‘You should abandon origins.’
This is also very practical advice. ‘Origins’ refers mainly to our delusions of attachment, anger, and self-grasping ignorance. Normally we have a sincere wish to avoid suffering permanently, but we never think to abandon our delusions. However, without controlling and abandoning our delusions, it is impossible to attain permanent liberation from suffering and problems. Therefore, we should follow Buddha’s advice and, through our concentration on the profound meaning of Dharma and the force of our determination, emphasize controlling our attachment, anger, and other delusions.
Delusions are called ‘origins’ because they are the source of all sufferings and the main cause of all our problems. We have already seen how attachment is one of the main causes of our problems, and the problems caused by anger will be explained in Part Two. The following brief explanation will show how our self-grasping is the principal cause of all our problems.
First we should recognize our self-grasping, which always abides at our heart destroying our inner peace. Its nature is a wrong awareness that mistakenly believes ourself and others to be truly, or inherently, existent. This is an ignorant mind because in reality things do not exist inherently – they exist as mere imputations. Because the foolish mind of self-grasping believes or grasps at ‘I’, ‘mine’, and all other phenomena as truly existent, we develop attachment to those things we like and hatred for those we do not like. We then perform various actions that harm other living beings and, as a result, we experience various sufferings and problems throughout this life and in life after life; this is the fundamental reason why we experience so many problems. Because our sense of truly existent ‘I’ and ‘mine’ is so strong, our self-grasping also acts as the basis of all our daily problems.
Self-grasping can be likened to a poisonous tree, other delusions to its branches, and all our sufferings to its fruits; it is the fundamental source of all other delusions and all our sufferings and problems. Understanding this, we should apply great effort to recognize, reduce, and finally abandon this ignorance completely.