and an intelligent clarity that keeps you steady and thinks, “I want to make the best cake for my friends, I want to make them happy,” without being polluted by the attachment. That’s compassion. And that’s what’s hard, darling!
But when we hear this, we tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater and think, “Oh, well, it won’t matter, it doesn’t matter if the album comes or not.” “It doesn’t matter if there’s a cake.” That’s nihilism!
The proof of practice is when we can learn to see the neurotic, craving, worried need to be a good girl, and distinguish it from the intelligent clarity that wants to make a good album. But it’s hard to see this because it’s just so automatic. We don’t ever have the clarity separate from the attachment: they come together and attachmentpollutes the good part of us.
Wanting to make a good album has got to be based on some kind of empathy. If it’s just completely greedy – “I want the best album so I can be the most famous violinist” – you’ll be in trouble. You’re not going to ever get happy, you’ll just go crazy.
It’s got to be having some virtuous basis, some positive basis, some empathetic one, some compassionate one. You can be anything: you can want to become a multimillionaire so you can do many good things – there’s nothing wrongwith that, it’s not moralistic.
You’ve always got to be driven by some kind of ethical motivation; there’s got to be some good ethics in there and some sense of empathy and connectedness – that’s the valid side. Then the other one is the I-based unhappy one, neurotic, needy.
The trouble is the neurotic and the virtuous are all mixed together. So until we start looking deeply inside, we’re not going to see the difference. Do you understand?
You don’t have to chuck the baby out with the bathwater. But it takes practice. That’s why I say we need to practicepatience. If you’ve got to work with other people, you’ve got to have your goal, be clear.
You need to realize it’s going to be tremendously difficult to see your attachment – and the trouble is we only notice it when it doesn’t get what it wants, which is when anger arises: anger is the response when attachment doesn’t get what it wants; and anxiety is just this panic when we can’t control everything.
You’ve got to be able to want to control things in a good way, with patience and connectedness and hearing the other person, but staying steady, never losing sight of your goal. It takes a lot of inner work, very sophisticated. This is what practice brings. Do you understand me?