Q: How do we let go of the attachment? We know it’s not good. But it’s very difficult to let go, any advice?
A: The first layer of the renunciation is you see the reality of the suffering. You see people getting old, you see children dying in the arms of the mother and the father in the war torn country. You see that reality. You see a great poverty. People who are not tricky, people who are not manipulative just simply suffering in a very poor condition. You see also people who work very hard throughout their life, and then once they reached the pinnacle of their life, and they are thrown into a prison by the different government people. So, you see in the circumstance all the different countries.
First, you have this kind of a very large perspective about samsara. You look at a little bit like a cinema, like in a full dimension. You say:’ Ah! That is suffering. That is a great suffering. That is immense suffering.’ So, you have this kind of very wide range of suffering perception.
As you continue to practice that wide, wide perspective and that perception becomes a little bit smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller and more connected to you, connect to your emotion, your mind, your anger, your surroundings. That is the second stage. You start to see the reality of your own emotion, the negativity of your anger, jealousy, ignorance, pride, and so and so forth, the hatred and whatever the negative emotion name you have, just throw it in. It doesn’t matter. After that, you become a monk or you become a nun or you simply take a vow and become a lay practitioner, you become a retreat practitioner. It doesn’t matter. Whatever the category is, you’re simply practicing dharma, and that is the main point.
And then you practice the dharma, and then you have this kind of a hierarchy perception about the Load Buddha’s teaching about what is this, the emptiness teaching and what is this the Vajrayana teachings and then all the different Tantra level perception. You get all this important idea about all this mudras and mandalas, and the clothing and the ornament and object and the color, and all the radiance and the symbol and the instrument and the superstition and all that mixed together. You entered to a very different dimension, of the so called the Buddhist world. You get the taste of everything.
And then slowly, you practice Avalokitesvara, Green Tara. You keep it very simple. And then you say to yourself, then you say, ‘Nothing is really permanent. Everything is bounded to change.’ And then you get a glimpse of that glimpse of light in your mind. As you continue to do retreat, then you say, ‘Nothing is really impermanent. Everything is really bound to change.’
Then you get a little bit like a perception, a little bit like one step back. Then you start to have a very clear and joyful and mindfulness, clear state of mind a few moments. As you continue to do your practice, then you will start to say, ‘Everything is interrelated, but nothing truly exists in object. What a foolish myself. ’Then you laugh at yourself a little bit. You laugh at yourself. You laugh at your own emotion. You laugh at your pride. What an ignorant person I was. And then you start to see your guru and Buddha and Bodhisattva equally inseparable and equally combined and inseparable. ‘What grateful I am to have this teachings and practice. I’m very grateful in them. ‘ And then you have all this kind of joyful experience. Your mind is not trying to be a simplified. It becomes simplified in a very gradual way.
So, all that path, all that steps, is a journey and it is a path of renunciation. Okay? It is still renunciation. Like an example when there is a practitioner who says that until now I have been practicing all the visualization. And your guru tells you that, “Oh you’ve been practicing all the visualization practice. Now is the time to do ultimate meditation to the nature of the mind. ”Then, when you move to the state of the meditation, and you keep the visualization practice gradually based on your own practice, gradually based on your own experience, not abandoning it, but gradually becomes meaningless. That is still the path and the stage of renunciation.
So the renunciation it’s not something changing clothes or changing name or changing location. It’s a state of mind that we must continue to develop. If you stop developing, then the possibility to going back down has a higher chance.
With love and respect
Kalu Rinpoche
Facebook live Q&A
12, Jul. 2020
(End of this piece of Q&A)
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