She said she was a woman with a large family and many responsibilities. She loved her family; they were dependent on her and she was, somewhat, on them. It was not an oppressive dependency, but it could become one. She wondered what detachment was and, as she was getting on in age, shouldn’t she cultivate it?
For what reason did she want to cultivate detachment?
‘I suppose—to be honest—not to suffer’, she said.
There lies the whole question: to avoid suffering let’s cultivate detachment. Being forewarned that attachment entails sorrow, we want to become detached. Attachment is gratifying, but perceiving pain in it, we want to be gratified in another manner—through detachment. Attachment and detachment are the same as long as they yield gratification. So what we are seeking is gratification, craving to be satisfied by any means. We are dependent or attached because it gives us pleasure, power, and a sense of being, though in it are sorrow and fear. We seek detachment for pleasure also—not to be hurt, not to be wounded in our being. Pleasure, gratification, is our search. We are not condemning or justifying, but we are trying to understand. For, without understanding there is no way out of this confusion and contradiction. Can craving ever be satisfied, or is it a bottomless pit? Craving for the low or for the high is still a craving, a burning, and what can be consumed soon becomes ashes. And craving for gratification still remains, ever burning, ever consuming, and there is no end to it. Attachment and detachment are both binding; both must be transcended.
What then is our question? Not how to cultivate detachment, but how to free the mind from craving, from the search for deeper and wider gratifications, from the consciousness of being or becoming. To transcend the observer and the observed. It is very strenuous to free the mind, the whole being from craving, from desire, from want. We are the result of craving, and to go beyond ourselves is extremely difficult. But this we must first understand: the necessity of freeing thought-feeling from craving. The intention is of the highest importance. If this is clearly perceived and understood, then the subtle ways of the self can be traced out and rooted out. That is the work of constant awareness. With deeper and wider awareness, there comes, almost imperceptibly, the liberation from craving, from want. This liberation is not the effort of will but of understanding.
This understanding, born of awareness and meditation, has its own momentum, its own activity which, if allowed to flow, unhindered by greed and memory, enters into the bliss of the eternal. Only in that, all conflict, all ignorance, and all sorrow cease.
Does all this mean, she asked, that she will have to withdraw from the world, which she couldn’t do as she had young children and other responsibilities?
In becoming aware of the implications of craving, of which she is but intellectually, superficially aware inwardly, and if that awareness is not distorted, dissipated, but allowed to flow into ever deeper and wider comprehension, that very awareness will bring the answer. It is not a matter of decision of what she should do, but of heightened awareness and of deep self-knowledge. A decision, a conclusion without self-knowledge will only bring further conflict and confusion, but with self-knowledge comes right thinking, which alone brings its own true action.
‘I came’, she said presently, ‘to learn how to cultivate detachment but, as I see it now, a much greater problem has arisen, and perhaps there will be joy in it.’