Ajahn Sumedho

        Attachment 
        Taking Personal Responsibility 

        Attachment
        First, you must recognize what attachment is, and then you
        let go. That's when you realize non-attachment. However, if 
        you're coming from the view that you shouldn't be attached, 
        then that's still not it. The point is not to take a position 
        against attachment, as if there were a commandment against it; 
        the point is to observe. We ask the questions, 
        "What is attachment?"
        "Does being attached to things bring happiness or suffering?" 
        Then we begin to have insight. We begin to see what attachment 
        is, and then we can let go.
        If you're coming from a high-minded position in which you 
        think you shouldn't be attached to anything, then you come
        up with ideas like, "Well, I can't be a Buddhist because I 
        love my wife, because I'm attached to my wife. I love her, 
        and I just can't let her go. I can't send her away." 
        Those kinds of thoughts come from the view that you
        shouldn't be attached.
        The recognition of attachment doesn't mean that you get 
        rid of your wife. It means you free yourself from wrong 
        views about yourself and your wife. Then you find that
        there's love there, but it's not attached. It's not 
        distorting, clinging, and grasping. The empty mind
        is quite capable of caring about others and loving in 
        the pure sense of love. But any attachment will always
        distort that.
        If you love someone and then start grasping, things get 
        complicated; then, what you love causes you pain. For 
        example, you love your children, but if you become attached 
        to them, then you don't really love them anymore because 
        you're not with them as they are. You have all kinds of ideas 
        about what they should be and what you want them
        to be. You want them to obey you, and you want them to be 
        good, and you want them to pass their exams. With this attitude, 
        you're not really loving them, because if they don't fulfill your 
        wishes, 
        you feel angry and frustrated and averse to them. So 
        attachment to children prevents us from loving them. But as we 
        let go of attachment, we find that our natural way of relating 
        is to love. We find that we are able to allow our children to be 
        as they are, rather than having fixed ideas of what we want them 
        to be. When I talk to parents, they say how much suffering there
        is in having children, because there's a lot of wanting. 
        When we're wanting them to be a certain way and not wanting them 
        to be another way, we create this anguish and suffering in 
        our minds. But the more we let go of that, the more we discover 
        an amazing ability to be sensitive to, and aware of, children 
        as they are. Then, of course, that openness allows them to respond
        rather than just react to our attachment. You know, a lot of children 
        are just reacting to our saying, "I want you to be like this.
        The empty mind-the pure mind-is not a blank where you're not
        feeling or caring about anything. It's an effulgence of the 
        mind. It's a brightness that is truly sensitive and accepting. 
        It's an ability to accept life as it is. When we accept life 
        as it is, we can respond appropriately to the way we're 
        experiencing it, rather than just reacting out of fear and 
        aversion.
        Excerpted from 'The Mind and the Way' 


        Taking Personal Responsibility
        With mindfulness, we can be independent of the positions other
        people are taking. We can stand on our own two feet and take 
        responsibility for acting in a virtuous way, regardless of what 
        the rest of sociery is doing.I can be kind, generous, and loving 
        toward you, and that is a joy to me.But if I make my happiness 
        dependent upon your being kind to me, then it will always be 
        threatened, because if you aren't doing what I like-behaving the 
        way I want you to-then I'm going to be unhappy. So then, my 
        happiness is always under threat because the world mightnot behave
        as I want it to.
        It's clear that I would spend the rest of my life being terribly 
        disappointed if I expected everything to change-if I expected 
        everybody to become virtuous, wars to stop, money not to be wasted, 
        governments to be compassionate, sharing, and giving-everything to 
        be just exactly the way I want it! Actually, I don't expect to see 
        very much of that in my lifetime, but there is no point in being 
        miserable about it ; happiness based on what I want is not all that
        important.
        Joy isn't dependent on getting things, or on the world going the way 
        you want, or on people behaving the way they should, or on their 
        giving you all the things you like and want. Joyfulness isn't 
        dependent upon anything but your own willingness to be generous, kind,
        and loving. 

        It's that mature experience of giving, sharing, and developing the 
        science of goodness. 
        Virtuousness is the joy we can experience in this human 
        realm. 
        So, although what society is doing or what everyone else is doing 
        is beyond my control-I can't go around making everything how I want it-
        still, I can be kind, generous, and patient,and do good, and develop 
        virtue. 
        That I can do, and that's worth doing, and not something anyone 
        can stop me from doing. However rotten or corrupted society is doesn't 
        make any difference to our ability to be virtuous and to do good.

        Excerpted from 'The Mind and the Way'