August 9, 2017
Venerable Wuling in Attachments

It’s time to clean out the attic.

No, not that one, the other one.

What other one you ask? The one stuffed with the accumulated dust-gathering detritus from uncountable lifetimes—your mind. Oh, that one. To appreciate the true situation, imagine you’ve lived in the same house since birth. Now consider what your house’s attic might look like if, since that illustrious day you’ve been stuffing things into it on a daily, make that a minute-by-minute, basis. Your house’s top-most floor just expanded to unimaginable proportions. And those proportions are nothing compared to our mental top-most floor, the one we’ve been stuffing things into willy-nilly since time immemorial. Oh dear! Indeed. Now let’s say we want to move. Where to? The Western Pure Land. To move, we need to clean out our attic. There’s no time to hold up each item reliving fond or bitter memories. If it’s not a good seed, a virtue, an Amituofo, out it goes. When our attic is rid of the detritus, we get to move. Finally. 

Article originally appeared on a buddhist perspective (http://www.abuddhistperspective.org/).
See website for complete article licensing information.