..续本文上一页ent with being human beings. But it”s not to be despised either and rejected, but it is being awakened to and understood. You can say you”ve not wasted your life if you awaken to it.

　　If you live a long life - say 100 years - following foolish ideas and selfishness, then 100 years have been wasted. But if you”ve awakened tom life - maybe the length of it”s not so long but at least you have not wasted it.

　　Q: How about non-attachment within a relationship

　　A: First you must recognise what attachment is, then you let go; then you realise non-attachment. However, if you”re coming from the view you shouldn”t be attached, then that”s still not it; it”s not to take a position against attachment s a kind of command, but to observe: What is attachment

　　 Does being attached to things bring happiness or suffering

　　 Then you being to have insight, you being to see what attachment is, and then you can let go.

　　If you”re coming from a high-minded position of thinking that you shouldn”t be attached to anything, then you come up with ideas like: ”Well I can”t be a Buddhist because I love my wife, because I”m attached to my wife. I love her, and I just can”t kind of let her go. I can”t send here away. I can”t throw her into the volcano. That”s coming from the view that you shouldn”t be attached. But the recognition of attachment doesn”t mean that you get rid of your wife, it means you free yourself from wrong views about yourself and your wife. Then you find there”s love there, but it”s not attached; it”s not distorting, clinging and grasping.

　　The empty mind is quite capable of loving in the pure sense of love and caring about others, but any attachment will always distort that. If you love somebody and then start grasping them, it tends to go off; then what you love becomes painful for you. For example, you love your children - but if you become attached to your children, then you don”t love them any more, because you”re really with them as they are. You”ve got all these ideas about what they should be and what you want them to be. You want them to obey you, and you want them to pass their exams. And then you”re no longer loving them. Then if they don”t fulfil all your wishes, you feel angry and frustrated and averse to them.

　　So attachment to children no longer allows us to love them. But as you let go of attachment, you find that you natural way of relating is to love, and you are able to be aware of them as they are, rather than having a lot of ideas of what you want them to be.

　　Talking to parents .. they say how much suffering there is in having children, because there”s a lot of wanting. You know, when we”re wanting them to be a certain way, not wanting them to be another way and so forth, we create this anguish and suffering in our minds. But the more we let go of that, then we find out that we can have an amazing ability to be sensitive and aware of children as they are. Then, of course, that openness allows them to respond, rather than just react to attachment. A lot of children, you know, are just reacting to: ”I want you to be like this.” And they get to that stubborn stage: ”I”m not going to be what they want.” It”s just reaction going on.

　　The empty mind or the pure mind is not a blank kind of ”zero land” where you”re not feeling or caring about anything. It”s that effulgence of the mind, brightness, truly sensitive and accepting - an ability to accept life as it is. And then, because we accept life a it is, we can respond to the way we”re experiencing it in appropriate ways, rather than just reacting out of fear and aversion.

　　Q: (Ajahn Sumedho replies to a question on attachment and self-view.)

　　A: Grasping is the problem. If you see grasping and understand that, then you have solved life”s problems completely. If you rea…

《Question Time with Ajahn Sumedho》全文未完，请进入下页继续阅读…