Tuesday, August 26, 2008

You Cannot Train a Fish To Breathe

You cannot train a fish to breathe air, and you cannot train ego to live a spiritual life. Enlightenment comes by transcending ego, not by transforming it. The attachment to ego may be the last attachment you surrender, but until you can accomplish this, you have not set foot upon the Path.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

People have been trying to give up attachments for thousands of years. In the monestaries, and the ashrams, and the churches. And conflict and disharmony has been created. The conflict of what I am versus what I should be. You cannot jetison what is, and what our species is, what your nature is. Instead of trying to give up desire and attachment, how about understanding how desire and attachment arises? And in that mindfulness, does desire and attachment disolve?

Alan Cathcart said...

I agree that it is futile to try to train ego to give up attachments; those attachments are the reason ego exists. What is essential is to recognize that ego is not Self. Self awareness does lead to the dissolution of attachments.

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