Emily Eslami - My Missing Piece (8th Precept - No Coveting)

"When you go to the mountain, and see a flower blooming, pick it, break it, and make it yours - this is attachment. If you let it be there for everything and everyone - this is 'no attachment.'

Even your self does not belong to you. You are everything." - Kobun Chino

In the latest installment of Emily’s ever timely precept series, she takes on the eighth precept, "no coveting," ie craving – what it looks like, why we do it, whether we can stop ourselves, and how it turns out that coveting and stinginess are two sides of the same coin after all. What exactly are clinging to when we grasp after those desires, states, and people? And (maybe more concerning) if there is no self, what is there even to cling in the first place?