"Sid's Sack of Rocks"
Channel: One Mind Zen Collective
Date: 2023-05-21

Our pervasive sense of "self" creates (and is created by) attachments. There are some that are instincts--for self preservation--that are hard to shake. Whether cultural or not, we want to be young, if for no other reasons than we're that much further from death, and are less likely to be ill. And even though we've been told that attachments are a hindrance on the path to awakening, they're just hard to shake. 

But there are some other attachments that are by choice, not by instinct. Our self-righteous anger can feel really good sometimes. Our ability to elicit sympathy for being hurt is another feel-good habit. Feeling indignation about being slighted, or low self-esteem when we feel like someone has belittled us (and we believe it to be true), feeling the need to puff ourselves up by bragging, or by diminishing someone by pulling them down are all attachments we create just by thinking. They are not for survival, they're just self-made attachments that we really like. And that's OK, that doesn't mean we'll always have these attachments, since they're as impermanent as our health and youth.

But these attachments weigh us down, like the sacks of rocks weigh down Haengdal Citta's good friend Sid carries in Haengdal's Dharma talk from May 17, 2023 at One Mind Zen.