Attaching to detachment

Easy to read. Difficult to practice. Isn't it?

- Dilip.

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Source: The Hindu, 15-07-2006

Attaching to detachment

CHENNAI : Though it is imperative that an individual has to gain insight into one's essential nature, it is a difficult and demanding process. The human form is a combination of matter and spirit, and the unravelling of the essentially divine nature in us is the road to the development of one's personality, and this is a lifetime process, said Sunanda in a discourse on the Bhagavad Gita. Lord Krishna's detailed description of the body, mind and intellect combination that constitutes a human being is an eye-opener in this regard.

It is with the mind and intellect that a human being can understand the divine nature in him. The mind is a powerful force that can feel intensely but is not able to reason. Without any rhyme or reason when the mind tends to make demands like a child, it has to be kept under supervision lest it should lead itself towards destruction. Once we understand our mind, we should learn to keep it under check.

The body brings the world into it through the senses and the mind reacts to the experience. The body in turn receives the mind's instructions. But if one were to go through the experiences at the level of the intellect, then one would realise that attachment leads to sorrow and detachment leads to happiness. Our preoccupation with the world is such that when one is subjected to various experiences while driven to fulfil desires of different kinds, when every set of desires that is fulfilled leads to a fresh set waiting to be fulfilled, one is repeatedly cast into the endless cycle of birth and death.

Lord Krishna drives home the truth of the ephemeral nature of the world that can cause unstable joy and deep sorrow. The only way by which a soul can be relieved from this bondage is when one realises that attachment with the worldly objects is the cause of misery and then learns to detach himself from them.

Mind is the child and the adult the intellect. The yoga of knowledge insists on concentration and demands that the intellect has to be conscious of the focus of the mind. It is selfish desires that cause misery. Desireless action leads to self-realisation. A person with genuine love does not suffer. Vedanta helps us to develop our personality by cultivation of love and compassion and negation of selfish desires.