I have killed all of you before.
I was chopped up by all of you in previous lives.
We have all killed each other as enemies.
So why should we be attached to each other?

Let me tell you about the middle path. Dressing in rough and dirty garments, letting your hair grow matted, abstaining from eating any meat or fish, does not cleanse the one who is deluded. Mortifying the flesh through excessive hardship does not lead to a triumph over the senses. All self-inflicted suffering is useless as long as the feeling of self is dominent.
You should lose your involvement with yourself and then eat and drink naturally, according to the needs of your body. Attachment to your appetites - whether you deprive or indulge them - can lead to slavery, but satisfying the needs of daily life is not wrong. Indeed, to keep a body in good health is a duty, for otherwise the mind will not stay strong and clear."
Discourses II

You should lose your involvement with yourself and then eat and drink naturally, according to the needs of your body. Attachment to your appetites--whether you deprive or indulge them--can lead to slavery, but satisfying the needs of daily life is not wrong. Indeed, to keep a body in good health is a duty, for otherwise the mind will not stay strong and clear."
Discourses II

What is this laughter, what is this delight, forever burning (with desires) as you are?
Enveloped in darkness as you are, will you not look for a lamp?

The Tempter masters the lazy and irresolute man who dwells on the attractive side of things, ungoverned in his senses, and unrestrained in his food, like the wind overcomes a rotten tree.
The Tempter cannot master a man who dwells on the distasteful side of things, self-controlled in his senses, moderate in eating, resolute and full of faith, like the wind cannot move a mountain crag.

In the same way that rain breaks into a house with a bad roof, desire breaks into the mind that has not been practising meditation.

Don't indulge in careless behaviour. Don't be the friend of sensual pleasures.
He who meditates attentively attains abundant joy.

'I've got children', 'I've got wealth.' This is the way a fool brings suffering on himself.
He does not even own himself, so how can he have children or wealth?

Surely, the path that leads to wordly gain in one, and the path that leads to Nibbana is another; understanding this, the Bhikkhu, the disciple of the Buddha, should not rejoice in worldly favours, but cultivate detachment.
Dhammapada v. 75

A man who gives way to pleasure will be swept away by craving and his thoughts will make him suffer, like waves.
Dhammapada v. 339

A man's joys are always transient, and since men devote themselves to pleasure, seeking after happiness, they undergo birth and decay.
Dhammapada v. 341

The Buddhist notion of attachment is not what people in the West assume. We say that the love of a mother for her only child is free of attachment.

Attachment increases desire, without producing any satisfaction. There are two types of desire, unreasonable and reasonable. The first is an affliction founded on ignorance, but the second is not. To live, you need resources; therefore, desire for sufficient material things is appropriate. Such feelings as, "This is good; I want this. This is useful," are not afflictions. It is also desirable to achieve altruism, wisdom, and liberation. This kind of desire is suitable; indeed, all human development comes out of desire, and these aspirations do not have to be an affliction.
...when you have attachment to material things, it is best to desist from those very activities that promote more attachment. Satisfaction is helpful when it comes to material things, but not with respect to spiritual practice. Objects to which we become attached are something to be discarded, whereas spiritual progress is something to be adopted--it can be developed limitlessly, even in old age.
How to Expand Love

...several great Kagyu and Sakya masters... have expressed the stages [of sutra and tantra paths] in terms of the tradition known as "parting ourselves from the four forms of clinging."
First we part from clinging to this life. Instead of total involvement with affairs of this life, we involve ourselves with future lives. We accomplish this by thinking about our precious human life with all its freedoms and endowments for spiritual growth, how we lose it because of death and impermanence, and then the karmic laws of behavioral cause and effect that shape our future lives. Next we part from clinging to future lives and involve ourselves, instead, in the quest for liberation. By thinking about all the suffering of uncontrollably recurring rebirth, or samsara, we generate sincere renunciation of it--the strong determination to be free and attain the total liberation that is nirvana.
The Gelug/Kagyu Tradition of Mahamudra

The aim of desire is to be satisfied. If it dominates us and we are always craving for more, that goal is never reached and instead of finding happiness we only get suffering. These days we talk a lot about sexual freedom. But when one gives in to sexual desire without any restraint, merely for pleasure, one does not find any lasting satisfaction and creates a host of problems of which the negative consequences – the suffering of an abandoned partner, relationship break-ups, children’s lives turned upside down, venereal diseases, AIDS – are quite disproportionate to the brief moments of pleasure one may have experienced.

Grasping is the source of all our problems. Since impermanence to us spells anguish, we grasp on to things desperately, even though all things change. We are terrified of letting go, terrified, in fact, of living at all, since learning to live is learning to let go. And this is the tragedy and the irony of our struggle to hold on: Not only is it impossible, but it brings us the very pain we are seeking to avoid.
The intention behind grasping may not in itself be bad; there’s nothing wrong with the desire to be happy, but what we try to grasp on to is by nature ungraspable.
The Tibetans say that you cannot wash the same dirty hand twice in the same running river, and “no matter how much you squeeze a handful of sand, you will never get oil out of it.”

The real glory of meditation lies not in any method but in its continual living experience of presence, in its bliss, clarity, peace, and, most important of all, complete absence of grasping.
The diminishing of your grasping is a sign that you are becoming freer of yourself. And the more you experience this freedom, the clearer the sign that the ego and the hopes and fears that keep it alive are dissolving and the closer you will come to the infinitely generous “wisdom of egolessness.” When you live in that wisdom home, you’ll no longer find a barrier between “I” and “you,” “this” and “that,” “inside” and “outside”; you’ll have come, finally, to your true home, the state of nonduality.

Often it is only when people suddenly feel they are losing their partner that they realize how much they love them. Then they cling on even tighter. But the more they grasp, the more the other person escapes them, and the more fragile the relationship becomes.
So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow. Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something that will ensure our happiness. We ask ourselves: “How can we possibly enjoy anything if we cannot own it?” How often attachment is mistaken for love!
Even when the relationship is a good one, love can be spoiled by attachment with its insecurity, possessiveness, and pride; and then when love is gone, all you have left to show for it are the “souvenirs” of love, the scars of attachment.

Quietly sitting, body still, speech silent, mind at peace, let thoughts and emotions, whatever rises, come and go, without clinging to anything.
What does this state feel like? Dudjom Rinpoche used to say: Imagine a man who comes home after a long, hard day’s work in the fields, and sinks into his favorite chair in front of the fire. He has been working all day and he knows that he has achieved what he wanted to achieve; there is nothing more to worry about, nothing left unaccomplished, and he can let go completely of all his cares and concerns, content, simply, to be.
How can we work to overcome attachment? Only by realizing its impermanent nature; this realization slowly releases us from its grip. We come to glimpse what the masters say the true attitude to change can be: as if we were the sky looking at the clouds passing by, or as free as mercury. When mercury is dropped on the ground, its very nature is to remain intact; it never mixes with the dust.
As we try to follow the masters’ advice and are slowly released from attachment, a great compassion is released in us. The clouds of grasping part and disperse, and the sun of our true compassionate heart shines out.

Even in the greatest yogi, sorrow and joy still arise just as before. The difference between an ordinary person and the yogi is how they view their emotions and react to them.
An ordinary person will instinctively accept or reject them, and so arouse the attachment or aversion that will result in the accumulation of negative karma.
A yogi, however, perceives everything that rises in its natural, pristine state, without allowing grasping to enter his perception.

Although we have been made to believe that if we let go we will end up with nothing, life itself reveals again and again the opposite: that letting go is the path to real freedom.
Just as when the waves lash at the shore, the rocks suffer no damage but are sculpted and eroded into beautiful shapes, so our characters can be molded and our rough edges worn smooth by changes. Through weathering changes, we can learn how to develop a gentle but unshakable composure. Our confidence in ourselves grows, and becomes so much greater that goodness and compassion begin naturally to radiate out from us and bring joy to others.
That goodness is what survives death, a fundamental goodness that is in each and every one of us. The whole of our life is a teaching of how to uncover that strong goodness, and a training toward realizing it.

All we need to do to receive direct help is to ask. Didn't Christ also say: ”Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you. Everyone that asketh, receiveth; and he that seeketh, findeth”? And yet asking is what we find hardest. Many of us, I feel, hardly know how to ask. Sometimes it is because we are arrogant, sometimes because we are unwilling to seek help, sometimes because we are lazy, sometimes our minds are so busy with questions, distractions, and confusion that the simplicity of asking does not occur to us. The turning point in any healing of alcoholics or drug addicts is when they admit their illness and ask for aid. In one way or another, we are all addicts of samsara; the moment when help can come for us is when we admit our addiction and simply ask.

As you continue to practice meditation, you may have all kinds of experiences, both good and bad. You might experience states of bliss, clarity, or absence of thoughts. In one way these are very good experiences, and signs of progress in meditation. For when you experience bliss, it’s a sign that desire has temporarily dissolved. When you experience real clarity, it’s a sign that aggression has temporarily ceased. When you experience a state of absence of thought, it’s a sign that your ignorance has temporarily died. By themselves they are good experiences, but if you get attached to them, they become obstacles.
Experiences are not realization in themselves; but if we remain free of attachment to them, they become what they really are—that is, materials for realization.

How can we work to overcome attachment? Only by realizing its impermanent nature; this realization slowly releases us from its grip. We come to glimpse what the masters say the true attitude to change can be: as if we were the sky looking at the clouds passing by, or as free as mercury. When mercury is dropped on the ground, its very nature is to remain intact; it never mixes with the dust.
As we try to follow the masters’ advice and are slowly released from attachment, a great compassion is released in us. The clouds of grasping part and disperse, and the sun of our true compassionate heart shines out.

Often it is only when people suddenly feel they are losing their partner that they realize how much they love them. Then they cling on even tighter. But the more they grasp, the more the other person escapes them, and the more fragile the relationship becomes.
So often we want happiness, but the very way we pursue it is so clumsy and unskillful that it brings only more sorrow. Usually we assume we must grasp in order to have that something that will ensure our happiness. We ask ourselves: “How can we possibly enjoy anything if we cannot own it?” How often attachment is mistaken for love!
Even when the relationship is a good one, love can be spoiled by attachment with its insecurity, possessiveness, and pride; and then when love is gone, all you have left to show for it are the “souvenirs” of love, the scars of attachment.

Less desire means less pain, more satisfaction, more freedom in your life, more inner peace and happiness.

Make the total dedication right now in your heart and mind, because death can come any day or minute. The moment you think this, the painful mind of attachment goes away from your heart, so your mind is total peace and happiness. It is like an apple a day keeping the doctor away!

No desire means no disturbing emotions, pain of attachment, pain of anger, pain of jealousy and there is tranquillity, peace, openness, no barriers, space for sincere love and compassion.