Mindfulness to Avoid Attachment

...if you meet someone you feel strong desire toward, you can try to remember someone you were extremely attracted to in the past where that attraction turned into something unpleasant or painful. Think about all the problems that came from your excessive feelings of desire and then think that other sentient beings may have gone through a similar experience as a result of their obsession. Imagine you are absorbing all their pain, relieving them of their anguish. Then make the following mental aspiration: “May I and all sentient beings be free of the pain associated with excessive desire and attain the virtue of nonattachment.” The key point of the exercise is not just having the willingness to take on the suffering of others, but using that to transform our own poisons into the corresponding seeds of virtue through the force of our aspirations. Sometimes people have problems understanding the whole mechanism of this practice, but if we actively use it, it is actually very profound.