ON DETACHMENT

“Practice detachment from now on; for a day will come when you have to give up all that you hold dear.” counsels Bhagawan Sri Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Can detachment come all of a sudden? It is impossible! Life on earth starts with attachments! The moment the the child sees the light of the day, all types of attachments crowd in! Mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, grand mother, grand father and a host of connections attach themselves to the child! Even as the child grows up friends and companions join and attachments increase! As the boy grows into youth and takes up a job, colleagues, managers, officers and others come into the picture! In other words life is a series of associations and connections that one cannot avoid despite himself! Apart from these attachments the attachment to house, property, wealth and various other possessions maintain a stranglehold on man and make him their slave! Wife and children complete the missing connections and the poor man is inextricably entangled in the shoreless sea of samsara! Caught in this web of family and children, property and wealth, man has no

thought of extricating himself from these attachments! He finds indescribable pleasure and happiness in the company of these transitory and mundane connections and imagines that he is perfectly happy!

“ Kimva putra kalatra mitra pasubhir dehena gehena kim jnathvai tat kshana bhanguram”  Of what use are your son, wife, friend, pets, your body and home that vanish in a second? asks a devotee.Fully involved in Samsara, full of ups and downs and its little pleasures, man  thinks that this is all real and everlasting! He forgets that it is all due to the illusion created by Maya! He enjoys for a while but suffers more on account of associations and attachments. There is no escape for him as at every step his attachments drag him down and make him more and more miserable. An eagle caught a prey in its beak and flew into the sky. Many crows and other birds chased it and the eagle didn't know what to do. It tried its best to avoid them but they pursued the eagle. Finally the eagle let the prey down and lo, all the birds disappeared in a moment!  The more you are attached the greater is your suffering!

Arjuna is the victim of “moha”or attachment on the battlefield of Kurukshetra! He, for a moment, is sad at the thought of killing his own kith and kin and his teachers! He even puts down his great bow Gandiva and the arrows! He decides to  take up sanyasa instead of killing all and eat the bloody meal! Krishna explains that the curse of attachment has made him think like that! One should not feel sorry for the body that dies one day or other! Even so he should not weep for the Soul that is indestructible and eternal! But it is very difficult to get detachment because our associations are too long to be detached!! Man earns money by hard work. He tries hard to save it. When it is spent he feels unhappy. When it is lost he feels miserable! Why this money that makes you sad and miserable says a poet!

Attachments should be light, not strong! A father should do his duty just as a father, not more, not less! Catering to the needs of children, bringing them up, getting them married is quite enough! He should not involve in the affairs of his children too much! They may not like it! Desire, one of the six formidable inner enemies, is another reason for attachment! No desire is satiated totally and one is totally attached to the object of his desire! “ Aasa aasa paramam duhkam nirasa paramam sukham”---more and more desire leads to more and more sorrow, no desire leads to great happiness! It is not as if man doesn't know these truths. But he is too attached  to get himself released from the the shackles of samsara and its entanglements. What is the panacea for the sufferings of the ailing man?

When man leaves the world he cannot take any of the attachments dear and near to him! The so called material things have to be left behind however close they might be! There are instances of people who, on their deathbed, do not breathe their last because of their attachment to something or other! it is a sorrowful sight to see such people! Detachment can be developed by starting early in life. Curbing desires, not attaching too much of importance to many things, associating with devotees and saints, reading scriptures like the Bhagavad-Gita and the Bhagavata Purana, the lives of famous saints like the Azhwars and Nayanmars, shall surely inculcate the spirit of detachment in any individual! In order to get detached you should think of God. It is too difficult to think of him in the final moments of life!The Bhagavata Purana tells the story of Ajamila who, by calling the name of his son Narayana, went to Vaikunta! Hence let us be prepared to shuffle our mortal coil easily by developing non attachment to things during our short stay on this planet!!