According to the Buddhist model of the mind, attachment is effectively the main source of our suffering in day-to-day life. Attachment is necessarily I-based: dissatisfaction, neediness, expectation, manipulating others to get what I want. Love, however, is other-based: open, kind, clear, the wish that others be happy. “I could tell you about attachment for one whole year,” Lama Yeshe said. “But you won’t begin to understand it until you go deeply into your own mind.”
How do we distinguish them? That’s the key to practice. Through meditation, becoming our own therapists, as Lama says, we can learn to unpack and unravel our emotions and lessen attachment and the other delusions and grow love, compassion and the rest — for our own sake and the sake of others.