Quote of the Day

Nov 29, 2023
For the speaker attachment is much more important than detachment. Because if one can find out why the mind is attached, it doesn't matter to what - my sitting here, I have done it for fifty years, on a platform, talking, and I am attached to that - if I am attached, I hope I am not - if I am attached. And why is it attached? You see the difference? Not how to be detached but why it is attached. Why are you attached to your house, to your wife, to your girl, to your ideas, to your meditations, to your system, why? What would happen if you were not attached? Attachment gives a certain occupation to the mind - right? You constantly think about it. And this constant occupation is one of the factors which the brain and the mind says, "Yes I must be occupied with something" - please follow all this. With my god, with my sex, with my drink, with my god knows what - I must be occupied - with the kitchen or with the king, or with some social order, or commune, or whatever it is. And out of this demand for occupation there is attachment, you hold on to something.

Now why is the mind occupied? Why must it be occupied? And what would happen if it was not occupied? Would it go astray? Would it disintegrate? Would it feel utterly naked, empty and therefore the fear of that emptiness, therefore occupation? And therefore the importance of the furniture, the book, the idea, and all the rest of it. So out of the empty feeling and loneliness of not being totally whole, the mind is attached. You follow? And can the mind live, be vital, energetic, full of depth, without attachment? Of course it can.
Saanen, Switzerland | 2nd Public Talk 16th July 1974 Read full text