Positive Attachment ~ 14th Dalai Lama

If your engagement with others is tainted by strong attachment, craving, aversion, anger, and so forth, then that form of grasping is undesirable. But on the other hand, when you are interacting with other living beings and become aware of their needs or suffering or pain, then you need to fully engage with that and be compassionate. So there can be positive attachment in this sense of active engagement.

Buddhist masters have long used the term attachment to describe the quality of compassion for others. For example, a verse from Haribhadra’s Clear Meaning Commentary refers to compassion that is attached to other living beings. And as we have seen, Nagarjuna teaches that attachment for other living beings will arise spontaneously in the person who realizes emptiness.


14th Dalai Lama

from the book From Here to Enlightenment: An Introduction to Tsong-kha-pa's Classic Text The Great Treatise of the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment

Read a random quote or see all quotes by the 14th Dalai Lama.

Further quotes from the book From Here to Enlightenment: