Posts Tagged ‘Attachment’

Money is a cancer.
It grows, devours us, as a metastasis.
Now completely detached from the value of life and its useful things, money is flooding in every body and mind with its putrid mud.
As in ancient religions, every moment, we sacrifice to this god evil our good food, clean air, drinking water, our lives, the lives of our children, and love and all the joy of our hearts.
In return for this wicked huge sacrifice, we receive back a handful of his useless black cancer that spews his desperate hatred in the world.

A beautiful girl in the village was pregnant. Her angry parents demanded to know who was the father. At first resistant to confess, the anxious and embarrassed girl finally pointed to Hakuin, the Zen master whom everyone previously revered for living such a pure life. When the outraged parents confronted Hakuin with their daughter’s accusation, he simply replied “Is that so?”

When the child was born, the parents brought it to the Hakuin, who now was viewed as a pariah by the whole village. They demanded that he take care of the child since it was his responsibility. “Is that so?” Hakuin said calmly as he accepted the child.

For many months he took very good care of the child until the daughter could no longer withstand the lie she had told. She confessed that the real father was a young man in the village whom she had tried to protect. The parents immediately went to Hakuin to see if he would return the baby. With profuse apologies they explained what had happened. “Is that so?” Hakuin said as he handed them the child.

With the first step i feel compassion for all living things.

Moving the second step i don’t cause more harm or damage to the universe.

Performing the third step i am free from the three poisons of the mind: illusion, desire and anger.

On the fourth step i begin to better discern what is truly right and what is really wrong.

The fifth step will teach me that every dichotomy is false and empty. Good and evil, the self and the outside world, the white and black, are all abstractions of the mind.

Moving the sixth step I forget greed and envy and i behave always with generosity, sense of justice and positive creativity.

With the seventh step i forget selfishness, pride and false humility to act with honor and true perennial generosity.

The eighth step will teach me that happiness is the maintenance of a dynamic equilibrium, with loving detachment.

The ninth step will teach me to fight against personal pain with non-attachment and to alleviate the suffering of others with a deep sincere and disinterested love.

With the tenth step I return to the whole, to revive again on the road to perfection, a path with no beginning and no end.
So i start to walk another path made of ten steps, always improving, to reach here, in the eternal everchanging present, the enlightment.

(Free adaptation of the “Vote of the 10 steps” of the followers of Ch’an Tao Chia)

We are the Whole

Everyone suffers.
We suffer because of our attachment to things, ideas and material goods that have nothing to do with our true essence.

Only the awareness of the whole can give us true happiness.
Only the universal love that flows from it can give real peace of mind.

Everything you own is a burden, it is useful if you still live it with detachment.
All the money you have is an illusion of value, because nothing has more value than awareness and enlightenment.

In front of human wickedness, violence, hatred, anger, ignorance, desire, envy and every negative feeling and emotion that dwells within you and around you, look at yourself and at the world with detachment and compassion.

Watch with compassionate detachment that everything is impermanent: your home, your things, your enemy, hatred and your own suffering.

Spread love, understanding, joy, warmth and positive feelings to sow the power of a Buddha in every human soul.

So lose the attachment to harmful and unnecessary things for your journey to enlightenment of a Buddha.

Dino Olivieri

”You can rejoice of the beauty of the people and things only without the desire and possession. Every real beauty is transitional and attachment to it is a source of secure suffering.”
Dino Olivieri