How to Reduce Emotional Attachment and Liberate the Mind from the Suffering of Afflictions?

If a person's emotional attachment is too deep and heavy, their heart will surely be filled with endless entanglement and heavy distress. How can one lighten emotional attachment? The best way is to observe the impermanence of the world, observe the impermanence of every family, observe the ending of every family; observe the impermanence of every person, observe the ending of every person; observe the impermanent changes in one's own and others' mental states, and carefully contemplate what in these worldly dharmas is worth clinging to. Then contemplate all the emotional bonds one has had life after life—what have been their final endings? What results have sentient beings obtained from soaking in all kinds of emotions over countless kalpas? Observe what each person brought from past lives, and what they can take away after death in this life; what is the thing in oneself that never changes, what is the thing one can most rely upon, what is the thing that forever belongs to oneself.

Further observe and contemplate the parents, partners, children, relatives and friends, and all family members and kin one has had over countless kalpas—where are they all now, where have all those feelings gone? Why have you transmigrated through birth and death, suffering endlessly, life after life? It is all because of clinging to your own and others' emotions, thereby binding your own mind and preventing escape from the six paths of transmigration. No matter what it concerns, sentient beings greedily give rise to craving upon craving; for birth and death and transmigration, emotion is the root, and love is the root. Knowing this, one should no longer pursue the root of the suffering of birth and death and transmigration, but should gradually pull one's legs out of the mire of greedy defilement and gradually walk toward freedom and liberation.