The More You Cling, The More You Will Suffer by Ajahn Kalyano 01 June 25

0:07 [Music] More note. [Music]

0:53 One very common theme that runs through the teachings of the Buddha is that whatever we cling to will bring us suffering. And probably very uh something you'll hear all the time. You know, if you cling to the five candas, your body, feelings, perceptions, thought formations, mental formations, um and sense consciousness. They will bring you suffering, bring you to an experience of

1:39 suffering. A gent our teacher used to um talk about this all the time from different angles. One thing he would say if you want to understand what you're clinging to well ask yourself um when you die what do you take with you as a human being we all have to face death one day what will you take with you probably the most obvious thing you realize you can't take with you uh material things. Every day we use the material things we have even

2:25 before we die. We use them up all the time. We're consuming [Music] food. We wear clothes and they wear out. We have a house. We have a car, a phone, and all these things. What we call consumer products. And we're constantly using them up, changing them, replacing them. But when you die, you have to leave them all behind. Even if you get your family or friends to stuff your coffin full of uh money and jewelry and mobile phones and model cars or whatever it is that people like to put in coffins. Of course, none of those will go with you into your next life. They just become turn into dust or earth.

3:15 So that's a very simple way to start this reflection on you. Whatever I cling to will cause me suffering. If you cling to the material things of your life, you'll suffer because you're constantly losing them. And when you die, you have to separate from everything, all your material possessions. So the more you cling on, hold on tightly, the more you worry about them, the more you suffer. So it wouldn't be unwise just every day find a time whether it's the morning, the middle of the day, evening, doesn't matter. Just remind yourself everything I'm involved with that I use and have will one day become separate

4:02 separated from me. Just keep using that like a mantra. The same applies to people, doesn't it? You whoever you cling to will cause you suffering. We cling to our own body, this body, this person, the idea of a person and that brings us endless suffering. But we also cling on to our family, friends, people. Clinging isn't always with love. It's also with hatred. You can cling to someone with hatred, can't you? because you keep thinking of them because you're angry with them. You don't think much about people you feel neutral to. You either think about people you

4:50 love and want or people you don't want or want to get rid of. So love and hate is a form of clinging. It applies to people, doesn't it? But when you die, you separate from everyone. When you die from this world, you'll never see the people that you know in this life ever again in this form. Impossible because everyone must die and the body gets cremated or buried or whatever, you know. So when people Buddhists love to fantasize about you where they were last life and where they'll go next life but in the end does it really matter because you'll never see the people you know in this

5:35 form again. So people will ultimately we have to separate from them. We don't take them with us. We don't take this body with us. We don't take the experiences of, you know, the feelings of pleasure and pain that we've had in this life. We don't take them with us. In fact, we don't even take them more than usually for a few moments. You feel pleasure and then it passes or you feel pain, then it passes. Feelings are constantly arising and passing away through the day. So you don't even get to the end of your life already just in one day you're letting go without trying you already

6:24 lose those feelings as it were. So you can go on like this sort of looking and observing investigating what what do I what do I take with me when I die to understand a little bit more about clinging and what it is. The reason we suffer when we cling is because we hold on too tightly. And so another way ajenta would talk about clinging and attachment is that you makes you feel heavy. A lot of our stress in life, our unhappiness, our problems come with this sort of heavy feeling.

7:12 Jen Cha would find very simple ways to point this out. He could, you know, he lived um with many monks and nuns and but he couldn't speak any English. But many of those n monks and nuns were foreigners. So he'd find very simple ways to teach them. And uh so a friend of mine once told me how he was walking into the monastery with Ajentcha after the morning arms round. And when you live in the forest, a very common experience is you come across a fallen branch blocking the path and some branches are quite large from a large forest tree. So they stopped and Ajentcha went to one end of the branch and pointed for this monk to go to the other end of the branch and then he picked it

7:58 up and sort of turned to throw it off the path. just held Ajentcha just paused for a moment, held the the branch which was heavy and asked the other monk in Thai but simple tie just said nakmai is it heavy and the monk knew enough Thai to understand he's what he was asking and he just answered yes it's heavy and then Ajentcha said let's throw it away so they threw it off the path into the forest to clear the path. And he said, "How does it feel now? Is it still heavy?" And the monk said, "No, now feel light because I'm no longer holding it, no longer carrying

8:46 it." Ajenta didn't say anything much more than that. But he was just teaching a very simple thing that whatever you hold on to or cling on to and the longer you cling to it, the heavier it feels. And that heaviness is suffering, isn't it? If you can let go of these things that make you suffer, that you cling to, you're going to, if you can cling uh put them down, you'll suffer less or you won't suffer at all. You could say meditation, one way of looking at meditation or even just Buddhist practice practice in general is is helping you to put things down, let things go, stop

9:31 clinging. It's what the purpose of it all is. Even though we practice many things and we you know we study, we learn, we chant, we meditate, we do all kinds of activities you might call wholesome activities which are good but really they have this end in mind or this goal that they're helping us to let go to put things down put down this sense of grasping clinging firm clinging which causes a suffering causes a sis feeling of heaviness. So of course when you do good things you start to feel lighter, happier because you you even practicing dana you're literally giving

10:18 away some material thing or sharing some knowledge you know or saying something useful to another person or you're giving someone your time. You say when you're volunteering or doing a favor for somebody or some group of people doing dana you're clearly giving away putting things down in that sense. So the idea is if you do that with full awareness of what you're doing and why you feel lighter when you're carrying a plate of food, you give it away. Literally, it's lighter on your hands and you no longer have to worry about that food. You no longer have to do much with that food because you've given it away. Any other

11:05 kind of charity giving, even knowledge that you give, you give it away. You don't have to worry about that knowledge or words that you've said anymore. You've given them away as it were. If you understand that on the level of dhana, then it follows through into what we call bowana, training your mind, which is a sub more subtle thing, you know, giving away or letting go or putting down attachments in the mind. We have to be a little bit sharper and quicker and more mindful because the mind is very subtle and fast. But it's the same process, isn't it? You're giving away something in as an act of

11:53 dhana or charity such as food. Well, giving away attachments to things that you call yourself, your things that you feel you own or are you you the self what we call selfidentity view. on the level of the mind, you're giving that away. You feel lighter afterwards when you finally give up some clinging to the idea of self. You feel better for it. Sometimes it takes a while though, doesn't it? Sometimes we're a bit stubborn and there'll be some part of our character or personality that we're not yet willing to let go of or set aside. And that's where we suffer. And

12:38 sometimes we don't see the suffering or sometimes we even when we see it we're just so habitualized and so used to clinging on to uh some part of our character that even though we know on one level it's maybe not so good to think in that way or act in that way we say well this is who I am I am I am this way We're so used to it. We're so familiar with it that we're not willing to let go yet. And so, you know, we sort of have our little ways of speaking to our family or our friends. We say, "Well, this is me. This is who I am. You know, I'm

13:23 the selfish one. I am the greedy one. I am the lazy one. I'm the worrier. I'm the one who gets irritated." Whatever it is, there'll be something that you identify with and you already know it's a cause of suffering. You cling to some habit and even other people sometimes point it out as well. But we're still not yet ready to put it down. Uh how many sort of of your personal indulgences you often use that term indulgences we have that we know are not good for us. maybe even are threatening our life as you get older. You know, a good one is food. The kinds of food that you like that are maybe not that healthy for

14:11 you. And yet we just love to because we're so used to that food, the taste, it's what we like, what we want. Even though it may be very unhealthy for us and as you get older that catches up with you, still not ready to put it aside. Uh I mean that's just one example. We our character is made up of a lot of this. It's little parts of little uh compartments or rooms you almost like rooms. We have little rooms in our mind that are aspects of our personality that we are still clinging onto and we maybe haven't seen yet or haven't recognized yet that we are clinging. We just don't

14:56 know. Maybe we're so familiar we don't realize. And it's part of the problem with clinging. It's just what we're used to. So you don't realize there's anything else. Which is why the Buddha encouraged us to come back to develop the path, the noble eight-fold path, and particularly mindfulness and samati and investigation. So you can find out where your clinging is, especially on the most subtle level. Sometimes as you meditate and practice and you learn to bring your attention inwards more and more through

15:44 your practice to observe yourself, you just naturally notice things that you didn't notice before. Other times you have to work at it. Sometimes you have to look around and see where where clinging is kind of lurking, where the dark corners are. And meditation is like giving you a a good light, like shining the light back in into your mind to see where where the dark corners of clinging are, the ones that you haven't picked up on yet. And of course, some things are very difficult. You know, when you have love, say something you love, obviously food that you love is maybe a an more obvious one and perhaps easier to let go of. But

16:30 people, very difficult to stop clinging to a person if you've been with them all your life. If you have a child, you've given birth to the child or you're the parent or a partner who you've lived with for many years, you know, the sense of clinging is going to be very deeply rooted on many there may be maybe many layers that you haven't even recognized yet. And sometimes we don't really notice or know about this until maybe something happens to that person. Say that person gets sick or in the worst case when they it comes time to they pass away. So only then you realize how deep the clinging was. Ideally the Buddha encouraged us to

17:17 look at this early on. Don't wait for the person to pass away or to fall sick. You question on and look at that clinging every day. And he encouraged us to you bring up the dhamma dhamma reflections to help us just to think more deeply. You know this person I live with maybe that I love very much identify with associate with very much all the time perhaps or most of the time. One day they won't be here. Either I'll die first and I'll leave them or they'll die first and they'll leave me. We don't live forever together. Bring up that reflection.

18:04 Often you often even if you really love orident identify with someone as yours, my partner, my child, my parent, my this, my that. We don't want to look into that clinging very much. we're satisfied. You know, there's a certain satisfaction when you have somebody often we say, "Oh, this is all I've got. I've got this person, this person I love or this person who's helped me." So, of course, there's maybe many good reasons for you to appreciate that person, think of them. But without full awareness, we it tends to fall into just blind clinging as well. And that's where the suffering comes. Even for people who have helped

18:49 us greatly, we often just cling quite automatically or habitually to them, to the idea of who they are, to what we see in them, you know, how they've helped us, what we what we get from them. They make us happy, they make us feel secure, whatever. There'll be a lot of that that we haven't real realized before or haven't looked into as a cause of suffering. Many of you will have heard of the monk Lumpo Part um who lives in northern Thailand. He's very old now, but he's very wise, peaceful monk and being with him a few times when people have um young couples maybe have decided to

19:37 get married. They go to him for a blessing and they go to him and they say, "Oh, we're going to get married. We love each other." And he just looks at them with a kind of a smile and says, "Oh, Wayne gum." Wayne comes from the parley. Parley word wearer come from karma. Wearer and karma meaning basically meaning bad karma or bad luck, bad misfortune, which is not the comment they were expecting, but because he's smiling, they usually can take it. If you're about to commit to marry or live with someone maybe for the rest of your life is almost certainly going to lead

20:22 to some clinging and attachment. Meaning it's almost certainly going to lead to suffering, isn't it? Whether you like it or not, whether you realize it or not. And this isn't to, you know, diminish the institution of marriage or people falling in love and staying together and helping each other, but it's the truth. And Buddhism is helping us to get to the truth. And the truth is whatever you cling to will cause you suffering. So if you have a partner and you cling to them, be prepared. Same with children, isn't it? More more bad karma as Lumpur would say. You have children. Oh dear. Cuz children are going to bring you a lot of suffering. You love them. You look after

21:09 them, but they'll bring you suffering. Friends do perhaps a bit less than you know family. But nevertheless, friends will get bring us suffering. We suffer because of our friends. what our friends think of us, how whether they approve of us or not, whether they like us or not, whether they help us or not, support us or not. You know, what our friends are doing, our social circle brings us lots of suffering because we cling to them. Often they reflect who we think we are, don't they? We we reflect ourselves in other people. So we want to have good friends. Maybe we want to have friends of a certain kind. Maybe maybe we want to have

21:56 wealthy friends. So it makes us feel good that we have all these important wealthy powerful people that we know perhaps um and so on. But it's the clinging that causes the suffering. And if we never investigate that then it just carries on, doesn't it? It carries on through your life. You cling on, cling on, cling on through year after year. Often the clinging, the attachment gets more intense as time goes on. Again, without realizing, you keep thinking. What does clinging mean? You It means you keep thinking of someone. You have all kinds of expectations because you got this idea of a person, whoever it is, family, friend,

22:42 whoever. Keep thinking of them. So you miss them when they don't do what you want. You get angry with them, annoyed with them. Whether it's a for or against liking or disliking you, there's always some kind of reaction and something going on in the back of your mind. Um, as monks, we often say it's like people have all these strings of attachment. Clinging is almost like a string from your heart, the center of your being, that which knows, you know, the jitter to the heart, the mind, the jitter of the other person that you're clinging to. And it's reciprocal as well. They may cling to you, you cling to them, and

23:27 the whole thing gets more and more entangled and more and more stronger over time, maybe. So you got this string as it were, this mental string of karma and attachment and clinging from yourself to this other person. So that means they move a bit. You move a bit as well because you're tied together just as if you were tied by an actual rope or chain or something. They move to the left. Well, you'll move to the left with them a little bit. And they move to the right, you'll move a little bit to the right because of the string, you know. pulls on you. They pull in one direction, you'll feel it. Maybe even it's painful, isn't it? When someone's pulling away from you, maybe they're leaving you. It feels

24:14 painful. Maybe it feels lighter for a while when they come closer to you because of the string. But, you know, it's only a slight slackening off of the tension maybe, but it's still there, the string. Maybe they run around you in circles, you know, like a dog on a lead or something. So this string is not just sort of a straight string going out in one direction. It starts to tangle all around you until you feel completely strangled by it. Sometimes relationships are like that. You feel strangled by someone or suffocated by someone or they're just too controlling or overbearing or they're just too complicated. It made your life too complicated. Your attachment has all kinds of consequences.

25:02 It goes on and on. This is what we're looking at. What we cling to and how it causes us suffering when we die. What do we take with us? And we we don't take people. We don't take material things with us. We don't even take this body with us. Not much we take with us. We do take our good karma with us. in the Buddhist teaching, in the Buddhist explanation of things, we're here because of our good karma. Even the fact you're listening to this talk now is really the result of past good karma. I hope unless this is a bad talk and in which case you're pro, you could say it's the result of your bad karma that you have to sit through a boring or bad

25:48 talk maybe. Um, but the fact that you have faith in Buddhism, you meditate, you learn the dharma, you're interested in practice, we would say is your good karma. You've done it before and so it's brought you to this point in your life doing again. If you practice charity, generosity, kindness in daily life, this is all your good karma and that will stay with you. If you keep precepts, try to live in a harmless way, a moral way, and you're mindful, careful of what you say, what you do, this is your good karma. This will stay with you. If you learn meditation and practice mindfulness and then develop some insight, maybe insight into the

26:35 impermanent nature of things and lack of self in in your experience. This is good karma. This will stay with you. So the good karma is what we take with us when we die. You know what do you what do you have when you die? What goes with you? Well, that's what goes with you. That's the the stuff that's worth taking with you as well. So these are themes that we use all the time in Buddhist teaching and then in our own reflection, our own practice. I would say where am I clinging? You know, if you're feeling stressed, unhappy about something, whether it's from

27:21 disappointment and [Music] despair, or you're just feeling stressed because you got a lot of desires and expectations that maybe are not being met, but they're kind of affecting you. Uh, you're feeling bored, you're feeling excited, you're feeling physical pain, mental pain, you know, whatever your experience is. Simply speaking, the more you cling, the more you suffer. So if you're suffering and you haven't worked out what what the cause is, we have to start looking back at the clinging. If it's involved with another person, it's not always, often it's yourself, but if another person is involved, well, look for maybe look for the thread, that

28:08 string, that thread from your heart to theirs and see how it's being pulled or tugged or tied up around something of affecting you in some way. It doesn't take very much. You if it's another person, you just have to worry about someone, you start suffering. Nothing's happened yet, but just the worry, the the the possibility that they could be in difficulty can really tie you down. Your worries tie you down, wear you out, pull you around, shake you up. They say when you when people die, you know, their consciousness often doesn't yet go to a good

28:54 destination to be reborn. Partly because of these threads of attachment back to the the living, the worry about the family members who maybe they still have problems and you know the parent dies or the friend dies and they're still worried about the the living who have their problems. It's like these little threads are pulling one person's mind back, attaching to the living, the people who are still left here in the world. It stops someone to be going on to be reborn. A bit like, you know, a balloon or something with a string attached. It can't blow away because you've got the string attached. You have to release the string. Then the balloon can go up into the sky. It's a bit like that. consciousness

29:42 can be held down by so many attachments. You know, we all know the story of, you know, ghosts. People say, "Oh, there's a ghost hanging around somewhere." Well, if if that was true, if there was a ghost, then it would be some kind of attachment holding them there. Can be anger, can be greed, can be despair, fear, worry. But it's like the threads threads of attachment are holding the mind back. So that being is suffering and can't go on to be reborn. If it's a person, you know, just day by day your your own practice, you can see it will be the same, won't it?

30:27 If you're worried, what does worry and and attachment do? Or sometimes it just leads you to doubt. Leads you to hesitate, procrastinate about things, can't make a decision because you're worried about this, worried about that. You feel like you've got things pulling you back. You should go and look for a new job, should I take the new job? Should I form a relationship with this person? What should I do about this problem or that problem? you know, your attachments often make you hesitate before you're doing something. Uh, or sometimes it is the other way around. Sometimes they push you to act impulsively without thinking you

31:13 because of your attachment. Say, you know, you know somebody or you're very attached to somebody and they they do seem to be in trouble or something or you might rush in rush in to help them but without considering the best way to help them or what's needed in that situation. So you just rush in and possibly make it make the thing worse, make the situation worse. Your attachment is like that between people. If it's within your own five canders, your own mind, your own body, well, you have to have a lot be very, you know, sharp and very clear on what's going on. And you see how you just feelings constantly. We're attaching to

32:00 them and reacting to them. We cling to the feelings. So, we want pleasure. We like pleasure and we want more pleasure all the time. We want to hold on to pleasure. We want to keep it longer. And we don't like pain. So, we're always trying to get rid of pain, get away from pain, painful feelings, painful experiences. That's the kind of the thread of attachment back sort of tied back to the experience of feelings all the time, day by day, moment by moment through our day. probably only really notice this when you meditate. You know, you practice mindfulness from moment to moment. When you're meditating, you see quickly how feelings drag our mind around. So, we

32:47 start say you're feeling bored or tired in your meditation. You might start imagining things that make you feel better. Pleasure pleasure pleasant situations, people you like, things you like that make you feel good. you start imagining or remembering them in your meditation because you're becoming bored or dull perhaps. Or if you're not careful, not mindful, maybe you remember something that makes you really angry as you're meditating and then and that sets you off in another direction. and you get really upset remembering what somebody said earlier in the day or something that happened some injustice in the world or injustice in your life you remember it you're meditating but it

33:33 just comes up and fills your mind takes over your mind often it begins just as a unpleasant feeling isn't it you remember something you don't like and you the feeling comes up and straight away you react to It's like you tie a bit of this. The thread of attachment is tied around that feeling and it's like so it tugs on you. I don't like this. Don't want this. And that feeling pulls your mind. It's not just a physical thing. You know, that's the obvious one. Physical pain. Say, but mental pain is the same. It's just very subtle, isn't it? It's very subtle. You remember something or think of something that brings an unpleasant feeling and you

34:18 react. As long as you're not very aware or mindful, you just react. Don't like it, don't want it, think in a certain negative way. So this is why we're constantly aiming to develop more mindfulness, more awareness, and then try to observe what's going on. And you might see some of these threads of attachment in your mental activity. How you you move towards things subtly. We always wanting to do something, get something or get away from something, move away from something. It's going on all the time as

35:03 you bring your mindfulness up and you become more still. You notice that literally. You might notice how you want to move, physically move as you're meditating. You know, many people find it's hard to sit still for more than a few minutes. So just if you can stop and pause and say, why do I need to move? Is the say the pain or the feeling of discomfort that strong? Maybe it is, but maybe it's not. Maybe you can just sit and watch it. or the desire to do some other activity. You know, maybe a little bit bored or distracted. You say, "Oh, I can't meditate now. I should stop and I should go and do that other thing that I I'm supposed to do."

35:50 These are the times where you can really teach yourself, catch yourself to observe desires and different thought trains of thought arising, but watch them arise and pass away and try not to just follow them, but actually observe them as independent individual m mind states, states of mind that are temporary, impermanent. And you'll see as you meditate how quickly your mind can change. You can have some really burning issue or problem or desire to do something, but you just watch it and it may completely disappear and you forget all about it. Sometimes at the end of a meditation,

36:36 whether it was a longer meditation or a short one, sometimes it's good to sit there for a little while and review what came up during your meditation. What were you thinking? How were you feeling? What was happening? And you might remember, oh, there was a dur a period in your meditation when you felt felt a really strong urge to do something else, for example. But it just came and went and you didn't you didn't follow it. You just kept sitting. You had enough patience, enough effort, mindfulness to keep sitting with it. And you realize, yeah, I don't have to follow every desire. I can just see a desire as a desire. and you let go and you did let go because you clearly didn't follow

37:23 that and you review it. So you become very mindful and aware that you have done that. You're aware that ah there was that desire came up that thought that seems so important in my meditation but I didn't follow it. I just watched it. Or it could be an opinion about something. As you're meditating, your mind is wandering around, not very peaceful maybe, and you form an opinion or you have an opinion already about something, and it comes up and you say, "Oh, I really like that. I really hate that." So, it's an opinion you've had before. Maybe it's sort of something that you would say is an attachment, something you've you've built an attachment

38:08 to. But during your meditation, you can also observe how it just arises and passes away. If you're mindful enough, you don't do anything with that opinion. You just observe it as an opinion in a more objective way, detached way. You say, "Oh, yeah, I've got that opinion, but it came up. It went away. It's not that important. It's not that big as such. It's just an opinion kind of floated in, floated out of my mind. If you become very mindful of that kind of thing either at the moment when it is arising or perhaps a bit later then you can use that understanding more and more to see how your opinions, your views on things,

38:55 your reactions to things, they're real in the sense they come up. They fill your mind for a while but also you can see they're temporary and you don't have to follow them. You don't have to cling to them. You just know them and then you let them go. And you see how this gives you a bit more choice and more the sense of freedom or relief. You know, even though you do have opinions and knowledge and understanding from your life, you also have the ability sometimes to change your views on things or to reassess or learn new stuff or change things for the better maybe. You don't have to just stick with your same old view because the more you stick with the

39:42 same old view, it tends to become heavier, doesn't it? You're back with clinging and this heaviness of just automatically clinging to a certain view about yourself or other people or the world, whatever it is. As you become more mindful and see the impermanent nature of things, you say, well, I have this view, but it may change or I may, you know, if I learn new information, things change. Maybe this view will change. All of us have had probably if you meditated for a while now, a few years or many years, you'll have noticed you've had times in your life where you had a really strong opinion about something. you know, this person was really a good person or this person's

40:29 really bad. But it changes over time. And if you can be mindful and catch that, you reflect back and say, "Oh, I used to really not like this person, but now they're okay." Or this person who used to seem very good, kind, reliable, but now they're not. You learn how your opinions and views on things in the sense of self that you identify with your experiences, how it can trick you. And it's often it it changes over time and you if you're not awareing aware of that, you're not mindful of that. It tricks you.

41:14 And the more you look at this, the more you realize how, you know, the you let your mind go out into the world nowadays, you know, the world of information, technology, social media, and everything. Oh, it's very easy for you to pick up all kinds of views and opinions. But if you never become mindful of that and never investigate, some of them may be accurate and helpful. Some of them may be completely misinformed or even very harmful because we're being bombarded with information nowadays much more than you know maybe 20 30 40 years ago. So we have to learn how to navigate that and meditation and mindfulness can really help. You can certainly still receive

42:00 information and observe. But before you cling to that opinion that you're forming, you just question it and be aware. Well, maybe this will change over time. Maybe I only know part of the story. Maybe I'm, you know, forming my opinion too quickly. Sometimes we do that and so on. We judge things. We we fall into sort of mental pathways or ruts that sometimes we need to doublech check our own opinion on something whether it's good or bad right or wrong you know we have to check maybe I I am right but maybe it will change over time

42:55 Sometimes our perceptions of things if we never become mindful of them you know they really narrow down our experience of life because you you your perception is something that you without being without investigating it without looking more closely at it. It will just stick with you and then you you add that label onto your experience. This is good that's bad. And if you never know more than that, then that's that's what you're stuck with. That's what becomes your your attach you're attached to them. And it might be particularly harmful often is with a person, isn't it? You have one know one bad thing about a person or you you see something you you feel is not

43:42 very good about that person and that may be all you know. So you just get stuck with the view this is a bad person. The information that you're forming that view or opinion on is very limited maybe, but you get stuck with it and that becomes your view on them. Maybe even you tell other people, oh that person's no good or that person is a certain way, not necessarily a bad person, could be a good person, could be a certain way. If you never investigate it, well, that just carries on sitting there in your mind.

44:27 So as we meditate, we have to be able to learn to look back at our own attachments, the way we react to things, our opinions, beliefs, views, and can use the theme of impermanence to help us question things more, look at things from different angles, or just see them as subject to change. They can change. Ask yourself if there's anyone in your life that you used to like and then don't like or used to think is a good person and then is a bad now you realize is bad person or someone you used to think is a bad person now you think is a good person.

45:16 You may well have that kind of experience and you can as you become more mindful of it, you'll learn from it. So what we cling to will cause us suffering. The more we cling and the less we are aware of it and the more suffering we'll have. Whether it's our own mental activity, views and opinions, feelings about things, whether it's people, whether it's material things, this is all the area to investigate as you practice Dharma. So I'll leave you with these reflections for now and if there are any questions can uh discuss them later.