Each time you are
anxious and afraid, it is because you may lose or fail to get the object of
your attachment, isn’t it?
Think of
the numerous times you were tossed about by your emotions, that you have
suffered the pangs of anger, depression, anxiety, when in every instance it was
because your heart became set on getting something that you did not have, or on
holding on to something that you had, or on avoiding something that you did not
want. … to put it briefly, the moment
you pick up an attachment, the functioning of this lovely apparatus called the
human heart is destroyed. If you want to
repair your radio, you must study radio mechanics. If you want to reform your heart, you must
give serious, prolonged thought to four liberating truths. … The first truth:
you must choose between your attachment and happiness. You cannot have both. … The second truth:
where did your attachment come from? You
were not born with it. It sprang from a
life that your society and your culture have told you, or a lie that you have
told yourself, namely, that without this or the other, without this person or
the other, you can’t be happy. … The third truth: if you wish to be fully alive
you must develop a sense of perspective.
Life is infinitely greater than this trifle your heart is attached to
and which you have given the power to so upset you. … And so the fourth truth brings you to the
unavoidable conclusion that no thing or person outside of you has the power to
make you happy or unhappy. Whether you
are aware of it or not, it is you and only you who decides to be happy or
unhappy, whether you will cling to your attachment or not in any given
situation.
Look at
your life and see how you have filled its emptiness with people. As a result they have a stranglehold on you.
See how they control your behavior by their approval and disapproval. They hold the power to ease your loneliness
with their company, to send your spirits soaring with their praise, to bring
you down to the depths with their criticism and rejection. Take a look at yourself spending almost every
waking minute of your day placating and pleasing people, whether they are
living or dead.
How many
activities can you count in your life that you engage in simply because they
delight you and grip your soul? Find them out, cultivate them, for they are
your passport to freedom and to love.
