Attachment and commitment, in human relationships || Acharya Prashant (2019)

Question (Q): Acharya Ji, what’s the thing between attachment and commitment, especially in terms of human relationships? Since we know that attachment to another person has to be seen as hindrance to freedom, what about commitment?

Acharya Prashant (AP): To commit oneself to something, is to hold that thing valuable. It is to hold that thing so valuable that it is worth committing, sacrificing, laying down the self to. You always commit a smaller thing in value of something, in service of something bigger, no? So, that is commitment.

To want something so intensely, to value something so greatly, that the thing becomes more important than even the one valuing the thing - that is to be committed.

Even in attachment one is committed. To what?

In attachment, the little self is committed to its own petty wants, desires, insecurities. Therefore, attachment and the accompany commitment are a fallacy of evaluation. The little self, the ego is valuing security higher than its welfare and Peace.

What does one say in attachment? One says, "That is the thing that appears Peace-giving to me, that is the thing I am conditioned and habituated to, that is the thing I have become dependent upon. And so, I don’t want to leave that thing."