How to be non-attached? || Acharya Prashant (2019)
Acharya Prashant (AP): Non-attachment is simple. How do you get attached? That's far more difficult, and you manage it. Have you ever considered how much investment and energy attachment requires? Attachment is not cheap; it requires a lot of investment. Attachment is not natural. You require to maintain it. It's a high-maintenance thing. It requires a lot of upkeep. It's a white elephant.
Which means non-attachment should be simple: Just stop the upkeep. Just block the funds that go towards the maintenance of the attachment. When I say ‘funds’, I do not merely mean ‘money,’ all the emotional capital that you invest in attachment, just stop it. Does anybody want to invest in something that offers negative returns? Attachment is an investment that gives you negative returns. It's not merely that all that which you have invested goes down the drain. It does not merely go down the drain, it boomerangs upon you.
When you invest in the shares of a company, and the company goes bankrupt, you cry hoarse, you say, “I invested a million dollars, a million dollars, and it's turned to zero.” And it's so bad that your investment has brought you zero results. Attachment is an investment where you invest a million dollars, and they are gone, and the attachment has sent you a notice for ten million dollars more. And you are obliged to invest another ten million dollars because you are attached. Not only has the existing investment gone down the drain, but it has also necessitated further investment.
Is that not the story of attachment? You keep putting more and more into that deep well. It doesn't get filled up, but you keep putting in more and more, and your justification is that “I have already put in so much, how do I abandon my existing investment?” Life is short, time is short, resources are short, energy is short; why spend all that in clinging to things that are forever threatening to go away? Tell me, if something were an integral part of you, inalienable part of you, would you require to be attached to it?
You don't require to be attached to your heart. It's not going away anywhere, or is it? You don't have to keep cross-checking. It's there. But you have to be attached to your mobile phone. It can go away somewhere. Don't invest too much, and if you have to invest, invest rather in your heart. At least, it won't abandon you. At least, it won't suddenly disappear someday. At least, no technology company can come up and say, “Well, your model is redundant now. Here is the new technology. The old one is obsolete.”
That which can go away usually does not deserve too much of your attention. But then our logic is: “Because it threatens to go away, so I give it all my time. And that which I know for sure is inalienable to me, I take for granted, and have, therefore, no respect for.” That which troubles you gets all your attention. That which reassures you remains neglected. See that there's no point wasting your life, and thoughts, and energy on stuff that would anyway not last.
How much do you want to spend for the upkeep of this hall? Yes? You'll be out in the next two minutes. Why do you want to invest yourself here? It's far wiser to spend on your eyes, on your teeth, on your liver; they, at least, have some relative longevity. In this hall, you are a visitor here, what's the point of clinging? And what's the point paying too much for it? Pay a little, consider a little, give it a bit of thought. Not more than that. And when you leave it, leave it fully. Don't start crying.
