It's not the object of renunciation or attachment that matters, but the idea you hold of it. Suffering lies not in giving up the object but in letting go of its idea. The mind lives in narratives. Once the narratives are gone, the attachment is gone. Then, renunciation becomes celebration, for what you’re dropping is not precious but your misery itself.
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Questioner: Acharya Ji, Pranam. When you say renunciation is celebration, it is for the one who is already a king. But for us who are not really living in that reality, we are not any kings. So, sometimes the whole renunciation act seems like a punishment. Our love for renunciation is a strange thing: sometimes it is brimming with pleasure and with gratitude, and sometimes it is very weak. So, how can our renunciation still be a celebration?
Acharya Prashant: Knowledge is the key. It is not the object of renunciation or the object of attachment that matters to you, rather what matters to you is the idea that you have of that object. Because we anyway do not really know. We know neither ourselves nor the object. Now let's say, there is this object in my life, and I'm very attached to it, right? What am I attached to? The idea of this object. The idea of this object, right? And the idea, obviously, I take as truth because we all need Truth. When we do not have Truth, we use ideas as the Truth, right?
So, first of all, the suffering does not lie in giving up the object, it lies in giving up the idea of the object. Let us take, for example, you are very attached to something or somebody, and then somehow you lose your memory, would you still be attached to that person? So, that attachment is not to that person because that person still exists. What is it that you have lost? You have lost the idea of that person. That same person might still be sitting next to you, but you will no more be attached to that person. You have not lost that person, but you have lost your idea of that person. And now, there is no attachment.
