Question: Hello Sayadaw! I am 38 years old and I am a director of my own company. I hire a young secretary and I fall in love with her but she denies it because we are not matched. Another reason is she is a Dhamma practitioner as well as a meditator. She doesn’t think she will get married. I know my desire is caused by ignorance and attachment. We are working together every day. How to let my loving mind go because I want to keep her doing work. Please give me advice, Sayadaw!

The cause is you might have done the same thing to someone loving you and it has not fulfilled her desire. That’s why you have to suffer again as same as what you did before. If you can accept, you should understand like this and you should try to treat her as a sister. In this way, you can do good deeds and get good results in the future. To detach from her, you should do more and more good deeds like this. It’s better to love doing good deeds than loving something or someone as there is no side effect in this way. Now you cannot endure. Besides, you have to detach from yourself by doing all kinds of good deeds by keeping precepts and keeping the mind stable and pure. The problems are not concerned with anyone but our ignorance and attachment. Because of that, we misunderstand about someone or something, man and woman, living beings or non – living beings. That’s why we cannot detach. We should not forget the Truth of not someone – not something – no I – no you – not mine – not yours, just ever-new-impermanent nature. The more you can accept the Truth in your mind, the more you can detach from yourself and the others, from that girl also. Many people are suffering like you in society. Now you have a chance to solve the problem by doing good deeds. If you succeed you can help the others. That’s really great!