Surge 82
INNER DETACHMENT
My friend Vijay Chhabra was in Italy last week, and he Emailed me, “Here at Meran, on the wall of a house where I stayed for a few days was imprinted a statement [in German] that read: This house is mine and yet not mine. My predecessor thought it was his, he left and I got in, and after me it will be the same story.”
Objects, places and people seem to belong to us, and we sometimes get very attached to them. How much blood has flown, for example, over land, sometimes in a fight between brothers! “This is mine,” says one and, “It is not yours but mine,” says the second. “I and mine, you and yours,” is the definition of maya (worldly delusion) that Shri Tulasidas gives1 in his work Ram-Charit-Manas. Desire, attachment, pride and hurt are the different facets of the conditioned mind’s erroneous perception. They keep us trapped in this worldly existence. The folly leads to, immediately or later, terrible unrest and sorrow.
Can we decide to be detached? Will we succeed in being free from all attachment overnight? Is it possible for us to keep one day in a week for the practice of detachment? How about shedding our attachments one by one, and be free of everything through a five-year plan?
All this is ridiculous, though a lot of popular spiritual teachings have made millions believe that there is a graded process or a systematic journey towards freedom (mukti). Religious organizations have become (or remained) rich by propagating such beliefs2.
Attachment is a thought process. Another thought process cannot end it. You do not come out of the dream world by a vehicle which also is part of the dream projection. Nor does any somersault that you turn in the dream become the cause of your waking up. It is not a conscious act, willed by you, that brings about the waking up. You wake up by a leap into a different state of consciousness; this leap is not the effect of any particular thought, word or deed of the dream state.
The Vedanta therefore says uncompromisingly that freedom is not an effect (kaarya). No cause (kaarana) can lead to it. No action, and therefore no effort, has a bearing on this mysterious enlightenment. Most students get very puzzled by this scenario. Majority of them pay no heed to these utterances of the Vedanta and simply proceed with their (so-called) saadhana, for they are attached to ‘doing something’; they are terribly attached to their being the doers.
On a parallel track, most people cannot sit quietly for they are slaves to their habits of ‘doing’. They do not realize how memories have hijacked them and held them captive. They cannot see that there is nothing intrinsic in ‘work’ that boosts their self-worth; it is their thought processes that make them feel good when they do some work. A child holds a doll and feels good. An adult does not attach value to that doll but the thought process in the child makes the doll very precious in his eyes. This doll is nice, feels the child, and what is more, the child considers his own self-worth as high when he possesses the doll. Many of us work because, like the doll, work gives us an enhanced self-worth. It is self-deception.
There is nothing right or wrong with work itself. The doll is innocent; let us not blame the doll. We need to examine if we are escaping some fundamental issue by immersing ourselves in work. Can we face ourselves, leaving aside either work or entertainment?
We need to stand apart from our own thought processes and see the habitual, repetitive conclusions that our mind arrives at. We then see clearly that we are not really attached to another person but our attachment is to the self-image built by thought. “I am complete, with her; I am incomplete without her,” says the thought process. The Vedanta reveals, “I am complete – with her and without her too.” The insights of the liberating wisdom of the Upanishads help us see that various conditional clauses (if I get that, because I got rid of this, and as a result of acquiring that etc) are the mischief of thought.
Becoming a Vedanta scholar is not the solution either. We must examine our life, maybe with the help of some Vedanta study, and let the erroneous perceptions get exposed. Let the mischief of thought be brought to light. Let the ego come under the scanner.
Swami Chidananda
Varanasi, Monday, June 20, 2011
1 mein aru mor tor tein maya – Sri Ram to Lakshman in Aranya Kanda.
2 It was in this sense that J Krishnamurti once remarked that gurus were spreading illusions. He stood for a sense of urgency with regard to waking up; anything that prolonged the dream was nothing short of illusion even if it gave much comfort to the student.
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