Saturday, March 28, 2009

Detaching oneself from desires

What is happiness? Does it lie in acquisition of wealth or satisfying sensory pleasures as we commonly understand? Most people believe so and pursue relentlessly these ends. In the quest for such a ‘happiness’, they lose their virtues and good values. Hankering after material possessions, they fall into bad ways of greed, corruption and insensitivity to others sufferings. Ask any youngster his goal in life and you would get a prompt reply that he wished to become very rich.Attachment does not mean only to wealth. It can be to a woman or a man, to positions of power, to fame and name, Growing attachment destroys the mind pushing the individual deeper into the vortex of desires and in the process adding to the heavy baggage of papa (sin). Happiness is elusive and remains an illusion. Attachment produces desire that is insatiable and unquenchable. The root of all sorrows and grief is in attachment.
The sages have found that lasting happiness cannot be found so long as we pursue these mundane goals. They kept themselves away from worldly objects and pleasures. A guru gave a disciple a thread with several knots and asked him to untie the same. The disciple did accordingly and gave the thread to Guru. He threw it aside and asked what he learnt from the exercise. The disciple said that people should likewise untie themselves from worldly attachments if they wish to realize the purpose of life.Eschewing attachments does not come by easily. It is a difficult process calling forth steadiness of mind and a strong will power. One has to search constantly the heart and endeavour to keep at bay attachments to earthy matters. Sat sanghs, reading of and listening to spiritual subjects and engaging oneself in virtuous activities would facilitate the progress towards the spiritual goal of realizing oneself. One can be part of family and society doing one’s duties at home and work place and yet not get dragged into the quagmire of desires. All the duties should be performed in the name of divine for service to others. The self interest should be totally absent. Like the drop of water on a lotus leaf, one can be a part of the world and yet not belong to it. Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions and reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
Pray to God that your attachment to such transitory things as wealth, name, and creature comforts may become less and less every day”.
Ramakrishna

7 comments:

  1. An outstanding post, KP. Perhaps another name for attachment is undue expectations from a person or situation. If one can love without such expectations, that relationship becomes divine, giving proper space to each other, secure in the knowledge that nothing can separate them as souls.

    Thank you and best wishes :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Beautiful theme-picture. Thanks again.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very nice post sir. Attachment gives rise to anger and fear. Anger and fear give rise to loss of discrimination. Loss of discrimination leads to accumulation of sin. And the the individual is doomed.

    ReplyDelete
  4. A great post Mr. K.P. its truely difficult to detach oneself fro the things that harm us. But sometimes it so happens that we are well aware of the fact that things are harmful yet we get dragged into them, unable to come out, that's when we need strong will power to bring back stability into our lives. Thanks for the enlightining post:)Best

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi sir!

    Great thoughts shared! I find them inspiring...surrendering all our actions to the feet of God is an easy way to raise from our attchments...

    Also, the quote of Sri Ramakrishna was wonderful!

    Thanks for sharing!

    Happ blogging!!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks,dear friends, for the kind comments

    ReplyDelete
  7. hello Sir ...
    how you been doing?
    how is life at your end?

    i am kind of making my mark once again, as you have already seen in my other blog ...
    yes, life does give us a little bit of scratch & hitch ...

    yes, at the end of the day what counts is if we are happy with the whole happening and are able to move on ...

    you have superbly put it up here ..
    nice day

    ReplyDelete