themiracleforest:The Self-Made Prisoner: How to Become Free and Happy The Buddha taught that suffe
themiracleforest: The Self-Made Prisoner: How to Become Free and Happy The Buddha taught that suffering is caused by attachment. What attachment did he mean exactly and how can we rid ourselves of it? I can’t know what the Buddha meant exactly, but I can tell you what attachment means to me and how I practice letting it go in my everyday life. As humans living in a modern world, we grew accustomed to comfort. The comfort of our convenient houses and all around lifestyles. The thought of losing the comfort of our home is just one of the things that terrifies us to death. See? That’s one form of attachment, right there. We can easily grow attached to material things, not even realizing it, thinking that they actually are needed for us to survive. Our attachment to material things, however, is probably the easiest to let go of once we notice the attachment itself and realize that in reality, it serves no purpose, since our existence is not defined by our material possessions. What we can also be attached to, and what are much harder to let go of, are our own concepts and ideas. The image we hold about our own selves probably being the biggest one. That box we stuff ourselves into can become a torturous prison with a lifelong sentence if we don’t recognize the bars. When we are children, who didn’t yet label themselves as anything, therefor not restricting themselves, we are so free. Just think back to the time you were a carefree child, who didn’t take anything so seriously. An adult might say that that’s because we didn’t know back then what we know now, which is true - we didn’t know all the limitations we will put on ourselves in the future, we didn’t yet know the many labelled boxes we will stuff different parts of ourselves into. Read more» (via The Self-Made Prisoner: How to Become Free and Happy | The Miracle Forest) -- source link