Parting From The Four Attachments 

by Khenchen Appey Rinpoche

Let us now briefly consider the instructions from Parting from the Four Attachments. This is a very important teaching. The first line says: 

If you cling to this life, you are not a Dharma practitioner.

We need to let go of clinging to this life by recollecting death and impermanence. The Sanskrit term Dharma carries the meaning of “keeping” or “holding.” At the very least, the lesser Dharma teaching has to be able to keep us out of the lower realms. The average one keeps us away from rebirth in samsara, and the great Dharma teaching of the Mahayana can keep us away from the extremes of both samsara and nirvana. Therefore, it is taught that whatever teachings we study, contemplate, or meditate on, if it is done out of clinging to this life, it is not the Dharma.

The second line says:

If you cling to the three realms, you do not have the spiritual resolution.

It is taught here that if one practices Dharma with the motivation to obtain a human or a divine body in the next life, then one does not have the spiritual resolution. This is not the path to attain liberation based on the spiritual resolution to leave samsara. Therefore, if we are motivated to practice Dharma for the sake of avoiding a rebirth in the lower realms or in order to be reborn in the higher realms in our next lives, then it is not the path to liberation, but a path to accomplish samsara. Thus, regarding such a motivation, it is said that if one clings to samsara, one does not have the spiritual resolution. However, since we need to accomplish Buddhahood, a rebirth in the lower realms is a great obstacle to the accomplishment of Buddhahood. Therefore, in order to accomplish that, it is fine to aspire to obtain a body of the higher realms and to practice virtue.

The third line says:

If you cling to your own benefit, you do not have bodhicitta.

In the Mahayana, our main aim is to benefit others. If we mostly benefit ourselves, then it is not the Dharma of the Mahayana and it is a mistake. Therefore, we need to engage in a lot of contemplation on the faults of acting for our own sake and the benefits of acting for the sake of others. Furthermore, we need to cultivate loving-kindness, compassion, bodhicitta, and so forth. Since the root of samsara is clinging to the self, as an antidote to this, we need to cultivate the wisdom that realises the ultimate nature. Alternatively, since the root of samsara is discursive thoughts, we need to cultivate the view in order to abandon them. In this regard, the last line of this teaching says: 

If there is grasping, it is not the view.

The “view” is the mind that realises what the ultimate nature is. Since this ultimate nature does not exist as anything whatsoever, we need to have no grasping at all. For example, if we were to think that “this is emptiness,” then this would not be the view. It would be grasping. It is taught that the view must be free of grasping toward anything whatsoever. When the practice of the Parting from the Four Attachments is well established in our minds, our minds are able to be transformed to some extent. If we, on top of that, engage in the tantric practices of recitations and other virtuous activities, these will become authentic practices.