Still clinging to likes and dislikes?

 We naturally gravitate towards some things, and away from others. We may like tomatoes on toast and not smelly people. But if that tomatoes on toast were someone’s only food, and that smelly person had just lost the love of their life, everything changes. The person is still smelly, and the tomatoes on toast are still tasty, but its not the same, is it?

So everything is impermanent, yet at the same time there is a beauty in that impermanence. A flower is beautiful precisely because it is impermanent, more so than a plastic flower. Like and dislike is how we cope with life, on a conventional relative level.

It’s the clinging that causes the trouble. Clinging can limit everything for this lifetime…and beyond.

That is why we are born with an attitude, it reveals itself as we grow. This clinging creates a personality with an attitude. Clinging turns like and dislike into the addiction of uncontrollable desire and hatred. Then uncontrolled emotions turns into uncontrolled actions.

From an absolute view point there is no like and dislike, everything just is. It is just smell – or one taste. This is what appears before judgment.

If we can see things from an absolute and a relative point of view at the same time, we will not be so quick to react. Plus, one intelligence will have just increased. That’s our emotional intelligence EQ!

Three poisons

Desire, Aversion and Ignorance.

Desire and Aversion have a cause-

Ignorance.

Ignorance is clinging to an impermanent reality.

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