Joseph Goldstein - Liberation Through Non-Clinging

A dharma talk where Buddhist teacher Joseph Goldstein discusses the nature of impermanence and letting go of the grasping mind.


All the Buddhist traditions converge in one understanding of what liberates the mind. It is summed up very succinctly in one teaching of the Buddha: "Nothing whatsoever is to be clung to as 'I' Or 'mine.' Whoever has heard this has heard all the teachings. Whoever practices this has practiced all the teachings. Whoever realizes this has realized all the teachings." Nothing whatsoever is to be clung to as "I" or "mine." Non-clinging can be understood on two levels. The first level is non-clinging as a non-sectarian instruction for practice. What to do? Don't cling. There's no Buddhist school that says, "Cling." How to practice in the world? Don't cling. It hardly matters what form we build around that. We can not-cling in a Tibetan house, we can not-cling in a Zen house, we can not-cling in a Theravada house. The essence of One Dharma is the same. But non-clinging is not only an instruction of practice. On the second level, it is also a description of the awakened mind. If we want to know what enlightenment is like, what awakening is like, we can practice the mind of non-clinging, non-fixation, nonattachment to anything at all. It's the mind of open groundlessness.
~From One Dharma by Joseph Goldstein
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Ajahn Maha Bua writes:

Once when I went to practice at Wat Do Dhammachedi, the problem of unawareness [ignorance] had me bewildered for quite some time. At that stage the mind was so radiant that I came to marvel at its radiance. Everything of every sort which could make me marvel seemed to have gathered there in the mind, to the point where I began to marvel at myself, “Why is it that my mind is so marvellous?” Looking at the body, I couldn’t see it at all. It was all space-empty. The mind was radiant in full force.

But luckily, as soon as I began to marvel at myself to the point of exclaiming deludedly in the heart without being conscious of it . . . “Why has my mind come so far?”-at that moment, a statement of Dhamma spontaneously arose. This too I hadn’t anticipated. It suddenly appeared, as if someone were speaking in the heart, although there was no one there speaking. It simply appeared as a statement: “If there is a point or a centre of the knower anywhere, that is an agent of birth.” That’s what it said.

This is the critical point: as long as there is any identification with anything, any sense of the “knower,” the one knowing, then we are still bound by the conventional, conditioned mind. Through mindfulness and wisdom we keep deconstructing the sense of self until the pure mind is realised and only the ultimate ease remains.
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You see, dear reader (speaking frankly, without any intention to offend), you are a ramshackle collection of coincidences held together by a desperate and irrational clinging, there is no center at all, everything depends on everything else, your body depends on the environment, your thoughts depend on whatever junk floats in from the media, your emotions are largely from the reptilian end of your DNA, your intellect is a chemical computer that can't add up a zillionth as fast as a pocket calculator, and even your best side is a superficial piece of social programming that will fall apart just as soon as your spouse leaves with the kids and the money in the joint account, or the economy starts to fail and you get the sack, or you get conscripted into some idiot's war, or they give you the news about your brain tumor. To name this amorphous morass of self-pity, vanity, and despair self is not only the height of hubris, it is also proof (if any were needed) that we are above all a delusional species. (We are in a trance from birth to death.) Prick the balloon, and what do you get? Emptiness.

Take two steps in the divine art of Buddhist meditation, and you will find yourself on a planet you no longer recognize. Those needs and fears you thought were the very bones of your being turn out to be no more than bugs in your software. (Even the certainty of death gets nuanced.)

~From the novel, Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett



May you have happiness and the causes of happiness.
May you be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.



The gift of the Dharma excels all gifts;
The taste of the Dharma excels all tastes;
Delight in the Dharma excels all delights.
The eradication of Craving overcomes all sorrow.

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