To: alt.zen
From: trade@world.std.com (William Smithers)
Subject: Choosing Attachment (9408.attchmt.ws)
Date: 49940803
Quoting: |tyagi mordred nagasiva (tyagI@houseofkaos.Abyss.coM) 

|It has been said "we are not subject to attachment, we choose it".

|What are the advantages (real, illusory, anything in-between) that
|we may find or hope to find in choosing attachment?

Well, I think that what they meant was that you are responsible
for your own actions, and that attachment is a process that
can be altered consciously.  It is caused by "grasping mind",
which is the root of (most) all misery.  Recognition and
negation of grasping mind is a pathway to personal happiness.

The problem with grasping mind is that what you hold on to, 
you are also held by.  Since the nature of reality is inversion
of all things into their opposites, this means that you are
in for a wild ride.  Non-attachment is having the calm, focused,
Will to attain absolute selectivity in the placement and
displacement of your attachments.  In short, knowing when to
hold 'em, when to fold 'em, and when to walk away.

Note that this description differs from the "fuck everything, I
want nothing" approach that is commonly interpreted to be
non-attachment.  That is not non-attachment, it is isolation.
Anybody can be unattached in a cave in the mountains.  To walk
in a big, nasty city, and still see beauty and wonder in all
things is the essence of non-attachment.

-Will