Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 38-minute guided meditation, Venerable Thubten Dondrub addresses attachment and desire as the core obstacles to mental freedom. He begins with practical instruction on maintaining focus during practice—recognizing and releasing hindrances like dullness, agitation, and distraction—then moves into the doctrinal heart: why attachment, more than anger, keeps us trapped in saṃsāra. He explains how afflicted desire exaggerates the positive qualities of objects and falsely projects permanence onto them, leading us to cling and depend on external things for happiness. Dondrub identifies the hidden message of attachment: that nothing good exists within us. He then outlines concrete strategies for countering it—avoiding objects of desire, controlling thoughts about them, managing external influences, and deliberately cultivating opposite habits through understanding impermanence and death. The meditation concludes with a strong determination to use this precious human rebirth to overcome attachment and free the mind. Suited for practitioners with some familiarity with Buddhist psychology and formal meditation practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11b Day 3 Meditation Attachment & Desire.mp3
UUID: 4e0070c6-e991-4a6b-aff0-e2575f24817b
Teacher: Ven Thubten Dondrub
Collection: Meditations DTL (Ven Thubten Dondrub)
Date: 2006 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 38.1 minutes
Words: ~1,666
Make strong determination to keep the mind really focused within the boundaries of the subject, being mindful so that we don’t give in to any hindrance, dullness and sleepiness, agitation coming from the mind distracted by sounds, pain, other sensations and our own thoughts. Make that strong determination to be very mindful so that as soon as any of those things arise, one has the courage to let go of them and the wisdom to and skill to apply the correct antidote if necessary, at least recalling the Guru Buddha at the crown sending very powerful white light to dispel the hindrance. So we can begin by reflecting that although, of course, the Buddha taught that ignorance is the very root of cyclic existence, and this is what we ultimately have to eliminate. Before we can do that, we have to pacify our attachment, reduce it, control it, because it’s that fundamental delusion that we follow that gives rise to all other delusions is because we’re attached to things that we get angry to protect what we’re attached to. It’s because of attachment that we have pride.
A combination of attachment and anger, we can have jealousy. All of the delusions branch out because, firstly, there’s ignorance and then attachment. And although anger is incredibly powerful and destructive, it is relatively easy to subdue, but attachment is very sneaky and so much more pervasive, arising much more frequently than anger. We don’t remain trapped in cyclic existence because we are angry with it. Is because we’re attached to it.
So to overcome our attachment in any way, to pacify it, we have to be able to recognize it. What attachment is, and attachment always goes with desire, afflicted desire. Afflicted desire arises because we perceive some conventionally pleasant object. And because it makes me happy, it gives rise it appears to give rise to happiness within me when I contact, when I experience this object. What desire does is then it completely exaggerates the good quality of something.
It’s making me happy, so it must be fantastic. It is fantastic. We project onto this pleasant thing, person, situation far more than what is actually there. And in the process, we believe that this object is permanent. It’s always going to be like that.
So afflicted desire is or the object of afflicted desire is always what is in reality a contaminated phenomena, something produced by delusion and karma. But desire sees it as something perfect, pure, beautiful, desirable, happiness, and permanent. Try to identify from that description how aspects of or examples of one’s own desire. That’s what we get trapped in, believing that lie. When we’re not following desire, maybe we have some clarity and wisdom to see that that’s not true.
But when we’re caught in the middle of desire, it’s a very foolish mind, a confused mind. So the object of desire seems so wonderful, so permanent. And then there is attachment. We want to be with this thing, this person, this situation all the time. How can we separate ourselves from permanent happiness?
So we become attached, stuck, dependent on this object of desire. We can’t live without it or we think we can’t. So we follow desire and attachment thinking this will make me happy, secure, comfortable, solid. But in fact, by becoming dependent on something that we weren’t depending on before, we have actually weakened ourselves. It is important to reflect that this happiness, that desire and attachment believes exists is in fact only an example of the suffering of change.
And reflect how the more we follow desire by believing in it, the more we follow attachment. Then our mind is constantly being drawn into the external world, believing that happiness is only there. And the more we’re caught up in the impermanent things of this world, there’s no way we can discover the inner world of our own mind. And so not looking at our mind, our mind remains confused, disturbed, and there is suffering. And because we haven’t that we only experience the dissatisfaction of our mind, then we look for happiness outside, and there it is or appears to be.
So we desire it and get attached to it. So the very destructive secret message of attachment is that while it’s telling us the obvious message that something out there is beautiful, happiness, wonderful, good, The secret message of attachment is that it’s telling us, inside me, there is nothing good, nothing wonderful. There is no happiness. It’s all outside. And the more we believe that lie, the more we pretend to see ourselves in finding happiness outside in small, meaningless things.
And we grasp onto them and get attached to them. And we have to exaggerate how important they are because there’s nothing else. There’s nothing inside me I’ve found. So through meeting the Buddha’s teachings, having this precious human rebirth, meeting the Buddha’s teachings, having faith in them, we can begin to discover that our suffering mind, in fact, has amazing, wonderful potentials. And through following Buddhist methods, we can begin to get, even as beginners, a little taste of those wonderful qualities.
And if we allow ourselves to taste those, then the outer saṃsāra, the outer supermarket, becomes less interesting. But attachment keeps arising even if we have faith and belief and we’re trying to give it up. It keeps arising because there are the imprints of attachment in our mind. We’ve been following attachment since beginningless time. So the imprints are there.
And then when we meet the object, we can be peaceful, no attachment, no desire, feeling contented. We may think, if we’re practising, that we’ve really overcome desire. But then suddenly an object comes into our world and instantly desire arises. So if we constantly stay around those things which we know are objects of desire and attachment, desire and attachment is just going to arise uncontrollably. So the first level of defense against our delusions that we have as beginners is as much as possible to avoid those objects of desire that we know are objects of desire for us.
But even if the object isn’t there or we even avoid it, consciously avoid it, if we allow ourselves to think about the object, again, the delusion arises. So it’s crucial for us to be mindful of our thoughts and have the courage, the skill to let go of those thoughts. To see them simply as thoughts rather than identifying with them. Even if from our own side we don’t actively engage in thinking about objects of desire, if we mix with people who are involved in these delusions, see nothing wrong with them, then our delusions, our attachment, anger, and so on will arise. Even if we’re not with negative company, then just simply by reading about reading things where attachment is presented in a positive way.
We hear songs, we watch movies, TV programs, all sorts of things like this. Our delusions, our attachment will arise. And, again, we have to have the strength of mind as much as possible to avoid these things. And then finally, these conditions that we’ve reflected on so far are all compounded by the simple fact of the power of familiarity and habit. The habit of following attachment and desire is just so strong.
We are so our mind is so familiar with attachment. Just the slightest thing sets it off. This is why with this precious human rebirth we have to seize this opportunity to cultivate our mind to create the very opposite habits, to become familiar with non attachment, to become familiar with the faults of attachment rather than what we think are its benefits. Right now, when we listen to attachment, we think being renounced and working for renouncement, that’s horrible. That would be suffering.
So we have to habituate our mind with seeing all the benefits of non attachment, all the benefits of working towards that state. So now, coming to counteract afflicted desire and attachment, one of the great methods that we can apply is our understanding, especially our experience, that we need to cultivate of impermanence and death. Attachment tells us that what we’re attached to is permanent. It’s permanent happiness. We have to allow ourselves to see that that’s a lie.
It’s all impermanent. It’s not going to last. Why put so much effort and energy and so on into something that is not going to last, does not gonna fully satisfy us. And also reflect that combining with the understanding of impermanence is the understanding of death, that I could die in a moment of strong attachment. The greatest obstacle to dying well peacefully is our attachment.
We don’t want to die with strong attachment. It could just produce incredible fear. So we can conclude the meditation by making strong determination that I must use this precious human rebirth, this amazing opportunity I have to learn to overcome attachment, to use the Dharma wisdom and methods firstly to see all its faults. I have the chance now with the mirror of the Dharma not to believe the lies of attachment but to see all its faults, how it cheats me, leaves me frustrated, discontented, doesn’t allow me to discover my inner potential. And to use this precious human rebirth to cultivate all the antidotes so that I can really pacify attachment, free my mind to follow the path, the liberating path, that will benefit myself and all beings.
Recall the Guru Buddha, the crown of one’s head, seeing the Buddha very pleased with our meditation, and because of that, gladly dissolving into golden light and that blissful light comes down through our crown, pervading our whole being, blessing our mind to be able to gain a complete, unmistaken, stable realization of all the faults of attachment and all the delusions, gaining the realization, blessing our mind to gain the realization of non attachment.