Non- Attachment 3

If we understand this behavioural aspect of non-attachment, then we will know that changes in behaviour don’t make much difference. It often happens that a person of attachments reacts and turns his back on everything he clings to, similarly a renunciate turns into a worldly man again and begins to run after money, position and prestige. People of considerable success in this world say they are in a mess and want to get rid of it. Renunciate also say it seems they made a mistake by leaving the world. Who knows? There may be something really worthwhile which they are missing. A monk thinks the people of the world are having a good time, while really they are wasting their lives. And worldly people think they are missing some higher experiences of life the monks are having. In fact, only their situations are different. Psychologically the monk and the house holder are in the same boat. Psychologically they are heavily depended on others, they are in shackles. And such people, even many among us cannot know freedom, truth and bliss. Really the ‘other’ is the bondage. 

Usually a renunciate thinks that he has given up the other, but he is not aware that he is mistaken to think so. He is still bound with the other, he is in another kind of relationship with the other, a relationship of escape, what he leaves behind pursues him. Although he is not running behind it, he is afraid of it. Because he has escaped from it, he is worried lest it overcome him again. And where can we run away from the other. The other is everywhere except one place, and that is our innermost being, the center of our being. If we leave our home, the ashram or monastery will take its place. And we will be attached to it the way we were attached to our home. If we leave our wife or husband or children, then the master and the disciples will take their places and we will be attached to them. We can leave a palace for a hut, but hut is as much a house as a palace. 

The other is all over. In this world we cannot run away from the other, because the world is the other, and where ever we go the world will be with us. Where ever we go the other will be there, of course the other will take new forms, but it will be there. By changing appearances we cannot change reality. Except one space, the space of love, the other is everywhere. At the deepest core of love there is no other- not because the other cannot enter there, but because at our deepest core even we disappear. At the deepest center of one’s being even the self, “I”, disappears; so there is no way for the ‘other’ to be there. 

Dr. Dwaraka Nath, Director, 
Mitran foundation- the stress management people