Shared by Evelyn Ruut

Lama Thubten Yeshe (1935–1984) was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher from Sera Je Monastery who fled Tibet in 1959 and settled in Nepal, where he and his student Lama Zopa Rinpoche began teaching Western students in the late 1960s. Together they founded the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT), one of the largest organizations transmitting Tibetan Buddhism to the West. Lama Yeshe's teaching style was distinctive — direct, psychological, and often funny, drawing on contemporary Western concepts to illuminate ancient Buddhist analysis.

This teaching, "Attachment is the biggest problem on earth," was published in Mandala Magazine, the FPMT's journal. In August 2004, Evelyn Ruut posted it to talk.religion.buddhism in the context of a thread about spiritual experience, attachment, and Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Her framing — "I will copy and paste it here below my signature. It is long but a truly excellent read" — is characteristic of how Evelyn used the newsgroup: as a vehicle for sharing genuine Dharma with interested strangers.

The teaching is a complete discourse on attachment as the source of all suffering, and on the path from ego-driven attachment through equanimity to universal love. Lama Yeshe argues that the Buddhist analysis is not Eastern but universal — a scientific account of how every mind generates delusion. His account of the wheel of life, the kindness of other beings, and the Buddha's transformation of Mara's arrows into flowers are among his most memorable teachings. He died in 1984, and is widely understood to have reincarnated as Osel Hita Torres, recognized by the Dalai Lama in 1986.

This teaching is preserved here through Evelyn Ruut's transmission to talk.religion.buddhism, where it found readers who might never have encountered Mandala Magazine.

I often talk about the shortcomings of attachment and how it's the biggest problem on earth; how we are always manipulating our environment or running here and there in an attempt to escape our dissatisfaction. But whatever we do, wherever we go, ego and attachment are our constant companions and we never find the peace we seek. Therefore, we have to recognize that the ego and attachment so deeply rooted in our mind are the source of all our suffering and problems, and face and destroy these internal enemies.

As long as we are driven by attachment, everything we do becomes very superficial. Even when we try to be religious by generating compassion, making charity and so forth, it's all on the surface and an insufficient answer to our problems.

If you check up honestly what you really mean when you say that you love someone, you'll find that your "I love you" actually means, "I want to take advantage of you." Of course you don't say these words intellectually, but if you check deeper within yourself, you'll find that expectation lies beneath your expressions of affection. You look at somebody and if you see that you can get something from that person, you say, "I love you."

This is very poor-quality love. From the Dharma point of view, we don't even consider that to be love at all. True love comes from understanding that others' problems derive from the attachment deeply rooted in their minds and is based on correctly realizing the nature of other people's problems. This profound logic gives you a deep reason, a universal reason, for helping others. Ordinary love is narrow, closed minded and fickle. As long as your love is ordinary, your narrow mind will keep singling out one object: "You're the only one for me; my only object of love and compassion." There are countless atoms in this earth, but you choose only one: "I love this atom." That's such a silly mind; completely silly. There are countless atoms throughout all of space, but tied by attachment, your squeezing mind chooses only one. Then, when you encounter another atom, you feel insecure. "I really love my atom. I'm not so sure about this other one." This is how your mind is. You fix on one atom and mistrust the rest.

When you look at the atom you have chosen, what you see is just a relative projection painted on to that object by your ego. Your ego projects that this is a good object, something you can trust, and believing this appearance to be true, you choose that object to be yours. Then when you see other objects, you don't like them and make up all sorts of reasons for your dislike; "I don't like its color, I don't like this, I don't like that." When you get attached to one thing you automatically feel hatred for others.

Of course if I use the word "hatred" you're going to interpret it emotionally, but that's not how I'm using it. One of the factors in your mind is dislike. Dislike causes you to disdain certain objects, to close your mind off from certain things. The basic nature of that mind is hatred.

You have these experiences because your mind is unbalanced, unequal. Your internal world is constantly being thrown out of balance by the two extremes of attachment and hatred. Your attachment makes you choose one particular atom; your hatred makes you feel that the other millions of atoms are against you. Perhaps I should use a more psychological term than "against" here, but I'm not sure what it would be. "Rejection" might be better. Because of attachment, you have the extreme mind of acceptance, and because of hatred, you have the extreme mind of rejection; automatic rejection of other. These extremes of thought make your mind unhealthy.

When we function normally as human beings, we communicate well with each other and seem to be quite healthy. However those two sick minds — the extremes of grasping acceptance and blind rejection — are always with us. When the conditions are right, they surface and make us clinically ill. I'm not trying to scare you, but you have to be aware of what's lurking in your mind, just waiting to come out. Therefore, it's most worthwhile to constantly check your mind. If you do, you'll never have any reason to freak out.

Normally what happens is that you just go along, never observing your mind, and when emotions suddenly arise, you freak out. Sometimes you don't even understand what's happening to you. All schizophrenic mental defilements, personal problems and the suffering of all universal living beings, comes from attachment.

Sometimes you think, "People don't trust me." Perhaps they don't. But other people's mistrust of you comes from your own attachment. They don't trust you because they pick up on the bad vibrations of your selfish attachment. If you didn't give off the vibration of attachment, others would see you as easy to get on with and not be afraid of you.

If you have a neighbor whose gross mind of attachment is strong, you're likely to be afraid of him. You avoid going near his house, and if you have to, you do so cautiously, afraid of what he might do. Others avoid him too. This is a common situation; we're all familiar with it.

When people don't like you it's because they can feel the vibrations of your gross emotions. Even the members of your own family might like each other, but not you. All this comes from your own attachment.

If you are going to learn only one thing from your Dharma studies, it should be that every problem on earth comes from attachment. If you can realize that, you won't have to worry too much about deficiencies in other areas: "I don't have good concentration." Anyway, concentration alone is not enough. Dividing the entire Buddhadharma into wisdom and method, concentration comes more from the wisdom side of the teachings, while recognizing the faults of attachment and changing your mental attitude comes from method.

To discover the everlasting peaceful realization of enlightenment, ultimate inner freedom, you have to practice wisdom and method together. When you do, it's like a powerful elevator and electrical energy come together. To reach the everlastingly peaceful penthouse, you need to practice both wisdom and method.

When people talk about evil, they always make it sound as if it comes from outside of themselves. There's no such thing as outer evil. Mahayana Buddhist art might depict horrible looking demons, but we never believe that evil is external. Evil is nothing other than a manifestation of ego and attachment. Attachment is evil; ego is evil. If you want to know the words for evil, they're ego and attachment.

The Kindness of Other Beings

Every happiness and benefit you have ever experienced has come from others. When you were born, you came from your mother's womb with nothing. You didn't even have any clothes. Your parents gave you clothes, milk, care and attention. Now that you have grown, you have clothes and many other things. Where did they come from? They came from the effort of other sentient beings. Maybe you think it's because you have money. You can't wear money. If other people hadn't made the fabric, you wouldn't have any clothes. The cake you enjoy is also the result of the effort of others. If others hadn't put effort into making cake, you wouldn't have any. It's the same with all your other samsaric enjoyments; everything comes from other sentient beings; from other people's giving it to you.

Is this difficult to believe — too much for you? Think of everything you've done today. The milk you had this morning — it wasn't yours, was it? Similarly check in detail everything you have. It has all come from others. You were born with nothing. Other people are so kind. Without the kindness of others, you would find it impossible to live.

Don't think that you've come up through society — studying, working, making money — and now you're doing everything yourself. This is just the intellectual way society has developed in order to run more smoothly. But you can't survive without an organized society. How do you get milk from the farm and fruit from the orchard to the city or wherever you live? Society has arranged all this to preserve and make your life and everybody else's easier. Society is also kind.

Another example of the kindness of others is that of reputation. You're very attached to having a good reputation, of being well liked. How can this happen if you're alone? How are you going to have a good reputation without other people? Praise — "you're good, you're kind, you're this, you're that" — comes from other people. Reputation, food, clothing, all your enjoyments, come from other sentient beings. Forgetting their kindness and thinking "I did it" is a completely mistaken attitude, totally unrealistic.

Check up. All the food in the supermarket comes from other sentient beings' effort. You can't do everything yourself. Other mother sentient beings expended their own energy; brought the food to the supermarket and made it available to you. I'm sure that your ego and attachment have never let you think that other sentient beings are kind. For such a long time, that thought has never crossed your mind. As I talk to you about this, perhaps you're thinking, "Oh that can't be. It's just Lama's thinking." But you really check up. It's important. Truly, I'm not joking.

If you don't check things deeply, your religious practice will just be emotional. You'll only have a vague idea of what religion is, so whatever you practice will be just empty ritual done according to custom. Religion is nobody's custom; Dharma has nothing to do with custom. The practice of religion, the practice of Dharma is the gaining of understanding realizations.

The problem with us is that we are so ordinary that when we look at religion, or Dharma, we do so with our senses. Dharma is not a sense object. Dharma has nothing whatsoever to do with sense perception. Dharma is the view of the wisdom mind, what wisdom sees.

Seeking the nature of attachment and realizing that all your pleasures and your life itself come from the kindness and effort of other sentient beings do not demand that you be a member of this religion or that. Dharma practice needs no partisanship: "I'm a this, I'm a that." Just do it; just realize.

Otherwise you hear some artificial idea, pick it up and try to practice it — Buddhism, religion or whatever else you call it — and it all becomes artificial and superficial. You have no understanding; whatever you do is of poor quality, almost hypocritical. Instead of being of benefit and solving your problems, that idea pollutes your mind.

Just look at what's happening around the world, with Communists, for example. The idea is radical change, external change. Trying to change the external world without first changing within is simply asking for trouble. I'm not talking politics; I'm talking human psychology. Don't just have a superficial view of human problems. You can't change things that way. Look deep, look wide, and don't be content with mere ideas.

You hear some idea and think, "Wow, that sounds good." This is common, especially amongst Westerners. They are so intellectual; they so love ideas. They don't care what it is. As soon as they hear something they like they're out trying to put it into action: "Oh what a great idea! I love that idea!" But they don't know how to fit the action and the idea together, which is much more important than simply the good idea itself. Otherwise the idea is like the sky and you're like the earth; the two never meet. Be realistic.

It's very difficult to equalize things without changing people's mental attitude. You can't force everybody to be equal. It's impossible. Without changing your mental attitude of attachment you can't equalize everybody. What you can do, however, is completely change your internal world. You can achieve total inner equality and transform your too-extreme mind into a perfectly balanced one, without the need of a radical external change. This is very logical.

When you achieve mental equilibrium beyond the two extremes, your inner nature is even and peaceful instead of conflicted. The experience of inner equality also gives you a vision of beauty when you look at the outside world. You can see that beauty lies deeper than the human surface, that human beauty lies within the person, beyond the form your sense perception apprehends. This extremely realistic view gives you a warm feeling for others.

How can you exist without relating to other human beings? It's impossible. You can't live without relating to other people. Throughout your entire life, your mind and brain relate to others. Therefore, other people have a great influence over what comes into your mind. That's why most human problems come from other human beings. We imitate each other. Human problems don't come from some far off place. To stop them, your attitude and behavior have to become humane.

When you realize how kind other mother sentient beings have been, instead of seeing them as repulsive or undesirable you'll see them as beautiful. Instead of rejecting them you'll have space in your mind to feel true love, profound, deep love, for all sentient beings, and these feelings will be based on deep, not superficial reasons. You'll feel inner equilibrium instead of your usual extremes of attachment and aversion.

The logical reason for feeling that all sentient beings are equal is that equally, all sentient beings seek happiness, and not one, yourself included, wants to be unhappy. Think: "All sentient beings want to be happy and no sentient being, myself included, wants to suffer. Whenever I experience an unpleasant feeling I want it to stop immediately. Although basically, all sentient beings equally desire happiness and freedom from suffering, out of countless millions of atoms, my fickle mind selects one to make happy and forgets the others. When I encounter a being who agitates me, I see it as an enemy and want to give it harm, and when an enemy finds good fortune, I get jealous." Such a mind is unrealistic, unbalanced and too extreme.

It's as if two hungry and thirsty people come to your door. You look at them both, but then choose just one. "You can come in," while telling the other, "You can't come in. Go away." You know that they're in exactly the same predicament, that they're both extremely hungry and thirsty, but your extreme, narrow mind picks one — "Come in, I love you; put on some nice clean clothes and eat and drink" — and completely rejects the other. This is the action of a narrow mind, a silly mind, an extreme mind. It all comes from the misconception of attachment, an unbalanced mind acting in an unrealistic manner that certainly has nothing to do with Buddhism or any other religion. Even if you check from the scientific, materialistic point of view, it's unrealistic; even ordinary non-religious people, looking into it, would easily see that this kind of mind is ridiculous.

So what am I talking about here, telling you to generate a feeling of equality with all living beings in your mind and to concentrate on it? Well, the way to do the Mahayana equilibrium meditation is to do analytical meditation first, intellectualizing a little on the equality of all sentient beings, as I mentioned above. Then, when you reach the point where at least intellectually you see their equality, let your mind remain in that feeling. Enjoy it. It's a remarkable experience. And maintain that feeling of equilibrium in your meditation session breaks — walking, eating, whatever you are doing.

Ego, Attachment, and the Wheel of Life

It's very important to recognize that all desire, hatred and other delusions and the problems they bring come from attachment and ego. Actually of the two, attachment and ego, it's ego that comes first. Delusion starts with ego: attachment follows. How is this? The concept of ego builds a projection of "I" and paints that polluted projection with a veneer of qualities. Then when the "I," which is really superficial, artificial, and illusory, starts looking at the pleasures of the sense world, it labels certain objects as desirable. Then attachment arises, sticking, or clinging to these attractive objects. This, very briefly, is the evolution of attachment.

The moment your ego says "I," you automatically identify your "I" as totally separate from other atoms, other people. On the basis of this view of two different things, you automatically see "I" as the most important one. Then, with attachment, your narrow mind chooses one particular atom as a source of sense pleasure. This then makes you view all other atoms as either irrelevant or objects of hatred. This is the way it all starts.

In other words, when you perceive the hallucination of the self-existent, independent "I," you immediately accept the existence of other. That other then appears, totally separate from you. If there were no "I," there would be no appearance of other. But you build up that separateness, and this is where all the problems of samsara spring from. All this is the work of ego, which is a product of ignorance. Ignorance causes ego.

Lord Buddha demonstrated this graphically when he created the wheel of life. You must have seen thangkas of this; they're very common. There are many details, but at the center, there's a pig with a chicken's tail feathers in its mouth. The chicken's beak holds the tail of a snake, while the snake is shown biting the tail of the pig. The wheel of life is not just some item of Tibetan culture; it is a deeply symbolic teaching created by Lord Buddha himself.

Once some disciples were looking for a gift to send to a neighboring non-Buddhist king. Lord Buddha told them how to make a painting of the wheel of life and suggested they send it to the king simply as a work of art, without any other explanation. After receiving this gift, the king kept looking at it, until one day he realized what it represented. The art itself spoke to him. He realized that ego, attachment and aversion were the greatest poisons, and the cause of all problems. If you too keep Dharma art in your room, it can have a similarly beneficial effect on your mind.

It works the other way as well: with movies, for example. Sometimes what you see on the screen makes you so sad that you cry. It's not reality; it's an illusion. Nevertheless, without discrimination, the mirror of your mind takes in and reflects whatever garbage appears before it. Things you see can have a strong effect on you. Therefore it's important that you remain aware of how the people and things around you are affecting your mind. Check up. Are they stimulating attachment or hatred? If you are psychologically alert you can easily tell, but usually you ignore your internal world. Your ego might be in there making a toilet of your mind, but you think it's okay; you don't care. On the other hand, if someone tried to build a bathroom on your property right next to your house, you'd completely freak out. It's so silly. You don't know what really makes you happy.

In the wheel of life, the pig symbolizes ignorance, the chicken craving, and the snake hatred. It is a perfect external demonstration of how, starting with ignorance, delusions evolve in the mind, and has nothing whatsoever to do with any Eastern trip, Lama trip, or any other kind of trip. It applies equally to all samsaric beings and is simply a scientific explanation of how everybody's internal world evolves.

Now you can see why Lord Buddha always emphasized abandoning ignorance and developing understanding. He wasn't the slightest bit interested in religious games, rituals or theory. His teachings always stressed actions based on wisdom as the only solution to problems. His key discovery was that the pollution of ignorance is the root of all problems and from ignorance comes attachment, craving, desire and hatred. Therefore, he always emphasized that only an integrated understanding mind could overcome mental defilements. You pretend as much as you like that everything's under control, but if you don't have understanding, you can't stop any problem.

If you can conquer your worst enemy, the internal enemy of attachment, you can control all external energy, all other people. If you try this using just the power of your own ego, it's impossible. You think you can control others, but you can't. There's no way to attain inner muni muni through the power of ego. Remember Lord Buddha's mantra, Om muni muni mahamunaye soha — "Control, great control, greatest control." To realize inner muni muni you have to conquer the inner enemy of attachment. If you can do that, you can control anything.

When Lord Buddha was meditating to reach enlightenment, the maras declared war on him and tried whatever they could to interfere with his meditation. At one stage they attacked him with a hail of arrows. In response, he went into single-pointed concentration on equilibrium and universal love and turned all the arrows into flowers. Nothing the maras threw at Lord Buddha could hurt him; he controlled it all, with his inner atomic bomb of universal love. With love, he conquered the whole world.

Colophon

This teaching was given by Lama Thubten Yeshe (1935–1984), founder of the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition (FPMT). It was originally published in Mandala Magazine, the FPMT's journal of Dharma, art, and culture. The date of original publication is unknown.

It was shared on Usenet by Evelyn Ruut (posting as [email protected] from Road Runner — NYC) on August 30, 2004 in response to a thread on talk.religion.buddhism titled "Attachment — was Re: Maslow's fallacy." Evelyn introduced it: "Did you know that Lama Yeshe gave a wonderful talk on this very subject? It was in an old Mandala Magazine. It is incredible. It is actually a talk on attachment, but it goes into this kind of gratitude. I will copy and paste it here below my signature. It is long but a truly excellent read."

Lama Yeshe was born at Tölung Dechen near Lhasa, entered Sera Monastery at age six, fled Tibet after the 1959 uprising, and established Kopan Monastery in Nepal with Lama Zopa Rinpoche, where they began teaching Western students in the early 1970s. He died in Ojai, California in March 1984. He is recognized as having reincarnated as Ösel Hita Torres, born in Spain in 1985 and recognized by the Dalai Lama in 1986.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

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