One night, as Nagarjuna was preparing to retire for the day in the ruins of some ancient monastery, he sensed the presence of someone. Upon probing, he found a thief hiding behind one of the columns. He held out his golden begging bowl, and said to the thief, “Here take this. This is all that I have. I hope now you won’t disturb me while I’m sleeping.”

Delighted, the thief grabbed the bowl and ran away—only to come back next morning. Handing over the bowl to Nagarjuna, the thief said, “Here take this. But I want something else from you. Will you give?”

“What do you want?” asked the great saint.

The thief said, “When you gave away this bowl so freely last night, I realised how rich you were—and I was so poor. O great man, teach me how to acquire the wealth that enabled you to give so freely.”

We derive a sense of safety and self-worth from our possession

The true measure of wealth

While I don’t know what happens afterwards, I suspect that Nagarjuna must’ve freely given away the lesson that the thief wanted—that real wealth has nothing to do with how much we possess. The true measure of wealth lies in our capacity to give freely.

Ordinarily we tend to accumulate, acquire, hoard. One look into our closets, our cabinets, our store rooms and it’s amply evident that we are attached to stuff. We derive a sense of safety and self-worth from our possessions. Yes, we were conditioned to save for that rainy day, and to protect our future. But when we possess beyond all our needs and wants and yet find it difficult to give away, what does it say about our status?

Giving sans value judgements

And even when we do give, we do it sparingly and with dozens of value judgements attached. For instance, we may give only to the poor, the needy or the deserving. Or we give with an ulterior motive—because we expect the favour to be returned. Such kind of giving is transactional and does not reflect wealth.

No matter how big our bank balance and how great our net worth, if we can’t give freely, we’re poor

While giving the golden bowl, Nagarjuna didn’t care whether the man was deserving—after all, he was a thief! Neither did he bother to find out if the thief was needy. How does that matter to a giver? He gives because he can’t help giving. Pure and unadulterated giving doesn’t concern itself with anything else.

No doubt Nagarjuna was tuned into Nature’s great secret—that giving freely is the mark of true wealth. Nature doesn’t discriminate. The apple tree gives its fruit to everyone—the rich, the poor, the hungry and the well fed. The cloud that’s become heavy doesn’t concern itself with whether the land is fertile or barren, the lake is empty or full—it rains without any value judgements. And Nature operates from the position of abundance—it’s intrinsically wealthy.

Tapping into your intrinsic abundance

Those who give freely have an intrinsic sense of security that comes from trusting the universe and knowing that everything is provided for. Such people know that material wealth is transient. It’s here today, gone tomorrow and back again the day after.

No matter how big your bank balance and how great your net worth, if you can’t give freely, you are poor. Likewise, if you can give away even your last possession, you’re wealthy beyond imagination. And such wealth cannot be purchased or earned. It can only come from tuning into your intrinsic abundance.

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He decided to meet the fakir and invite him to live with him in the palace. When the fakir accepted the king’s invitation readily, it surprised the king a little as he was expecting that the ascetic will have to be persuaded to live and enjoy the opulent life. Nevertheless, the king took the fakir along with him and made lavish arrangements for his stay.

Was the King Hoodwinked?

At the palace, the ascetic settled down quickly and started enjoying all the royal luxuries —imperial clothes, rich food and all the aristocratic comforts that were provided to him. At first the king ignored this sudden change in the hermit’s stance. But soon he started suspecting that perhaps he had being hoodwinked by all that show of austerity and that his holy guest was just another ordinary human. But he kept his thoughts to himself and continued to observe the fakir.

Six months on, the fakir was still enjoying his stay and didn’t seem to mind this majestic life one bit. By now the king had become convinced that the fakir had only been pretending in the forest. He decided to confront him.

On meeting the fakir, the king said, “When I first met you, I was impressed by your austere lifestyle and minimum needs. Your life was an example of renunciation. But what I now see is totally the opposite. You seem to be enjoying every material pleasure there is. So what is the difference between you and me?”

The fakir smiled and said, “I was waiting for you to ask me this question but I will answer you tomorrow morning.” The next morning the fakir appeared before the king wearing his old tattered clothes.

The Fakir Leaves

The fakir said, “I am leaving for an unknown destination. If you really want the answer, you will have to leave your palace, your family, your kingdom and accompany me.” The king was stunned. He said, “You know, I can’t do that!”

The fakir smiled and replied, “Yes, I know. And that is the difference between you and me. I can leave all pleasures and comforts whenever I want because I am not attached to them. You are. I hope you have your answer now.”

It dawned on the king that the fakir was indeed great. He pleaded him to stay on but the fakir had made up his mind. As he was leaving, he said to the king, “Remember, what you hold on to, holds you. And since I hold on to nothing, I have nothing to renounce. I am forever free.”

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What is Attachment?

Attachment can be defined as holding on to other people, places, or things to give your life meaning and direction. When we are attached, we define ourselves, our purpose and our happiness in terms of ideas, values, things, or people, external to us—so much so we allow ourselves and our emotional states to be dictated by them.

I wouldn’t be too off-the-mark in saying that the root cause of all human misery is our tendency to become attached. It doesn’t matter what kind of attachment we nurture; chances are it’s going to hurt us, sooner or later. That’s because when we are attached, we allow the locus of our control to be outside of ourselves. Then, when things don’t go our way, we become dysfunctional or immobilised.

Attachment Breeds Trouble

Everyone knows how potentially harmful e-mail attachments can be. They come with risk of computer virus and can destroy your valuable data. But, the attachment I am discussing is of a more lethal nature. To prove how self-defeating attachments are, I invite you to engage in a simple visualisation exercise. Think how you feel about some of your most valued possessions, such as your car, wristwatch, jewellery, or mobile phone. Now, imagine if any one of these possessions getting damaged beyond repair or, worse still, getting lost. If you’re attached to your possession, you will feel terrible, or at the very least, upset, at such an “unfortunate” event. Yet, rationally speaking, if there is nothing you can do to reverse the happening, there’s no point in losing your calm, or feeling sad.

Attachment Makes You Weak

Attachment is a weakness that others can, and often do, exploit. If you’re attached to your job/work, you are vulnerable to exploitation by those who can benefit from it. If you’re attached to your car, the car mechanic gets the opportunity to take you for a ride.

One of the best illustrations of how attachment becomes a weakness is often visible in the context of sports, when a player, attached to the outcome of winning the game, often ends up losing. The best-known example of choking this way is of former tennis star Jana Novotna, who was labelled as a choke artist, a term for athletes who wilt under pressure. Novotna earned the choker label in the 1993 Wimbledon final against Steffi Graf. The match was evenly poised at 1-1, and Novotna was leading in the third set 5-1. One more game and she would’ve won the title. Yet she lost the third set, and consequently the match. What happened? The focus shifted from playing to winning. [Also read The Path to Success]

Attachments come in many odd sizes and shapes, and all of them are sticky and immobilising. We can be attached to our judgments, our relationships, our jobs, our possessions, our values or belief systems, our past, our political ideologies, or even our physicality. The scope is endless, both for attachments and the misery it produces. When you are attached, you become powerless in the face of the demands of people, places, or things that have the power to control you.

The only way out of attachments is that we develop a conscious mindset of detachment.

What is Detachment?

“Detachment is opposed to attachment, not enjoyment.”
— The Upanishads

Contrary to the widespread belief, detachment does not imply renunciation of life’s pleasures and privileges. It also doesn’t mean indifference. What it means is enjoying your life and all its gifts without demanding that they always remain in your life exactly as you want, or desire.

Think about it. When you replace attachment with detachment, nothing changes except your own attitude. You can continue to enjoy and appreciate everything without the accompanying fear of losing it. When you’re detached, you place your life in a healthy, rational perspective and acknowledge that there is a need to retreat from those events and circumstances of life over which you have no control.

Attachment Versus Detachment

In Prefer, don’t Demand, I discuss how demands create pitfalls and how reducing them to the level of preferences makes much more sense. In that context, attachment is a demand, whereas detachment is a preference. The difference is in the mind, in the thinking. By replacing attachments [a demand] with detachment [a preference], all you’re doing is changing the way you think about certain situations, people or things, while continuing to conduct your life in the same way.

Let me give you an example that most Indian readers would be able to easily identify in our cricket-crazy nation. A few years ago, I was obsessed with cricket. Whenever India played, I wanted the team to win. I was attached to Team India’s performance. If they played badly, it would create serious dissonance in me. Like millions of other Indians, I would brood over it endlessly. What’s more, I was even attached to my judgments about how the batsmen “should’ve” batted, bowlers “should’ve” bowled and so on. In my discussions with other cricket fanatics, I would hold on to my judgments, and get upset if someone held an opposing view. Then, when better sense prevailed, I understood the folly of my attachment.

As I became detached from cricket, nothing changed except that I no longer suffered because of eleven players who I had not even met. I enjoyed when they played well, felt happy about their success and the success of Team India. But, when they performed badly, I reminded myself that it’s only a game. Since I was detached, I had only opinions, not judgments, about how they should’ve played.

My detachment paid off big time in ICC World Cup 2007 when India was ousted in the league stage. Being detached served me, because—while I would’ve liked India to do better and even win the World Cup—I knew there’s nothing I could do about it. So there was no point in fretting over it, or losing even a moment’s peace.

Thus, detachment is about giving up attachments, not pleasure.

Detachment in Relationships

Attachments in relationships are trickier and more harmful than all other attachments. Any relationship that comes with a “conditions apply” tag implies attachment. It means that “if you want me to love you, you must first be, or do as I say”.

I quite like Wayne Dyer‘s views on detachment and relationships. In his first book, Your Erroneous Zones, Dyer defines love as following: “The ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves, without any insistence that they satisfy you.” What Dyer is saying is that the essence of detachment in love is to love enough to be able to let go. Detachment is freedom—from owing and controlling another, and from being dependent on others for your happiness and fulfilment. In one of his later books, You’ll See It When You Believe It, Dyer says, “Detachment in human relationships does not mean an absence of caring. It means caring so much that you suspend your own value judgements about others and relate to them from a position of love rather than attempting to control or judge them.”

Detachment in relationships then is the process of de-tagging, and freedom from conditions. It’s about giving space to the one we love to be himself/herself and giving space to ourselves too, from being dependent on another for our happiness. I invite you to read Love, Not Obsession from an attachment-detachment perspective. You will find that obsession is about owning and possessing another [attachment], and genuine love is about facilitating and nurturing the growth of the one you love, even at the risk of losing him/her [detachment].

7 Steps to Cultivate Detachment

The following seven steps can help you in your goal of developing detachment:

• Become conscious of your relationships with the world and identify those in which there is a dependency equation
• Next, consciously seize control of your emotions from external sources such as people, places, or things
• In case of circumstances which you wish to change but have no control over, just hand over your situation to God, or a Higher Power you believe in
• Acknowledge that there is only one person you can control and change — and, that is yourself. This way, you relinquish your need to fix, change, rescue, or heal other persons, places, and things
• Take charge of your feelings and recognise that your feelings are your responsibility. Don’t blame others for the way you feel
• Reduce the impact of guilt and other irrational beliefs which inhibit your ability to develop detachment in your life
• Practise “letting go” of the need to correct, fix, or make better the persons, places and things in life over which you have no control, or power to change.

Conclusion: Enjoy, Don’t Fixate

In the tennis illustration cited above, of how attachment makes us weak, when we are fixated on winning the game, we lose focus of the game, and consequently play badly. But, if we simply play the game as best as we can, without bothering about the outcome, not only do we enjoy the game, we improve our chances of winning too. Playing to the best of our abilities, without being attached to a specific outcome, is being detached. Detachment, then, is a winning attitude.

Attachment is a fixation. Detachment is about enjoyment without obsession. Once we practice detachment, we acknowledge that life is a gift, and we must enjoy it without getting fixated.

Last updated on 21^st September 2019

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As you will see from the cases in point that follow, familial love such as love between mother and child, or platonic friendship, or even love for a pet, are also just as vulnerable to such a mix-up. In fact, oftentimes true love is insulated with a sheathing of selfish obsession, which is neither healthy for the self, nor for others. A gentle uncovering is needed to reveal healthy, happy love. This is why it becomes important to be able to discern what love truly is and what it is not.

What is genuine love

Love is about nurturing and helping the loved one grow. When we feel genuine love towards another, we are concerned about the wellbeing of the loved one. In feeling so, we are willing to let go of our own wants and desires. When we love someone, we want to ensure that s/he becomes emotionally independent, self-reliant and possesses a healthy self-respect. We want our beloved to be able to think as an individual, and be strong enough to experience life’s ups and downs without getting bogged down.

Sometimes, this requires difficult decisions on our part. Like when we know that someone we love is making a mistake, we allow him or her to do so, knowing fully well that making mistakes are part of growing up and overprotecting impedes the development of the person.

Love frees, obsession cages

When we are obsessed, we lose objectivity and want a dependency-relationship. This dependency could be one-way or two-way; either way, it turns out to be a cage.

We have all known, or heard about, individuals who threaten to commit suicide if they don’t get their object of love. Fervent statements such as, “I can’t live without my boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife,” are usually the result of obsession, not love.

In The Road Less Traveled, M Scott Peck defines dependency as the inability to function adequately without the certainty that one is actively being cared for by another. He differentiates “dependency” from “dependency needs, or feelings” which, he reckons, is normal. All of us like to be cared for, but it is only when such desires begin to rule us and dictate the quality of our lives that we become “dependent.”

Obsession is a neurosis and it is detrimental to our wellbeing. In acting obsessively we hinder our growth and that of our loved one. When a mother doesn’t let her teenage son leave the city/country for higher studies because she is “afraid” that he won’t be able to take care of himself, is she demonstrating love or dependency? Certainly her concern comes across as love, but it might actually be dependency. She probably likes to be needed by her son because she feels worthwhile that way. If she lets him go away, she might be making him take his first step towards independence—he may, thereafter, not need her.

Love, on the other hand, encourages risk-taking and independence. In the above example, if the mother genuinely loves her son, she would risk her own feelings of concern for her son in lieu of his growth towards self-reliance. Any relationship comes bundled with the risk of loss. People who love genuinely acknowledge and accept this fact.

Love gives, obsession depletes

When we are obsessed, which is in contrast to true love, we care little for anything else except self. What does this mean? An obsessed person is concerned only about his own feelings, and consequently all his acts are motivated by a desire to meet his own expectations. Therefore, even when s/he’s acting generously towards his/her beloved, the motivation is selfish. For example, an obsessed man showers his girlfriend with gifts, because that makes her happy, and she thinks he’s so caring and loving which, in turn, delights him. The intention then is to purchase delight for oneself in return for a gift.

On the other hand, a man who loves his girlfriend genuinely doesn’t care about his own feelings. He simply wants to give. The loving man may also feel delighted, but his act of giving is not motivated by a desire for feeling good himself, but for the sake of giving alone.

Obsession controls, love lets go

An obsessed person is insecure and his/her actions are dominated by fear. As a result s/he’s always trying to control behaviours and emotions of the one s/he loves. S/he wants to know where you are going, what you’re doing/thinking/dreaming. S/he may also dictate how you should dress, what you ought to eat, how you should part your hair, what career you should opt for, and so on. The key word here is “dictate”. The one who loves may only suggest what s/he thinks is in your best interests, whereas the obsessed will only insist. The loving individual respects you and your choice, but the one who is obsessed doesn’t trust you.

Is it love?

True fulfilment can only be possible in true love. Obsession is a self-defeating phenomenon. It is a no-win trap that only causes harm. The trouble is that it is often difficult to draw the line between love and obsession. Thankfully, there is a simple test to figure out the difference.

When confused, ask yourself what is your deepest thought. If it’s selfless, it is love. Ironically, you can’t love someone truly unless you love yourself. For how can you give away what you don’t have?

Loving yourself should not be confused with narcissism, which is obsession with oneself, and just as harmful. Loving oneself is about being secure in the knowledge that you are worthy and have an important role to play in this world, and so do others. Those who love themselves genuinely have no desire to control anyone, because they are in control of themselves.

Yes, loving the self and others unconditionally is not easy. It requires hard work and mindful practice. But, the result is worth the endeavour, you will agree.

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