Shadowing Practice: The Root of Sorrow is Attachment by Anthony De Mello - Learn English Speaking with Video
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132 sentences
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1
Let's pick up the thread again.
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Your life is in a mess.
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You don't want to get out of it.
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There was another thing.
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It's in a mess because you've got wrong ideas, not because there's anything wrong with you.
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You're okay.
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I'm okay, you're okay.
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We're all okay.
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We're great.
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There's nothing wrong with us.
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They put wrong ideas into our heads.
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Somebody did.
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We needn't spend too much time trying to catch the culprit.
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But anyway, the fact is you got wrong ideas.
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You know, it's like somebody gives you a stereo set and you get a manual of instructions that comes along with it.
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They gave us the manual of instructions.
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It was all wrong.
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So you're not getting music.
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You're getting scratchy sounds.
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You're getting upset.
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You're getting conflicts.
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You're getting loneliness.
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You're getting emptiness.
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Now, there are many ways of putting the formula.
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I am going to give you the simplest I found.
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I am going to give it to you in the words of old Buddha.
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Why did I choose him?
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Because his is the simplest of all, but you find it everywhere.
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It is the simplest of all, enunciated with limpid clarity.
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You are probably going to disagree with it, but you cannot miss the point.
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Here it is.
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The world is full of sorrow.
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The root of sorrow is attachment.
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The uprooting of sorrow means the uprooting, the dropping of attachments.
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You know there are desires on whose fulfillment my happiness does not depend.
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You got lots of desires on whose fulfillment your happiness does not depend or else you would be climbing walls,
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you would be nervous wrecks.
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All of us have two types of desires.
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We got desires, you know, we desire all kinds of things and gee, we're happy to get them and we don't get them, okay, too bad, we're not unhappy.
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But we've got other desires, good lord, if we don't get that, we're going to be miserable.
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That is what he calls an attachment.
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Where do you think all conflicts come from?
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Attachments.
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Where do you think greed comes from?
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Attachments.
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Where do you think loneliness comes from?
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Attachments.
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Where do you think emptiness comes from?
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You got it, same cause.
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Where do you think fears come from?
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My, how clever you are becoming.
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Attachments, no attachment, no fear, ever thought of that?
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No attachment, no fear.
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We are going to take your life, go right ahead.
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No attachment to life.
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Happy to live, happy to let go.
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You think that's possible?
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You know something?
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People have attained it, so it is possible.
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Want to attain it yourself?
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Attachment.
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Sorry sir, you have AIDS, you only have six months to live.
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Just six months?
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Boy, that's a lot of time to live, that's wonderful.
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Happiness.
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Hey, this guy got no attachment.
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If you were not actively engaged in making yourself miserable, you would be happy.
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We were born happy.
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All life is shot through with happiness.
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Oh, there's pain, of course there's pain.
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Who told you you can't be happy without pain?
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Come and meet a friend of mine who's dying of cancer, and she's happy in pain.
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So, we were born happy.
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We lost it.
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We were born with the gift of life.
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We lost it.
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We got to rediscover it.
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Why did we lose it?
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Because we were working actively.
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They taught us to work actively to make ourselves miserable.
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How did they do that?
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By teaching us to become attached.
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by teaching us to have desires so intense that we would refuse to be happy unless they were fulfilled.
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The tragedy is, my dears,
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the tragedy is that all you need to do is to sit down for two minutes
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and just watch how untrue it is that you would be unhappy without A or B or X or Y or whatever.
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Do you know something?
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You won't sit, because if you sit you might see it.
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You won't sit and look at it.
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I know I wouldn't, I resisted it for years.
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You mean if I don't get Mary Jane or I don't get John, I won't be happy?
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Hey, wait a minute, that's false.
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Before I met him, I was happy.
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And you know something?
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I once fell in love with somebody and then, well, I lost her and I was heartbroken.
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So what happened?
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I'm all right now.
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So she wasn't my happiness after all.
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Remember the time I was, you were a child and you lost something and you thought I'll never be happy without this.
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What happened?
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If we gave it to you today, you wouldn't look at it.
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But why don't we learn?
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Oh, no, no. We got to live in illusions.
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It feels good.
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It gives you a kick, doesn't it?
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It gives me a kick.
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We want kicks.
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We don't want happiness.
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We want thrills.
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And wherever you've got a thrill, you've got an anxiety.
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Because you might lose it.
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Or you may not get it.
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And you've got a depression following.
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You've got a hangover.
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It's so simple as I told you, I could put it down for you in two minutes, whether you will hear it is another question, that depends on your own heart.
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So, here it is, the world is full of sorrow,
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the root of sorrow is attachment desire,
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the uprooting of sorrow is the dropping of attachment.
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How does one drop it?
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One only looks and sees that it is based on a false belief,
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the belief that without this I cannot be happy, that that is false, the moment you see it is false you are free,
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good luck to you, may take you one minute, may take you twenty five years, but the day you see it you are free.
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Does this mean dropping of attachments, does it mean detachment from the material world?
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No, no, one uses the material world, one enjoys the material world,
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but one does not make one's happiness depend on the material world, is that clear enough?
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Like look what I am saying is,
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you really begin to enjoy things when you are unattached, Because attachment brings anxiety.
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If you are anxious, when you are holding on to something, you could hardly enjoy it.
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So what I am offering you is not a withdrawal from enjoyment,
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it's a withdrawal from possessiveness,
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from anxiety, from tension, from depression at loss of something.
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Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “The Root of Sorrow is Attachment by Anthony De Mello”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: attachment, desire, happiness, sorrow, depend. This video has 132 sentences and 1081 words to shadow. The speech runs for 8:42. The speaker talks at a steady 124 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start. 24 of its 132 sentences are questions, so it is good practice for question intonation and short answers.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| attachment noun | /əˈtæt͡ʃmənt/ | The act or process of (physically or figuratively) attaching. |
| sorrow noun | /ˈsɑɹoʊ/ | unhappiness, woe |
| uproot verb | /ˌʌpˈɹut/ | To tear up (a plant, etc.) by the roots, or as if by the roots; to extirpate, to root up. |
| miserable adjective | /ˈmɪz(ə)ɹəbəl/ | In a state of misery: very sad, ill, or poor. |
| emptiness noun | The state or feeling of being empty; an emotion that combines hollowness, numbness, disconnection and a lack of meaning in life, resulting in existential… | |
| fulfilment noun | /fʊlˈfɪl.mənt/ | The act of fulfilling or the state or quality of being fulfilled; consummation; completion; realization. |
| attain verb | /əˈteɪn/ | To come to or reach (a place) by motion or progression. |
| loneliness noun | /ˈloʊnlinəs/ | A feeling of depression resulting from being alone or from having no companions. |
| thrill verb | /θɹɪl/ | To suddenly excite someone, or to give someone great pleasure; to (figuratively) electrify; to experience such a sensation. |
| withdrawal noun | /wɪðˈdɹɔ(ə)l/ | Receiving from someone's care what one has earlier entrusted to them. Usually refers to money. |
| unhappy adjective | /ʌnˈhæpi/ | Not happy; sad. |
| culprit noun | /ˈkʌlpɹɪt/ | The person or thing at fault for a problem or crime. |
| detachment noun | /dɪˈtæt͡ʃmənt/ | The action of detaching; separation. |
| enunciate verb | /ɪˈnʌnsiˌeɪt/ | To make a definite or systematic statement of. |
| heartbroken adjective | Suffering from grief, especially after a failed romance. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. |
| shot through with | Infused, permeated, streaked with (something). |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Why did I choose him?
- Where do you think all conflicts come from?
- Where do you think greed comes from?
- Who told you you can't be happy without pain?
- It gives you a kick, doesn't it?
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 38 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, we're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thrill /θɹɪl/, withdrawal /wɪðˈdɹɔ(ə)l/
- Long words — get the stress right: miserable /ˈmɪz(ə)ɹəbəl/, enunciate /ɪˈnʌnsiˌeɪt/, hangover /ˈhæŋoʊ̯vɚ/ ~ /ˈhæŋɔʊ̯vɚ/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like attachment, sorrow, uproot.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.