The Buddha made clear in so many different ways that craving and clinging to anything at all is the cause of suffering. Most Buddhist traditions agree that liberation is experienced in the mind free of clinging—to the body, the mind, to awareness itself. The great Indian adept Tilopa expressed the importance of this to his disciple, Naropa: “It is not appearances that bind you; it is your clinging that binds you. Cut through your clinging, Naropa.”

I began to see non-clinging and its precursor, the cessation of craving, as central to liberation across nearly all Buddhist traditions, the foundation upon which different final goals may be realized. Depending on one’s particular aspiration, this might be the arahant of early Buddhism or buddhahood as taught in the later traditions.

Building on this understanding, which is succinctly expressed in the first three noble truths—suffering, its cause, and its end—we can then explore the fourth noble truth: the way to the end of suffering. If craving is the cause of suffering, and liberation is through the cessation of craving and clinging, the question then becomes how different traditions accomplish this, even when their metaphysics and end goals differ.

There are many methods for achieving non-clinging, and different doorways open to this freedom, each highlighting one particular Buddhist perspective or another. One comprehensive framework for exploring these methods is the three universal characteristics: impermanence, dukkha, and nonself. Although these characteristics are intimately connected, one or another of them may become more predominant in different traditions or for different practitioners, even as all of them are realized in the end.
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Buddha dharma teachings channel:

https://t.me/lorddivinebuddha
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