Friday, June 11, 2010

Attachment: Let Go, Get Ahead

Roshan Thiran (Thestar.com.my)


Once a monkey has gotten hold of food in its hand, it is close to impossible to get the primate to let it go. And this makes trapping it easy for monkey catchers.

In Malaysia, a villager developed the ingenious “Monkey Trap” by burying a coconut and drilling a narrow hole big enough for a monkey’s hand to go through. He would place pieces of fruit, nuts or meat on skewers in the coconut. The odor and smell of the treats attracts monkeys to reach into the narrow opening and grab hold of the treats. As the monkey attempts to extract the treats, it finds that its fistful of food will not fit through the narrow opening.

The monkey will scream in frustration as he continues to hold on to his food and attempts to remove his hand from the coconut. The villager comes over and drops a net over the monkey. Even though the monkey sees the villager approaching, so intent is it on keeping the food that it grips the morsels even tighter and tries even harder to dislodge its fist.

Nothing is keeping that monkey captive except the force of its own attachment. All it has to do to escape is let go of the food. But so strong is the force of greed that it is a rare monkey which can let go. More>>

The Judgment Trap Reverend Ryugen Watanabe, Osho


Everything can be looked at in many different ways. Most people only believe what they see. But forget that it is only their way of seeing and not necessarily somebody else's.

Zen teaches us to see things as they are. Almost no one sees things as they are. For example, three persons are talking about God, but all three have different concepts of God. While all three seem to be communicating well with one another, they are not really communicating at all.

In another example, two people are looking at a mountain, one of them admires the beauty of the mountain, its height, its color, its shape. But when he turns to another person, he cannot understand why that person cannot appreciate the mountain, because he just broke up with his girlfriend of many years. It is the same mountain that both are looking at and yet it is a different mountain.

This shows us why people do not see things as they really are. They see the world through colored glasses: If you wear yellow glasses then everything looks yellow; green glasses turn everything green. And if you are caught up in thoughts of sexuality, then everything you see is related to sex, whether you see a pencil or a cup. If people who think about stealing were to meet the Buddha, they would only see Buddha's pockets and not the Buddha. More>>

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