You may be going along completely fine, but as soon as you smell those chocolate chip cookies, an attachment arises. Today I did not smell them, no attachment. Yesterday I smelled them, attachment. Contact with the object.

This is one of the reasons why, when you are doing a retreat, you try to go to a quiet place. Because when you are at home you have contact with all the objects that give rise to your attachment, to your anger, to your jealousy, to your arrogance, and to all these kinds of things. This is not an escape method from reality. Avoiding the object gives you some mental space to be able to go deeper in your practice and understand how the afflictions arise, understand how they are based on ignorance, and understand how the wisdom of realising emptiness counteracts the ignorance, then you cultivate that wisdom. You are not escaping. It is like taking a break so that you can really develop your strong antidotal powers.

If you want to be a doctor, just having the motivation to be a doctor is not going to make you one. In the same way, just having the motivation not to have afflictions arise is not going to make them not arise. If you want to be a doctor you have to do something, you have to go to medical school. You would not want somebody who has not been to medical school and with a surgery internship to operate on you. In the same way, we need a break to go deeper in our practice to develop antidotes to the afflictions. That is why we go to a quieter place for retreats.

We can see that effect quite immediately in our practice. When we have some distance from the object, the affliction related to that object does not arise so easily. Of course, if our mind thinks about the object, then the affliction arises. You can be 100 million miles away and think about the chocolate chip cookies and the affliction will arise.

“365 Gems of Wisdom” e-book is out now!