The following post is very well written. I read it somewhere and I am not sure who wrote it. But whoever wrote this my due regards to him/her. Read on ....
The human mind has a tendency to get attached to anything it contacts. Your attachment has deadly effects on your life and peace of mind. Therefore, you need to develop a spirit of detachment. You cannot get detached from anything naturally. It needs conscious deliberate effort. You cannot forcefully pull yourself away from those things that you are attached to.
...To detach yourself from lower, you need to get attached to something higher. Attach to higher values and nobler ideals. The lower attachments will wane away. Just as although children are obsessed with toys, when they taste the joy of something better, like play station or a bicycle, they drop the attachment to the toys.
Similarly what are the toys that make us joy? Our toys are money, name, fame, power, position, status and family. Apart from these toys that are making your joys, you have to set a goal, you have to have a mission in life, and this mission must be beyond your selfish personal interest. It is a purpose that satisfies a larger interest. Perform dynamic action; thereafter peace and success will be your gain.
We secluded ourselves to assimilate wisdom and then emerged into the world to help humanity. To establish ourselves, we have to withdraw from the routine sensual existence. That, however, does not mean that we have to retire, that is not the idea. If you want to master the desires, you need to stay away from the sensual environment. You need not retire fulltime. You may do it for a short while on a regular basis. You need to frequently resort to a spiritual environment to recharge yourself, to imbibe higher values. Being amidst worldly enjoyments it is rather difficult to gain the strength of detachment because the spiritual inputs are washed away by the torrents of sensual temptations.
Detachment is an attitude of non-involvement. Detachment is rather subtle to understand and even more difficult to practice. The sense of detachment is not mere physical abstinence. When you detach yourself physically from pleasure without the mental detachment, which amounts to hypocrisy. The state of detachment is the attitude of not letting the objects of the world affect you or rule you. It is not what you do but how you do it that confers the statement of detachment upon you. Through non-attachment, there arises freedom from delusion.
Attachment blinds your perception of the realities of life. Delusion is false belief out of misunderstanding. Just as when a boy or a girl who is obsessed with the opposite sex is deluded and does not perceive the true nature of the other person and realities of married life. Detachment enables you to see the total scheme of things. You gain freedom from delusion. You begin to get established more and more in Truth the Truth of Life! We all came to this world with empty hands; and will leave the world with empty hands!
