The Ladder

Our practice requires a lot of letting go.

We prefer to think that it involves letting go of things that we don't like, while allowing us to hold onto the things we do like. But it requires more letting go than that.

The Buddha's strategy in teaching us to let go is to give us better and better things to hold onto. He teaches us to get attached to more and more refined states of well-being, and to become disenchanted with everything else.

It's like climbing a ladder. To climb up the rungs of the ladder, you already have to be holding onto a higher rung before you can let go of a lower one. Finally when you get to the top of the ladder, when there's nothing higher to hold onto, nowhere else to go: That's when you get off onto the roof or where ever you're headed. That's when you can totally let go.

The same principle holds true in the practice: You let go of lower attachments only when you've got something higher to hold onto.

All things in life are impermanent, and attaching yourself to impermanence will lead to suffering.

Therefore, move up the ladder from impermanence to that which is unchanging, and then step off into Nirvana.