Ajahn Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu

All aspects of modern life are very clearly full of clinging to the positive.

People are running around chasing after the positive all over the world, especially when there is enough money to create the illusion of getting these things.

This doesn't happen by itself.

Wherever there is clinging to the positive, then there will be an equal amount of clinging to the negative.

So you can see the businessmen, the politicians, the ordinary people, who are all caught up in this attachment to positive.

also have a lot of fear of not getting what they are clinging to, or of losing what they are clinging to.

And together these are destroying the world faster and faster.

Any kind of clinging,

whether to the positive or the negative, brings suffering.

All around us, the world is full of things with positive and negative qualities, which is the world that we live in.

When our mind, through wisdom,

is no longer caught up in these positive and negative things.

Then we say that the mind is above or beyond positive and negative.

This is our way to survival or to salvation.

This is the meaning of being spiritually alone, where nothing positive or negative can disturb the mind.

The negative leads to a negative sort of ego.

When there is an ego, the mind is not free, is not void.

you should remember this most important sentence that wherever there is ego, then there is no solitude.

If there is ego in the mind, even if we go and sit in a cave in the mountains or stay at the charnel grounds or deep in the forest,

there will be no real solitude, no matter where we go.