Overcoming Attachment

Srimad Bhagavad Gita is called as ‘Ashoka-Upanishad’.  Its theme is to ‘destroy grief’ and make one’s life happy.  Grief is caused due to attachment.  It is the glue that keeps us stuck in the cycle of birth and death.  Attachment appears cool, soft and binding unlike anger, which is hot. Attachment arises out of inalertness and takes over our entire personality.  For example, we barely dip a corner of a paper in an oil cup yet the oil gets absorbed and it pervades the entire paper. 

Attachment – Features

• Attachment to one’s image & Body Mind Intellect is - ‘i’ & attachment to things & beings is – ‘my.’ Hence attachment is defined by Poojya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda as – i  + i want.

• Attachment covers our vision and makes us blind.  Dhritarashtra was attached to his son. Duryodhana was attached to wealth & power. Arjuna was attached to the fruits of action & sense of doership.  These three characters cover most common attachments of human mind.   

• It expresses as Raag – Likes & Dvesha – Dislikes and distracts one from one’s duty.

• Attachment is an emotional pattern.  Our mind gets fixated.  We can’t do without it. Our sense of self & security entirely depended on that person, job, relationship, object…When separated from it one may even feel physical pain. 

• When Attachment has its way we become possessive.  Then we want the person, situation or object… to be exactly as we want it to be, rather than what it is.  We want it to be ours and ours alone.
• Attachment makes us psychology dependent.  Strongest of men become weaklings due to attachment.  Sant Jnaneshwara Maharaj says  - “A Drone is capable of boring through a thick log of wood but it cannot come out of the soft petals of a flower due to its attachment to nectar.”  Dependency is Pain & death.  Independence is freedom & life.
• Attachment also has its own attachments that come along into our lives: 

n  Jealousy
n  Anger
n  Fear
n  Insecurity
n  Loneliness
n  Psychological Dependence

Steps in Overcoming attachment

Step 1 - Recognize it

We must recognize our attachments at all the 4 layers of our personality.   Through introspection and self-observation we can find out where we are attached.  Ask – What am I attached to?  When we sincerely ask ourselves, we will know.  We must also accept with humility that I am attached to…...
n  Don’t resist it saying – ‘ I am not attached at all….’
n  Don’t justify – ‘everybody thinks that way… its natural to be attached’
n  Don’t disguise it as – ‘i think its love and how can we live without it’
n  Don’t give importance – my attachment is special. Its because of my ‘unique’ circumstances.
n  Don’t condemn yourself for having attachments.  Strive objectively to rise above them. 

Step 2 - Reverse, don’t run!

Bhagavad Geeta does not want us to leave the object of attachment and escape.  Renunciation is not of the object but of the dependency and doership.  We must neither run away nor ruin ourselves by giving-in to attachment,  but we must REVERSE our thinking.  Staying where we are we have to shift our attitude. 

Sri Ramakrishna Paramhamsa said - If the boat is in water there is no problem. If the water enters the boat, the boat will sink.  If we live in the world there is no problem. If the world lives in us we are bound.

Occasionally, going away for a short while helps to cultivate detachment.  When one is ready, then alone one can drop the lower for the higher.   Till then we must work on shifting our attitude.

Step 3 - Remind the mind   

Due to our fanciful imaginations and vasanas of the past we give inflated value to things, people and situations.  We must deflate the inflated value (Exaggeration) we have given.  This is called - Prati-paksha bhavana.  To see the other side and know the real worth of something is Prati-paksha bhavana.  In Bhaja Govindam Sri Adi Shankaracharya exhorts us to see the real-worth of money, pleasures, relationships, time etc.  When we reflect on the pains that attachment to all this brings and when we look deeper, we reverse our fanciful thinking and the mind becomes balanced. It stops craving and attains a healthy sense of equanimity and detachment because the mind never gets attached to something that causes pain.  See the pain of pleasure and pleasure of pain.   

Step 4 - Remember its impermanence

Poojya Gurudev Swami Chinmayananda said – “However much you hold on to the world, it will slip. God, even if you ignore will not leave u.”  Change is the nature of the world and it is ephemeral.  It is often compared to peeling an onion.  Layers after layers one peels and tears roll down one’s cheeks yet one finds that ultimately its all empty and there’s nothing substantial.  When we know firmly that something is temporary and we have to drop it one day we will not get attached to it.  Mind gets attached to something only because it thinks that the object exists by itself, has happiness and it can satisfy me.  When we reflect on the impermanent nature of the world we get dispassion. Shri Krishna in the Geeta says – “Having attained to this impermanent & painful world, seek The Permanent”        

Step 5 - Attach & Detach (Devotion / Self-Knowledge)

Mind gets attached only if it finds joy and happiness in something.  Mind gets detached where there is pain.   Assuming that Objects, people and situations have happiness, the mind gets attached to them.   This is delusion caused by ignorance -  Not knowing that my nature is BLISS.   Hence Poojya Gurudev said – “Attach & Detach”.  Attach to the Higher & Detach from the lower.  Detach the mind from the lower &  Attach it to The TRUTH / GOD – the real source of Happiness.  In the XII chapter Sri Krishna says – “Absorb the mind and intellect in Me alone.  You will attain Me there is no doubt”

This Self-Knowledge is the ultimate cure of all attachments because it destroys ignorance, which is the root cause of delusion, which leads to attachment.