Clingy: Who can detach and how?

Dhr. Seven to Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), DHARMA TALK, Wisdom Quarterly

Crazy wisdom Milarepa couldn't.

Regarding the Buddhist concept of letting go of worries or

• detachment
• nonattachment
• nonclinging, surrendering,

texts in the Buddha's ancient Pali language (as only Brahmins used Sanskrit) mention nekkhamma.

This term is generally translated as [internal] "renunciation."

But how can anyone let go, get unstuck, stop clinging, unadhere, and start renouncing?

It is not by willpower. That will only get one so far, and that ain't nearly far enough. Trying to detach that way is DOOMED to fail as the mind/heart will get obsessed thinking about the very things it says it's trying not to think about. Pink elephant, anyone?

Muscle power will get this done! (No it won't)

Mindfulness (sati) is the way. But what is "mindfulness" (or wakefulness, vigilance, presence of mind)? Everyone who talks about it -- and it's talked about everywhere nowadays by everyone -- seems to miss the key component.

Whatever it might mean in psychology or psychotherapy, it means something more in Buddhism. The key is detachment, non-entanglement, clear-seeing, non-reactivity, non-involvement.

To look at something mindfully is to see it freshly without all the baggage, evaluations, habits, stories, or judgments. It just is. And we let it be. But we observe it.

• Habits? We habitually approach (lust) the attractive, move away from (hate) the repulsive, and feel indifference (confusion) toward the neutral (boring).

We should all don robes to do this.

There is that quality some call the "observer consciousness" or the "watcher awareness." It's the sense that we're just dropping in to watch without getting involved, taking sides, or struggling for or against it. The Beatles, back from India and their guru, were "speaking words of wisdom" when they said, "Let it be."

Why watch then? Say one were a fresh grad student, arriving at the great university, and the great scholar-mentor assigned to teach you and make you a colleague were to say this: "See that tree there? Watch it." What would you do?

Rather than have ideas about it, form hypotheses, favor it to be this way or that, would it not be best to...watch it? Just watch it. Let it be and keep an eye on it. Don't let anything happen that isn't observed -- and remember what you've seen. The scholar-professor may ask.

What will her/his question be? "What did you see?" "What did it do?" "What happened?" The only correct answer is to be able to report what IT did, not as that differed from what was expected, wished for, assumed, or anything else -- just what did it do?

• Shed leaves
• welcomed birds
• transpired moisture
• absorbed groundwater
• swayed in winds
• shivered in breeze
• provided shade
• aimed leaves at moving sun
• grew sideways
• replaced leaves
• flaked bark
• dropped fruit
• grew in circumference
• tilted awkwardly
• became a high rise for ants
• exuded wax
• sprouted flowers...

You want me to watch this? What about it?

If everything reported about it, the observed tree, were in relation to the observer (you), it would be nothing but biased as usual. Thus tainted, little progress could be expected.

Real science, that is to say science well done, removes bias, accepts what is, adapts theory to observation (rather than forcing new observations or data to accommodate old theories or assumptions).

This Buddhist term "renunciation" (nekkhamma) also conveys more specifically the meaning of "giving up the worldly and leading the supreme life of spiritual exertion (brahmacarya) leading to awakening, knowledge-and-vision, and complete liberation/freedom (moksha/nirvana).

It does this because the true nature of things is NOT as we see them -- suitable objects to be lusted after, rejected, or deluded about. When we gain even temporary "freedom from lust/craving," which happens as a byproduct of meditative absorption (jhana, samadhi, stillness/concentratedness), we can see things as they truly are and thus let go, share, give away, donate, be unselfish.

• To say "concentration" is very misleading. Samadhi is not a doing. But in English "concentrating" suggests doing, straining, struggling, muscling, "efforting." Do that for a while, then knock it off.
• To say "stillness" is better. Start radically accepting, allowing, welcoming, letting things be, so that what can arise gets to arise (meets with the causes and conditions favorable for its natural arising).

I get it. Don't do it. Just allow it. Be mindful.

We can further reject them, abandon them, treat them with emotional equanimity or indifference, that is to say, use them without getting clingy or angry due to the idea that they should be able to fulfill us or not disappoint us.

Moreover, we will not be deluded about them, not taking to the wrong view (miccha ditti) about them that they should in any way, by their nature, be able to persist (permanently) unchanged, be personal, or be able to satisfy, fulfill, please, or behave as advertised.

They are advertised or advertise themselves as being enduring, enchanting, and ego (or self, or themselves, or personal, or truly what-they-seem, which they are not).

All (component) things bear these Three Universal Marks of Existence (ti-lakkhana), and if we saw that -- even in a glimpse, for a moment, in a flash, gestalt, or sudden understanding/satori -- we could let go, at least temporarily.

That is the power of a purified mind, purified by concentration/stillness called "absorption" (jhana/meditation). "Meditation" is not meditating, that is, sitting cross legged trying to concentrate or do something; it is a natural state that arises on its own when we provide the circumstances (causes and favorable conditions) for it to exist. It is dependently arisen.

Dare to try. But listen to how it's done.

The writings of Tibet's scandalous saint Milarepa are canonical Mahayana Buddhist texts that emphasize the temporary nature of the physical body and the need for detachment. Nonattachment is also a central concept in Zen Buddhist philosophy.

One of the most important technical Chinese terms for detachment is wú niàn (無念), which literally means "no thought." (With no thought there is no longing, grasping, clinging).

This does not signify the literal absence of all thought, but rather the state of being "unstained" (bù rán 不染) by thought.

Therefore, "detachment" is letting go and being detached from the thoughts that arise, persist, and fall away all on their own like a carousel no one needs to board or stop or impel.

It is to separate oneself from one's own [clinging to one's] thoughts and [personal] opinions in detail as to not be harmed mentally and emotionally by them [4]. Let them be. More

• Main article: nekkhamma
• Zen on Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal
• Buddhist Tara Brach teaches radical acceptance