Zen story: When is detachment really still just another form of attachment?
@innertalks (22088)
Australia
April 12, 2022 10:06pm CST
The esteemed Zen master, Jodda Resposhe, was giving a discourse on detachment.
Here is the wordage of his talk:
"Detachment is not all that it's touted out to be."
"We are told to give up attachment to our desires, our wants, and to anything else, where we have a vested interest in the outcome of anything."
"Detachment, though, never works, on its own, alone."
"We need to add back love, by staying attached to that love, and never letting it fall away within us."
"So I ask you then, does being detached from desires, and other things hold any real merit to it, or should we just be loving, and not even worry ever about trying to detach ourselves from anything at all?"
"And my answer to you is this:"
"Attachment is putting other things above love in your life, but detachment, trying to detach yourself from your attachments never works either."
"Just love, and all of your attachments will fall away of themselves then, naturally so."
"When is detachment really still just another form of attachment?"
"When you try to become detached, instead of only loving."
"Now, the Indian spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy, (1931 to 2007) once said this:"
"Your heart must become a sea of love. Your mind must become a river of detachment."
"This sounds good, but it misses the truth, on two counts."
"Our heart must become nothing."
"It already is a sea of love. We just need to live from it."
"Our mind must become nothing too."
"Let the mind stay as it is, and do not overwork it from itself."
"Living from your heart first, the mind just falls into line, and serves you as an instrument of that love, and nothing else ever need be done with that mind."
"Servants serve; leaders, here our hearts, always lead best from love."
Photo Credit: The photo used in this article was sourced from the free media site, pixabay.com
Be your real self, a heart person of love, and your mind will serve you, not try to rule you.
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3 responses
@innertalks (22088)
• Australia
13 Apr 22
Yes, it would be a cold life indeed, if we were cold-hearted enough to detach from love too.
Love is one thing that we should never detach ourselves from, and which we should always stay attached to, too.
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@Shiva49 (26774)
• Singapore
13 Apr 22
We tend to get too attached to the accouterments that go with material wealth. It starts with when we work hard we are also entitled to the fruits of our labor and that is counted in terms of wealth accumulation.
At some point, we need to disentangle ourselves from such pursuits that overwhelm our existence. I have seen how wealth attracts like flies to honey. Then love and selflessness take a back seat.
So the first step is to refocus our pursuits by shedding those that cloud our thinking. So detachment from those that glitter is needed and then others fall in place and in the right order.
Then our real self manifests in us and we are well on our way with heads held high with nary a thought about those that we leave behind.
To live in love is the ultimate in living, but we tend to revel in hatred and one-upmanship, sadly.
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@innertalks (22088)
• Australia
13 Apr 22
If our mind is attached to wealth accumulation, that is not the natural state of our mind.
We have altered it with our warped desires enabling that to happen.
Should one part of our mind then work on another part to try to fix it?
No, that is the blind leading the blind.
All that we need do is to allow the mind to return to being itself, its real self, which it will do the moment that we embrace our hearts, and begin to fully love from them.
"God cannot be lost. There is nobody blocking the way. There is no hurry because God is not something in time. There is nowhere to go because God is not distant in some star. You cannot miss in the very nature of things. Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand...relax. If you relax, it comes… If you relax, you start vibrating with it."
Osho, the Indian spiritual guru, said this.
Likewise, love cannot be lost either.
We need to bathe in the love in our hearts, and our minds will then be instantly cleaned too.
2 people like this
@innertalks (22088)
• Australia
15 Apr 22
@Shiva49 Yes, the mind, attached to an ego, rather than to the heart, wants, and keeps wanting things, and stuff. We do need to put the heart always first.
It is interesting to me, that some people now, with excessive wealth, do not value so much the trappings of that wealth, anymore. They have it all, huge houses, yachts, cars, etc, etc.
Now, they seem to want experiences, rather than accumulated possessions, and going into space at 55 million a shot, seems to be stroking their ego more now, than possessions.
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@Shiva49 (26774)
• Singapore
14 Apr 22
@innertalks Yes, the mind is likened to a monkey jumping from one branch to another, restless. It lacks focus as outside interference keeps it on tenterhooks.
Living from the heart and driven by love is the panacea for all our ills. Living with a sense of gratitude keeps us well-focused too.
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@macayada (1497)
• Cavite City, Philippines
29 Apr 22
Love is attachment and detachment, letting go or holding on. Just the same as setting yourself free of material and immaterial things. The heart finds peace when you know how to define earthly attachment and detachment. The mind weighs the right and wrong depending on us where to side. Let us clean and prepare our innerselves, purify our body because you will never know the time for us to bid farewell, don't get caught unprepared.
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@innertalks (22088)
• Australia
30 Apr 22
We are all attached to God, by his love.
We detach ourselves from God, and his love, and experience "non love" then instead, just as there is only good too.
All is good, except for when we conceal good from ourselves, and so act badly.
God created all good. If we only fully loved, all would always remain good for us then too.
@innertalks (22088)
• Australia
1 May 22
@Shiva49 Yes, it boils down to our choice. We can choose good, or bad, love, or non love.
Eventually, we will become aware though, that bad is an illusion we create ourselves, and non love is just a shadow that we caste across love.
Really, all is good, and all is love, underneath the veneers, and delusions, that we cover them over with.
@Shiva49 (26774)
• Singapore
30 Apr 22
@innertalks Yes, when we stray from the path of love, we get signals from our inner knowing. Then it is up to us which path we take.
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