What is non-attachment?
As thoughts arise,
destroying them utterly without any residue in the very place of their origin is
non-attachment.
Just as the pearl-diver ties a stone to his waist, sinks to the bottom of the sea and
there takes the pearls,
so each one of us should be endowed with non-attachment, dive within
oneself and obtain the Self-Pearl.
~ Who Am I? (Nan Yar?)
The Teachings of Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi
“When the Sage thinks of something, it is like a fan that has been pulled out of the socket. It’s still turning, but there’s no power. The power is dead. The power has been cut off. In other words, the thoughts of a saint are dead. The thoughts of the Sage have no power, no power whatsoever. This is why it is said, a Sage does not think, a Sage has no thoughts. What it really means is that the sage’s thoughts are dead. When the thoughts are dead, you live in absolute reality. You live in pure awareness. When the thoughts are dead you live in sat-chit-ananda [existence-consciousness-bliss], in nirvana.
So what are you to do to also cease the thinking, so the thoughts can become dead? You simply do not attach yourself to the thoughts. By not attaching yourself to the thoughts, by not reacting to the thoughts, by not responding to the thoughts, they lose their power and begin to fade away. You do not give it any energy. You do not give it any power. Do not say to yourself, ‘I have to stop my thoughts.’ Do nothing like this. Just slow down, slow down, let the thoughts do what they may. Allow the thoughts to go their own way. Do nothing with your thoughts. Do not think about them. Do not fight them. And above all, do not try to stop them.
You may think this is sort of difficult, but it’s not. It’s like when you first wake up, before the thoughts come. You’re still drowsy from sleep. And when the first thoughts come to you, you hardly pay any attention to them. That’s the attitude to have. Do not pay any attention to your thoughts whatsoever. … There are so many practices [used to stop the mind]. You have Vipassana meditation. You have pranayama. You have so many different methods to stop your thoughts. All of these methods are good to an extent. They make you sort of one-pointed, but they will not stop your thoughts.
This is why people who have been practicing pranayamas, breathing exercises, Vipassana meditation, even Zen meditation, and other forms of yoga meditation, have been practicing for years, and years, and years and years. Perhaps they have achieved a semblance of peace, but they have not become liberated, due to the fact that they are using methods, whether it is a koan, or it’s watching your breath or your feelings, or whether it’s changing your thoughts to something positive, whatever you’ve been doing, you’re using your mind to do it. And your mind will always fool you. It will make you believe you’re getting somewhere, you’re becoming something great. But it’s really the ego. It is the ego that is controlling the mind.”
~ Robert Adams (20th century American Advaita mystic)
Frank Johnson expands and with razor-sharp precision expounds my topic, drawn from my inquiry into how to put Eastern wisdoms to use in the Western world:
GIVING UP ATTACHMENTS
In response to a popular query re. exactly how one could proceed with the task of putting off attachments, I cautioned that I am not a behaviorist, meaning I don’t concern myself with matters on the outside at all.
This issue is 100% a spiritual one, so setting up a plan to adjust your behavior will most assuredly miss the mark. As a matter of fact, it’s an all-or-nothing situation as with Abraham and Isaac.
If you arrive at the point where you need absolutely NOTHING AT ALL, then you’ll know the nature of true bliss. You’ll see for the first time what total freedom is truly about.
DrRobinStarbuck
Frank Johnson adds:
“True. The religious mind would have you think that change comes about by YOU taking control of your behavior. How many believe that in order to advance to some “higher level”, or to achieve some kind of spiritual breakthrough or intuitive tune-up, you need to really focus on doing better? We’ve all heard the expression… “What would Jesus do?” Does that really work?
Yes, you may achieve some limited or measured results, but ultimately and hopefully you’ll come to realize that all that “doing” is still just you. All that religious effort is still coming from you. What if you were to actually stop, and do something radically different. What if you really did what Jesus did… actually accept the divine reality of your Being? Right now, just as you are!
What if that God that we believe in is the LIFE that we already are and we were never told the truth. How many Believers ever take the time to realize or accept the truth within of who they are? What if you were to realize that the gospel message was not about “you doing something”, but that it was about the change that takes place when we accept and awaken to the truth of who we are.
What if the “I Am” that Jesus knew in himself is the “I Am” of you and me? What if YOU have been fighting the truth of your own Being all this time? Maybe the change we were looking for is found when we finally stop and just learn what it means to “Be”. To learn what it feels like to rest in the truth that it is God–our true Life, that works in, as, and through our physical being. This is how real change takes place. For now we realize that all this time we never knew the truth of who we are.”
Frank Johnson
Oh, that every man, woman and child would say ‘yes!’ to the nudge in their heart that is forever drawing them home to their Source, the reality of who they – and everyone else – are!
DrRobinStarbuck
“We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.”
~ Thomas Merton (20th century American Catholic mystic)
A very common and justifiable question in the Third dimension is “Why in the world are we here, having to go along such a convoluted path to get to where we never wanted to leave?”
The answer, although irritating, is “We aren’t.”
What if this world were never intended to be changed into a spiritual one?
What if we’re intended to wake up, one by one, and see only perfection
right where the perennial earthling sees all manner of evil
forever rearing its hydra head?
What does death mean to most of us? Surely it means the ending, both organically and biologically, of all the things that we have held here, of all the wounds, pains, sacrifice, resistance, loneliness, despair—all that coming to an end, which means, either there is a continuity of the self, the ‘me’, or the ending of the ‘me’. We said death is an ending. You can believe in reincarnation, as most of you perhaps do. If you do, you have to ask the question, what is it that continues? Is there a continuity or is there constant change—breaking, ending, beginning? If you believe—as most people perhaps in India believe—that you are going to be reborn, then what is it that is going to be reborn? Surely not the physical body, but if you believe in that, it is a continuity of what you are now, continuity of your beliefs, your activities, your greed, and so on, that is the bundle which is the consciousness, which is the self. That self, which is essentially consciousness, is put together by thought, your greed, your envy; your religious beliefs, superstitions, your anger, and so on; all those are the activities of thought. You are the result of a continuous movement of thought. If you believe in reincarnation and all that, you must find out if it is an illusion or a reality. If you are your name, your form, your ideas, your conclusions, your experiences, are they the factors of continuity as the ‘me’ in the next life? What is that ‘me’?
Each one of us, we think, is a separate entity; we think we are so-called individuals. What is that individuality—the name, the form, what you remember, your attitudes, your loneliness, your pain, your anxiety, your chaos, your sorrow and uncertainty? You may live in a nice house or in a small room or a nice flat but you are all that. You are the bank account. When you are attached to a bank account, you are the bank account; when you are attached to a house, you are the house; when you are attached to your body, you are that. You may have lovely furniture, and it may be marvellous furniture, and if you are attached to that, you are that furniture. So you are all that. When you are attached to a chair, to a person, to an idea, to an ideal, to a personal experience, what are the implications of that attachment?
Mind without Measure
Jiddu Krishnamurti
For
