“Although other (yānas) assert that liberation will be achieved by renouncing the objects, one will not be bound by the mere appearances or the mind and the objects (Yul Dang Ch'os-Su sNang-Ba), but will be bound if one attaches (Zhen-Pa) to them. So it is taught (in scriptures) that one should renounce apprehension and attachment. Tilopā said: 'Appearances do not bind, but attachments do. So, Nāropa, cut off the attachments....”

“An object is not so attached to its name that we cannot find another one that would suit it better.”

“the tragedy of an attachment is that if its object is not attained it causes unhappiness. But if it is attained, it does not cause happiness – it merely causes a flash of pleasure followed by weariness, and it is always accompanied, of course, by the anxiety that you may lose the object of your attachment.”

“[The shells] do not have the meaning they once did, but, as Swann said in Remembrance of Things Past, "even when one is no longer attached to things, it's still something to have been attached to them." (22)”

“Beyond it is the incalculable. In other words, numbers cannot exceed the number of things there are: so that for the teller and the audience of this tale, numbers still are attached to objects.”

“Do not become so attached to any one belief than you cannot see past it to another possibility.”