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Attachment and commitment, in human relationships || Acharya Prashant (2019)
Acharya Prashant
4.4K views
6 years ago
Attachment
Commitment
Love
Ego
Self-preservation
Self-dissolution
Freedom
Suffering
Description

Acharya Prashant explains that commitment is the act of valuing something so intensely that it becomes more important than the self. In attachment, the ego is committed to its own petty desires, insecurities, and habits, which is a fallacy of valuation. This form of commitment is fragile and doomed to break because the object of attachment, being as limited as the self, cannot provide true fulfillment. True commitment is only possible toward something immense and infinite that can absorb the individual entirely, thereby relieving them of the burden of the self. While attachment is an exercise in self-preservation, love is the urge toward self-dissolution. Acharya Prashant further clarifies that attachment and love are opposites; where there is attachment, there is no freedom or love. Attachment promises intimacy but results in separation, violence, and fear. To move from attachment to love, one must recognize that attachment is not helping and is instead worsening one's condition. He emphasizes that attachment is always reasonable and based on the pursuit of personal profit or security, whereas love is unreasonable and comes from nowhere. To overcome attachment, one must ruthlessly question whether the object of attachment is actually providing the fulfillment it promises. When one realizes that attachment defeats its own purpose and exhausts all other neurotic options like jealousy and suspicion, the only remaining route is love.