Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 11-minute teaching, Venerable Thubten Dondrub explores the self-perpetuating trap of attachment and how it blocks genuine happiness and love. He describes attachment’s core insidiousness: the false belief that external possessions bring fulfillment leaves us with an inner emptiness that drives endless external seeking, preventing us from ever discovering the genuine inner qualities that could actually satisfy us. The discussion pivots to distinguish between attachment and genuine love—attachment clings to particular people or objects, whereas authentic spiritual love, once developed, naturally extends to everyone. Dondrub emphasizes that successfully releasing attachment requires faith in and cultivation of one’s own inner qualities; without this confidence, people fear that letting go will leave them miserable. The talk includes a brief comparison with Christianity and monasticism, and ends with a guided dedication of merit for overcoming attachment and following the Buddhist path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: Letting go_4.mp3
UUID: 3f812392-57b9-4018-924d-0972f9b51519
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Letting go of attachment (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 11.1 minutes
Words: ~1,033
I have to do more to get these wonderful expensive things. Right? So this is the insidious nature of attachment. It it it leads us out there and doesn’t enable us to look in there and find that there’s something really good in there. And because we don’t find that or experience that in there, we have to chase out there more.
And because we chase out there more, there’s no way we find that there’s anything in here. Because there’s this empty feeling in here, we have to find it out happiness out there. So attachment just just keeps us trapped in our limited beings, in our state of dissatisfaction. Yeah? Yes.
Yes. You said earlier that attachment and real life consciousness Yes. Yeah. In some ways, yes. I mean, there’s some debates about it.
Maybe we can talk more about this this afternoon. But, I mean, in in one moment of mind, you certainly can’t have these two things together, attachment and love. But, of course, since the mind changes very quickly, you can have a moment of attachment, a moment of love like that, or a series of moments of attachment for some time and then some love. I mean, generally, I would say that I’m not so wise, but that what we call love is you know, we do have some love for people, but it gets very much mixed and dominated by attachment. Yeah.
And if we could only get rid of attachment, then we could have some genuine love for people. But the point is, in the definition of real love, pure, Dharma love, spiritual love. I’m not sure if I really like this word spiritual, but, anyway, it’s kind of got some strange connotations, this word, kind of all this kind of unreal things. Whereas Buddha Dharma is something very sort of down to earth. It’s just working with our mind.
But anyway, pure love has a quality of being able to if you develop it, it doesn’t go just to one person. When you have real love for one person, it it automatically flows to everyone you meet. But when we’ve got attachment, our attachment is just you know, it’s stuck on this person, and you can’t move it to other people. Yeah. I love my family.
And the more you so called love your family, family, which is actually attachment, it’s wonderful to love your family. We should love our families, but the trouble is we’re attached to them and obsessed with them. All our energy goes just into them, And there’s no time, space, energy to love others. Always just with love in a very intellectual, superficial way. Dependence.
I mean, there’s many things to say about attachment, which we can think about this afternoon. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. If it was, sure.
But I think if the whole Buddhadharma was taught in schools at an early age, it’d be wonderful. But it’s not our karmic situation. But sure. Yeah. But, see, what I was trying to say also at the beginning is in in in the process of letting go of attachment, one has to understand that there is something that can replace it.
And if you don’t have a faith in your own inner qualities, there’s no way to get rid of attachment. Yeah. So this is also an essential part of the strategy I was trying to say, is that in the because we think our attachment believes that this is happiness, this stuff, and so if I let go of it, I’ll be miserable. Right? And you will if one hasn’t found any other solution.
So one has to have this trust, confidence, refuge in one’s inner qualities and start developing them. To some extent, yeah. And then you’re at this stage and I have to make a change. Yes, yeah, sure. I mean, this is what is happening in our society, that people have got all the things, found they are not happy, and have the intelligence and the honesty to recognize that and to say, Is there something else?
Is there another kind of being? But the Do you consider Christianity in that context in that context? Well, think the way Christianity is taught now is a very strange thing. I don’t know if that’s what Christ wanted or was teaching and wasn’t taught in the path. But modern Christianity, I mean, well not all of it, a lot of it, again, is this very external thing.
Yeah. And also, again, God will save you just by, you know, please God, take care of everything. I don’t think this is what Christianity real Christianity is about or any real religion. I Christians created monasteries where where you had to go and give up attachment. You found God by giving up attachment to this life.
That that’s the basis of all great religions, but that’s not taught any more because it’s quite hard, for one thing. Yeah? Yeah? The moment an ideal is born in its pure sense that the second time around it’s distorted or the moment it gets manipulated. And that’s one of the things that I think in this environment, Yeah, sure.
What was Christian mysticism? There was always this kind of, which is an unfortunate word, this mystical side of religion was always in the forefront of Buddhism. This kind of secret aspect, which doesn’t have to be secret. It has always been in the forefront of the Buddhist teachings, what one has to do, and made available to everyone. Okay.
It’s lunchtime. Yeah. I think half past twelve. Yeah. Twenty five to one.
So we can take a break. Maybe we can just spend one moment to dedicate the merit of this morning, the the positive potential we’ve hopefully built up in our mind. May this become a cause for us to really overcome our to see into our attachments, our desire attachment, and by seeing into it, really overcome it and therefore enable us to really follow the path to enlightenment, achieve that state, not only for our own sake, but for the benefit of all living beings. K. Thank you very much.