Masaki asked, for someone who has an aspiration for a certain career and is also strongly thinking about ordaining, is a career aspiration considered an attachment?
My turn, no?
What did you say?
No, my turn.
I took your turn.
Your turn and I get to take it.
Well, it's a pretty simple question.
I don't know that there really is a question.
It's like trying any sort of dual intention.
Do you think somehow that it's possible to have a certain career and still ordain, or to still go towards ordaining?
They're really heading in the opposite direction.
And they're totally incompatible.
There's nothing compatible about them.
So the career aspiration may not be considered... You don't have to consider it an attachment and say, the desire to ordain is the good one, but the desire to have a career is the bad one.
All you have to say is that there are two different paths.
If you want to get a career, then go have a career.
If you want to ordain, ordain.
They're both attachments, really.
They're both desires, really.
They're both intentions in the mind, the intention to ordain, the intention to have a career.
You have to decide for yourself which is going to lead to the goals that you wish for, which are going to lead you to true peace, happiness, and freedom from suffering.
So rather than even consider it an attachment, we have to ask whether it's meaningful or meaningless, because a career is in the end meaningless.
Ordination in the end is meaningless.
But ordination will allow you to attain that which is meaningful, which is the cessation of suffering.
So whatever you can do, whether it be ordaining or whether it just be simply practicing meditation, the point is to find that which is useful.
The point isn't our attachments.
The point is to work in such a way that you can find that which has true meaning, which is happiness and freedom from suffering.
I could maybe add that
When you have the desire for ordination and the idea to become enlightened in this life or in future life, then I wouldn't call going for a career not an attachment, but an obstacle, a great hindrance.
Sometimes this is called Mara.
That which keeps you away or gets in your way of getting closer to the goal of enlightenment.
Once you have
This goal, everything that keeps you away from it, I would call Mara.
Mara not as the evil-doer like a person, but a mind state that goes off track.
A mind that is not focused enough on the goal to get there.