Buddhism Attachment Quotes & Sayings

The best way of learning to be an independent sovereign state is to be an independent sovereign state. — Kwame Nkrumah

I'd send Eleanor a dignified note. Then I'd have to fall out of love with her. That was the rough part. Everything in life is organized around people falling in love with each other. Falling is easy; but no one tells you how to fall out of love. I didn't know where to begin. — Hanif Kureishi

Fiction was the only way I stayed sane. But I didn't read romances or fairy tales. Nope. I looked for the gritty, the perverse. The dark. Because those kinds of stories gave me hope that there were far worse things in life than what I was dealing with. — Stevie J. Cole

Without discursive thought it is just dharma practice. Hope together with aim obscures. One does not cut through pride by meditatively cultivating the desire for happiness. If there is hope, even the hope for buddhas, it is a negative force. If there is apprehension, even apprehension about hells, it is a negative force. — Machik Labdron

If we take something to be the truth, we may cling to it so much that when the truth comes and knocks on our door, we won't want to let it in. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The only way to make men speak well of us is to do it. — Voltaire

One of the key paradoxes in Buddhism is that we need goals to be inspired, to grow, and to develop, even to become enlightened, but at the same time we must not get overly fixated or attached to these aspirations. If the goal is noble, your commitment to the goal should not be contingent on your ability to attain it, and in pursuit of our goal, we must release our rigid assumptions about how we must achieve it. Peace and equanimity come from letting go of our attachment to the goal and the method. That is the essence of acceptance. Reflecting — Dalai Lama XIV

It was my letting go that gave me a better hold. — Chris Matakas

They had the same fears that you have, the same aggressive tendencies and the same attachments, but they were freed in time because they believed. — Frederick Lenz

Thousands and thousands of incarnations and nothing to show for it. You must choose whether to follow the path of love or the path of attachment. — Frederick Lenz

You can eat beef on a weekly basis and become a genius intuitive if your energy is in present time.You can consume only organic food while running thirty-five miles a day and "om-ing" until dawn, but if your spirit is raging about your history and is saturated in regrets and unfinished business, you won't be able to intuit your left hand from your right ... — Caroline Myss

No political party is justified to continue in existence unless it clearly states the principles which it advocates, the platform upon which its candidates stand, and then with integrity, when and if elected, carry out those principles and live up to that platform. Except that be the case, we as Latter-day Saints should not align ourselves to any party, because we do not have the basis upon which we can make an intelligent decision. We must know what they stand for before we can favor them with our vote. — Henry D. Moyle

Beginners will first meditate upon equanimity. Once that is established, they will then meditate upon the remaining three [immeasurable qualities of love, compassion, and joy]....

First, toward all those who are relatives, attachment is to be abandoned as though they were neutral. Then abandon aversion for enemies as though they were neutral and remain without partiality. In order to be free from delusion even toward the neutral, have the intention to dispel the passions of beings all at once. Meditate like this without clinging.

- Resting the Mind in Repose (sems nyid ngal gso) — Longchen Rabjam

I had uncovered a widely held but overlooked attachment: our attachment to the view that every problem must have a solution. We delude ourselves that we can think our way out of a problem or we see it as a matter of finding the right person to advise us. We become beggars for our problems, asking numerous people for an opinion. So often, we refuse to relax until a problem is fixed, only to discover our inability to relax was most of the problem. — Sarah Napthali

Each being in the universe, therefore, inhabits a private world. It is as if the universe were populated by countless cinemas, each occupied by a single person, each eternally viewing a different film projected by consciousness, each eternally suspending disbelief. For the Yogacara, ignorance and suffering result from believing the movie to be real, from mistaking the projections to be an external world, from thinking that what appear to be external objects are independent of consciousness, and then running after them, desiring some and hating others. For the Yogacara, wisdom is the insight that everything is of the nature of consciousness and the product of one's own projections. With this insight, desire and hatred, attachment and aversion, naturally cease, for their objects are seen to be illusions. With the achievement of enlightenment, the substratum consciousness is transformed into the mirror like wisdom of a buddha. — Donald Lopez

Recollection of death also serves as a useful preparation for the time when one actually has to face death. As the concluding exercise among the body contemplations, a regular recollection of death can lead to the realization that death is fearful only to the extent to which one identifies with the body. With the aid of the body contemplations one can come to realize the true [impermanent] nature of the body and thereby overcome one's attachment to it. Being free from attachment to the body, one will be freed from any fear of physical death. — Analayo

I know there's evil in the world, and there always has been. But you don't need to believe in Satan or demons to explain it. Human beings are perfectly capable of evil all by themselves. — Tess Gerritsen

We have listened here to the delegates who have recalled the terrible human suffering, and the great material destruction of the late war in the Pacific. It is with feelings of sorrow that we recall the part played in that catastrophic human experience by the old Japan. — Shigeru Yoshida

Attachment leads to suffering. — Gautama Buddha

People normally cut reality into compartments, and so are unable to see the interdependence of all phenomena. To see one in all and all in one is to break through the great barrier which narrows one's perception of reality, a barrier which Buddhism calls the attachment to the false view of self.
Attachment to the false view of self means belief in the presence of unchanging entities which exist on their own. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The mess we are making of our planet is caused by our own greed, hatred, and delusion. Aside from the existential afflictions of aging, death, and at least some of the illnesses, every instance we see of human misery, injustice, affliction. or sufficient and pain will, upon sufficient and sometimes even cursory investigation, be shown to be rooted in the attachment, aversion, or ignorance of some person or some group of people together. — Andrew Olendzki

But sometimes you simply can't make yourself feel like acting. And in those situations, motivational advice risks making things worse, by surreptitiously strengthening your belief that you need to feel motivated before you act. By encouraging an attachment to a particular emotional state, it actually inserts an additional hurdle between you and your goal. The subtext is that if you can't make yourself feel excited and pleased about getting down to work, then you can't get down to work. — Oliver Burkeman

With attachment all that seems to exist is just me & that object I desire. — Sharon Salzberg

Love is the one thing that can really sure-enough lighten all of life's dark clouds. — Sinclair Lewis

Precepts in Buddhism are not imposed by some outside authority. They arise from our own insight based on the practice of mindfulness. To be attached to the form without understanding the essence is to fall into what Buddhism calls attachment to rules. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Sometimes the entire thing comes out in one burst. Sometimes you hack away at a thing for years before you get something that satisfies you. — David Crosby

The passion and knowledge of journalism as storytelling is incredibly infectious. — Tom McCarthy

The harvest comes in if workers go out in the field — Sunday Adelaja

Dare to live by letting go. — Tom Althouse

My goal is not to upset the apple cart, but to make it more accessible. — Tom Althouse

A married woman has the same natural right to acquire and hold property, and to make all contracts that she is mentally competent to make reasonably, as has a married man, or any other man. — Lysander Spooner

Attachment has to do with suffering, so it's really close to Buddhism, because Buddhism wants to relieve you from suffering; you're supposed to escape from suffering. — Gerald Stern

The problem with love is attachment; love makes you dependent. Unattached love - you love for the hell of it. — Frederick Lenz

I can handle a lot of work. I've always been able to. I'm a very focused individual. I come to my studio at about 7:30 in the morning and exit almost 5:00 P.M. In that time, those eight or nine hours, it's kind of laser focus on whatever I'm working on. There aren't really any distractions or anything. — Jeff Lemire

Live in joy, in love,
even among those who hate.
Live in joy, in health,
even among the afflicted.
Live in joy, in peace,
even among the troubled.
Look within, be still.
Free from fear and attachment,
know the sweet joy of the way. — Gautama Buddha

The possessions themselves were not the problem, it was my relationship with possessing. — Chris Matakas

We should not allow ourselves to be deceived by our outward show of 'civilized' manners and 'cultured' social behavior into believing that self-concern, desirous attachment, aversion, and indifference are steadily losing their hold over us. — Stephen Batchelor

In Buddhism, they say attachment to anything only leads to suffering. So when we laugh, it's our way of saying, 'I'm unattached to that.' You're tickled by it, it makes your lobes do something on their own. So humor is very important to me. I always take that to the stage first. — Jason Mraz

It would be wryly interesting if in human history the cultivation of marijuana led generally to the invention of agriculture, and thereby to civilization. — Carl Sagan

The secure attachment of Western psychology is actually akin to Buddhist non-attachment; avoid-ant attachment is the inverse of being mindful and present; and anxious attachment aligns with Buddhist notions of clinging and grasping. — Sharon Salzberg

When I was first introduced to Buddhism in a high school World Studies class, I dismissed it out of hand. This was during the hedonistic days of the late '60s, and this spiritual path seemed so grim with its concern about attachment and, apparently, anti-pleasure. — Tara Brach