Attachment

It is important to note that desire is not attachment. Craving is the attachment.

The three Attachments that Causes Suffering are called Klesha in Sanskrit. They are referred to as the three poisons in the Mahayana tradition, or as the three unwholesome roots in the Theravada tradition.

1- Craving (Raga)Craving can be described as intense desires that people have for pleasing their senses, experiencing life, and protecting their ego.

Cravings are not simple desires, they are very powerful, disturbing mindsets that should be understood more as uncontrollable thirsts or urges.

Three Kinds of Craving

In his first sermon, Siddhartha Gautama – now the Buddha – outlined three sorts of craving: the craving for sensual pleasure, the craving for becoming, and the craving for non-becoming.

A. Sensual desires are easy to recognize, they are attachments to sex, food, objects, entertainment, comfort, etc.

B. Craving for becoming is am attachment to the desire to be famous or powerful.

C. Craving for non-becoming is an attachment to the desire to getting rid of something, whatever that something is.

2- Aversion (Dvesha)
Dvesha is a Sanskirt word meaning “aversion”, “repulsion” or “hate”, and is one of the obstacles that block a practitioner toward achieving Awakening. It can be defined as a fear of getting, or to be in contact with what we don’t want or what we don’t like.

The symptoms of aversion can manifest up as aversion and dislike, all the way up to anger, hostility, and wishing pain, harm, or suffering upon someone.

With aversion, we tend to resist, deny, avoid, and oppose unpleasant emotions, events, and people we do not like. Our ego wants everything in our life to be pleasant, easy, comfortable and satisfying all the time.

This disturbed state of mind only strengthens our perception of duality and separation with the world, with reality. It also imprisons us into a vicious cycle of continuously experiencing conflict and finding enemies wherever we go.

3- Ignorance
What is ignorance from a Buddhist perspective? True ignorance has nothing to do with someone’s level education, but with one’s incapacity to see the true nature of the self and the world, to see things as they really are, without the filter of the discriminating mind.

The Buddha believed that there are numerous truths in the world that people are unaware or uninformed of, because of the limits of their comprehension and knowledge.

From a Buddhist perspective, we’re having all those desires because we seek happiness. We try to find happiness in money, consumption, food, alcohol, drugs, sex, etc. We falsely believe that we’ll finally find it by eating more chocolate cake, by drinking more red wine, by buying the latest iPhone, by having a raise, by having a bigger house or by having more sex with more partners.

By being a slave to desire, we become complicated, disturbed, frustrated, and angry, which in return creates even more suffering.

When we’re no longer obsessed with satisfying our own selfish desires, we find that our mind transforms, and compassion and kindness grow in ourselves.

This liberation from attachment and clinging free our mind from troubles and worries. This attainment is called Nirvana in Sanskrit and Satori in Japanese.
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When we’re worried, we are tightly attached to how we want things to be, rather than relaxing into accepting whatever might happen when we put forth our best effort. When we’re frustrated with someone, it’s because we’re attached to how we want them to be, rather than accepting them as the wonderful flawed human they are.

At the heart of things, attachment is about not wanting things to be the way they are. You want something different. That’s because there’s something about the present moment, about the person in front of you, about yourself, that you don’t like. By meditating, practicing compassion and interdependence, you can start to trust that things are OK just as they are. They might not be “ideal,” but they are just fine. Beautiful even. And you start to become more aware of your continual rejection of the present moment, and open up to the actuality of this moment instead. Over and over, this is the practice, opening and investigating the moment with curiosity, accepting it as it is.

When we detach from someone, we stop expecting so much from them. Also, our happiness becomes authentic. Instead of looking outside ourselves to complete our happiness, we understand that we are already complete and can achieve full happiness on our own. Any happiness coming from the outside is merely an addition to our already existent happiness—but it’s not dependent on the absence or presence of the object or person.

Let’s not forget that that the person to whom we are attached becomes happier as well, because they’re no longer pressured to fit into the image we have of them, or what we expect of them. They start giving as much as they can, not what we expect them to give. In this way, we can experience true love for people, which is quite different than the attachment kind of love.

In order to let go of attachment to others, Buddhists advise us to start looking within, so we can love ourselves. The fact is, we always seek in others what is missing within ourselves. It doesn’t mean, for instance, that if we start loving ourselves, we stop wanting others to love us.

On the contrary, we still want to be loved, but we also appreciate the nature of love that’s being given to us. We accept whatever we are receiving, instead of trying to manipulate it.

When you start practicing non-attachment in your intimate relationships, you will have found one of the pathways that leads to unconditional love. Only a non-attached person can love unconditionally, that is, without expecting anything in return.

When you start practicing non-attachment in your intimate relationships, you will have found one of the pathways that leads to unconditional love. Only a non-attached person can love unconditionally, that is, without expecting anything in return.

Being attached to someone means that you love him or her primarily because of his or her proximity or convenience, which makes you feel good. But what will happen when your loved one does something that upsets you, or simply decides to leave? All too often, attached love then turns into bitterness, anger and resentment.

When you love with non-attachment, you are not concerned with the results of your loving, which emanates from you just like perfume from a flower. You can love out of a genuine overflow of energy from the heart, without any conditions or limitations. If attached love expresses itself by the words “I love you, because…”, detached love just says “I love you,” without any conditions. Going one step further, you will realize that pure, unconditional love, is best expressed by the words “I love.” As a great mystic once said: “Love is not a relationship, it is a state of being.”

Our problems don’t lie outside ourselves; they’re inside us. Whatever your mind makes up right now, realize it’s a lie. The only truth is your naked experience right at this moment.