Currently I’m studying Heart Treasure of the Enlightened Ones with a Dharma friend, the Venerable Tashi Nyima.

This is my contemplation on the last two lines of verse seven of the root text.

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“Not long ago, your consciousness was wandering alone,

Swept along by karma, it took this present birth.

Soon, like a hair pulled out of butter,

Leaving everything behind, you’ll go on again alone.”

Explain to someone else (making it my own)

We become attached to so many things in our life, not least of all our bodies. We live our lives as though attachment were some kind of cosmic Krazy Glue, and if we just became attached enough, we could magically keep all the things, and people, and animals, and states of mind that we become attached to forever. But attachment isn’t magic. It’s poison. It slowly, over a lifetime, poisons our view by deluding us into believing that all we see, hear, and experience has some inherent, lasting reality. Attachment deludes us into believing that samsara is how things have always been, and how they will always be.

But these lines remind us that who we truly are doesn’t belong in samsara any more than a strand of hair belongs in butter. Or to use a 21^st century Texan analogy, who we truly are doesn’t belong in samsara any more than an apartment building belongs in the middle of I-75. If that were to happen somehow, we’d immediately recognize it as ‘wrong,’, ‘not belonging’, and immediate steps would be taken to remove the building. Why? Because the nature of I-75 is for cars to be able to move freely from one place to another without impediment.

In the same way, it is our nature to be perfect. No. We are already perfect, yet we find ourselves caught in the delusions of samsara. Since we are not of samsara, merely in it, it will sooner or later eject us; our true nature will cause us to be pulled out. When that happens, as it inevitably will, we will leave behind everything, including our bodies. These lines remind us that, as Jesus put it in one of the gospels, this world is not our home. This is not who we truly are. Therefore, no matter how attached we become, we will be pulled out, and all that we thought we had will fall away.

Apply to a past situation (how would it have been different?)

I thought I would write romance forever; especially after beginning to study the Dharma. I thought, no, there’s one thing in my life that will last forever. I’ll write romance till the day I die. And I’ll have the same passion I’ve always had to write it.

Today, as I write this, I see that it’s true: nothing lasts forever, no matter how much we want it to. I still write romance, but nowadays I see it as a business transaction, a way to make money and get out of debt, then stop. The most important lesson I’m learning in writing romance is that there will come a day when I simply can’t bear to write it anymore.

Looking back on the time when I thought I’d write romance forever, unto the very end of time itself, I can see how attached I’d become to the idea of writing romance forever. Here was something in the whirlwind we call life that was rock steady. I could count on it not changing, just staying the same forever. I can notice that as I changed, what I wrote couldn’t change (because forever means NO CHANGE), and so fiction writing became more of a burden than a pleasure. It gradually became an artifact into which I had to breathe life, a kind of living fossil in my life.

Having noticed that, I could have taken a step back and noticed that the real issue, what was causing me suffering, was that I didn’t want to leave behind the idea of being a romance writer. I could have noticed that more effort went into sustaining that idea than went into the actual (mediocre) writing of the stories. Seeing this, I could have worked with letting go of the idea of writing romance. I could have gradually worked with that attachment, touched in on the incredible pain that comes with attachment, the fear, the angst, and just asked myself, were those habits the kind of habits I wanted to strengthen? I could have asked myself, in a month, or a year from now, do I want to be more attached to this idea or less attached? I could have noticed that attachment is a choice, and I was choosing suffering over peace and clarity.

Apply to an (ongoing) present situation (how does it matter today?)

Writing has been the single most important thing in my life since about the fourth grade when I first saw the movie The Diary of Anne Frank and decided I wanted a journal. Today I still write fiction. But I write it from a different perspective.

I no longer have the wrong view that I’ll write romance forever. I have the realization that I’ll probably write the rest of this lifetime, but I have no idea what I’ll write. In working with writing this way, coming very slowly to the wisdom that it is impermanent, insubstantial, it gives me a way to work with what these lines are trying to get us to see.

If all that we experience is a mental representation, then all of us were drawn back to samsara by our attachment to an idea. Whether it’s an idea of fear, of wealth, of love, of victory—it doesn’t matter. Since all phenomena lack inherent existence, we will sooner or later come free, come unmoored from whatever we’re attached to. And the moment that happens, “like a hair pulled from butter”, we’ll “leave everything behind” and go on alone. This happens at certain stages in our lives, whether it’s a divorce, sending our kids off to college or leaving a job. We go on alone.

Even if we can avoid ever going through any of those situations, no one can avoid death. Kings die. Paupers die. We all die, and we go on alone.

I have come to regard fiction writing as something that is both pleasurable and profitable. But each day, I work with being less and less attached to it. I remind myself that it’s impermanent, insubstantial. Doing this was at first quite terrifying. But now I’m finding that letting go has a certain exhilarating quality to it, as though I’m living that part of my life as it was intended to be: moving toward having neither hope nor fear of the outcome.

Apply to a potential situation (bringing it home to play)

I’m reading a book about Henry VIII. For a man of his time, he had everything: wealth, power, good looks, women. But the one thing he couldn’t have was a male heir. Then toward the end of his life, in an age without opiate painkillers, he spent nearly every waking moment in terrible pain. Death, when it came, must have been a relief.

In the west, we’re very conditioned to believe that leaving things behind is a bad thing. Oh sure, we give lip service to “time to move on”. But what we actually do is hang on by our fingernails until things get so bad, it’s unbearable not to move on.

This is what I’ve done at my work place. I blame Salem a lot, but I’m coming to see that she’s just what’s pulling me out of that particularly rancid butter. From this I am learning how attached we can become to our own suffering. Even though I literally have anxiety attacks so bad that it’s hard to breathe just at the thought of going to work, I don’t want to leave my job. I want to stay because it’s the evil I know.

On Tuesday when I go to work, I can notice how every irritant that comes up is simply me being yanked out of the butter. I can notice how utterly attached I am to all the time I’ve put in there. I can notice how it’s terrifying to think of leaving everything behind and going on alone.

As these emotions come up and I work with attachment, I can notice how one day it won’t be a job I’m leaving behind. One day it’ll be my body I’m leaving behind. And the more attached I am to anything at all (like being a romance writer), the harder that will be, and the more likely I’ll be to wander alone and end up getting swept along by my karma right back into samsara, into the cycle of birth and death.

Again.