Episode 151 - The Three Steps To Lessen Attachment

<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In this episode, we look at a three-step process to lessen attachment. The first step is to notice the craving mind and examine it. The craving mind focuses on its object of desire, exaggerates its good qualities, and fixates on it until it feels it can not be happy without it: it is at this stage that attachment has arisen. We might be attached to a new car, a person, being right, or an experience going the way we want it to. Our mind of attachment makes these things so desirable, imbuing them with attractiveness, and yet the attachment to them sets us up for disappointment, painful longing, or dissatisfaction. Attachment is like tasting honey on the raiser’s edge; the first taste is sweet, but pain is soon to follow.</span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">A three-step practice to lesson attachment</span></p> <ol> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Notice the craving mind</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Loosen the fixation</span></li> <li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1"><span style= "font-weight: 400;">Make offerings</span></li> </ol> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">You can meditate on the breath to loosen a fixation. Once you’ve noticed your mind glued to its object of attachment, this meditation frees and settles the mind because it focuses on a completely neutral object—the breath. </span></p> <p> </p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Offering a purified version of your object of attachment to all living beings is a profound way to lessen craving and create causes to be free of it completely, eventually. For example, you might be attached to buying a new home. Your mind is fixated on it; you feel you can’t be happy unless you buy a new house, but financially it would be reckless at this time. You could settle your mind and think, “may all living beings have safe and comfortable shelter.” Feel that your offering creates the cause for all