Attachment the cause of suffering

The Buddha says: "Attachment is the cause of all suffering".

On a wall, in the ashram of the wise Sri Ramana Maharshi, at the foot of the holy mountain, Arunachala, in Southern India it is written: "The ego is the source of all suffering"...

From a very young age, our ego, our human personality, has to develop to survive in this world where we are to live from our birth to our death. The child grows and develops its ego, asserting more and more its personality, its difference from others.

When we have reached adulthood, our ego becomes stronger. We want to be the tallest, handsomest, the strongest, bravest, richest and the happiest one, a star admired and acknowledged by all.

Our desire to be acknowledged, to gain power, wealth, and satisfaction is boundless. We crave for more and more. We take care of our looks, we need the most beautiful clothes, car, house and more and more money and power.

In the course of our life we identify more and more with our body, with the appearance we have invented to shine in the world and to survive through life. We create an image, as perfect as is possible, of what we want to be and identify more and more with this image.

The more we identify with this picture of our-selves, with our body, our human personality, the more we move away from our true Identity, from our spiritual identity, the divine Self.

And the more we move away from Love, Happiness, Peace and Freedom, which is what we are deep down in our-selves, beyond our human personality and our body.

We are desperately searching for this Love and Happiness, this Peace and perfect Freedom in thousands of things, in the other person.

Love, Happiness, Peace, Freedom

Who ever we are, or think we are, what are we looking for, amongst thousands of things in this world and in the other person? Love, Happiness, Peace and perfect Freedom, eternal and indestructible.

But these aren’t things we can possess and therefore lose. They are the aspects of our true spiritual being, immortal and eternal.

So why aren’t we happy, peaceful, and free? Because we identify with this body, the human person, the body of which we think it is the Self, our true identity.

But this appearance, this image of what we think we are never satisfies us completely. There is always something missing to make us completely satisfied, happy, peaceful and free. The more we are attached to this image of our-selves, the more we identify with our body, the more we move away from our real nature, our true happiness.

And then one day, what we call death knocks at our door and invites us to totally give up this image we created, this small person we cherished so much, this body we always thought to be our self. This illusory self will disappear into the unfathomable depths of the unknown. It seems terrifying, so unfair.

But Love, Happiness, Peace and perfect indestructible Freedom are not a question of Having but of Being. Being, is simply what we all are deep down. It is our spiritual nature, the divine Self, the ultimate Reality of the universe and of our-selves.

When we are again living the spiritual Experience, the divine Self, we become what we were looking for blindly during many human lives, through many thousand identities, and thousands of different things. We are again Love, Happiness, Peace and perfect Freedom, indestructible and eternal. This is what we have always been and still are and will eternally be...