Detachment

Vedanta is a religion of detachment. To detach ourselves from that which is false and transitory and to attach ourselves to what is real and enduring is the way and goal in Vedanta. No compromise in this process is ever possible. To the extend we have successfully detached, to that extend we have emerged out of the pangs and pains of existence and proportionately we have entered into a state of peace and tranquillity. Detachment should not be understood as a running away from the things or situations in life. This we can never do, and that an escapist is never a champion in the spiritual path is a fact. Ignorant of this idea, many have wrecked their spiritual unfoldment by merely getting away from sense objects and comforts.

Detachment is an intelligent attitude to life and the environment. The world will impinge upon us whether we wish it or not. We have to be in the world so long as we live in our present plane of consciousness. There is no escape from perceptions, emotions or Detachment is a mental attitude intelligently maintained by the seeker towards objects and beings around him in life. Mere understanding of pain –ridden nature of the finite world is not sufficient at all; this understanding must get completely assimilated buy the individual’s personality through constant thinking and continuous realization. Through intelligent and alert experiments in our own life, we can build up an ever-increasing conviction that detachment pay us a high dividend. The knowledge so gained, the conviction so gathered as a result of our own personal experiences is what I meant by the In fact, the objects and beings that constitute the world in themselves cannot and will not bring any storm into us. The shattering shocks in life and the tragic events that happen now and then, and also the day-to-day pinpricks, create a disturbance in us only because we are making wrong contact with the world around us. Our reactions to the environment around us will depend upon our mental evaluation of it and our inner nature at that particular If our inward nature can be so arranged and continuously held in that arrangement as to make us react with the world around always positively, then we have discovered the secret of living at peace with the world, perfectly independent of the pattern of happenings around us. This arrangement in one’s inner nature is called detachment, and a personality that has developed detachment becomes a non-conductor of the shocks in life. Such a person is ever tranquil, ever efficiently intelligent, peacefully serene in all occasions and in This glorious spirit of detachment cannot be practiced in a sequestered place where there are no temptations and challenges around. No one can learn swimming on the dry banks of a river; one must live in this world, and while living, fully and enthusiastically, learnt the art of doing so in a spirit of intelligent detachment. This is called ‘asparsha yoga’ in Vedanta. The pangs and disappointments reach our bosom only because of our attachment, sparsha, and now we are living a life of ‘sparsha yoga’.

   Read the Upanishads and Gita carefully, slowly, giving a lot of your original thinking to it. Read the discourses and commentaries upon them, not merely to accept them, but to stimulate your thinking and independent re-evaluation. From the new angles of observation, it is possible for every one of us to realize the futility of our present way of life and the fallacies in our present evaluation of things. Once this new version enters your inner life, be careful not to accept it totally and start implementing it in your everyday life immediately. Try to experiment with the with this new-found understanding in limited instances, in selected situations, in determined relationships.

   Very soon, every intelligent student will thus come to discover that by cultivating ‘detachment’ we are not losing anything, but on the other hand, we are entering each day into an ampler field of fuller joys and deeper peace. “Detach….detach…detach…. and live. Attach, attach, attach and die,” seems to be the cry of all scriptures, the sigh of all texts, the roar of all prophets and the song of all masters.

*This article is by Pujya Swami Chinmayananda, founder of Chinmaya Mission