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Lama Yeshe teaching at Royal Holloway College, 1975, London, England. Photo by Dennis Heslop, courtesy of the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive.
In 1975 during their first trip to Europe, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche gave a weekend seminar in England, once again demonstrating their charisma and knowledge, and the profound effect of Buddha’s wisdom on Western people. This seminar was published in the book Freedom Through Understanding and covers the purpose of meditation, bodhicitta, the importance of motivation, tonglen and the shortcomings of attachment, among other topics. Produced by the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive, this is one of the few works that feature both Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. This short course was also videotaped and is available on the LYWA YouTube channel.
Today we share an excerpt from Chapter 8 from Freedom Through Understanding: “The Shortcomings of Attachment” by Lama Yeshe:
From Tibetan lamas’ point of view, if your actions don’t change, even though you might think or say, “Attachment is the cause of all my problems,” it’s not really true for you; you haven’t realized it. Mere intellectual comprehension is not realization. It’s worthwhile to understand these things.
If we don’t identify the psychological root of problems we can never cut them off, never rid ourselves of them. In order to overcome an enemy we have to identify that enemy and know where to find him. Otherwise we’re shooting in the dark. Similarly, in order to destroy the root of our miserable energy we have to know exactly where it is; then the antidotes we apply will go to exactly the right spot. Even one atom of antidote will be part of the solution.
But that’s not what we normally do. Normally, our problems are here but we apply the antidote there. Like when things go wrong, we usually blame our family, friends or society. That’s totally misconceived. If we think that the cause of problems is external, there’s no way we’ll ever be able to stop them. In fact, that’s why, from the time we evolved on this earth we’ve never been able to put an end to problems. It’s impossible to do it that way.
Since we now realize that attachment is the cause of all our problems and acting under its influence causes us to create negative actions, we must determine that for the rest of our life we will not allow the actions of our body, speech and mind to follow after this deluded mind.
We have to change our mental attitude, our self-attachment to our ego, I, and to transfer that energy to others. That means we should concern ourselves more with others’ pleasure than always thinking only of I, I, I. We should make the determination, “Right now, for the rest of my life, I’m going to dedicate the energy of my body, speech and mind to others and change my attitude, my self-cherishing thought of attachment – excessive concern for my own pleasure – to greater concern for that of others. From the time I was born until now, all my pleasure is due to others’ kindness. Even my very existence is due to the kindness of other sentient beings; without it I would not exist, I would not have reached even the age of five.”
That’s true. For example, from the time we were born we’ve been drinking milk. It’s not our own milk we’ve been drinking; it’s that of others, it’s others’ energy. Think: this is scientific reality. And we need clothes; without clothes we’d die of cold. We don’t make our own clothes, do we?
Everything that preserves us – food, clothing, everything comes from other sentient beings. So think how others preserve our life and how without them we’d die. Most of us eat meat; without depending on animals, how could we eat meat? Animals are so kind; they give us clothes, meat and milk. Similarly, all the people who work for us one way or another are also kind.
Read all of Chapter 8 from the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive and watch a video of Lama Yeshe offering this teaching:
Watch Lama Yeshe giving this teaching on “The Shortcomings of Attachment”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxVZfCiC9Eo
From the Lama Yeshe Wisdom Archive website, you can order a print copy of Freedom Through Understanding, order an ebook, listen to the audio book, read the book online, access translations, or download a PDF.
Foundation for the Preservation of Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), is a Tibetan Buddhist organization dedicated to the transmission of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition and values worldwide through teaching, meditation and community service.