Quotes About Detachment

When you're playing cards you can't constantly think about what the money costs you in the real world. You can't be constantly concerned about that if you want to be successful.

By giving up 'the need' and 'the want', things begin to happen for you

Detach yourself from all that makes your mind restless. Renounce all that disturbs its peace. If you want peace, deserve it. By being a slave to your desires and fears, you disturb peace.

If you want something then you lose everything. If you don't want anything then you already have everything.

I do not read newspapers. I do not watch television. I am not interested in current events, although I will occasionally discuss them if other people want to discuss them.

I don't have no friends. I don't want no friends. That's how I feel.

You can learn not to want what you want, to recognize desires but not be controlled by them.

Do not follow others," Corot exhorted. "He who follows is always behind. You must interpret Nature with entire simplicity and according to your personal sentiment, altogether detaching yourself from what you know of the old masters or of contemporaries. Only in this way will you do work of real feeling.

Every time we discerningly renounce a possession, we free up energy that can be channeled into the pursuit of dharma. Renunciation was never meant to be for its own sake, but for the sake of dharma.

Abandon all supports," says Krishna to Arjuna in one of his great final teachings. "Cast off your dependency on everything external, Arjuna, and rely on the Self alone." We work first because we have to work. Then because we want to work. Then because we love to work. Then the work simply does us. Difficult at the beginning. Inevitable at the end.

Yes, you absolutely should change what you can change, but you also need to accept what you cannot change. Out of acceptance will come detachment. This will enable you to enjoy the positive aspects of life without being distraction by the negative. Why waste energy focusing on things from the past when you can move on and put those things behind you?

If good happens, good; if bad happens, good.

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.

If we let the drama of others' lives become our own, then we are no longer ourselves.

When the infamous Shotts riot of '93 kicked off, Dingus was in the hall but he never started it or took any part in it whatsoever, he just sat in one of his friend's cell, smoking hash, waiting for the riot to end. Dingus had seen all the crazy shit before.

It was a lesson I had taken most of my life to learn. Sometimes you have to let things go.

The greatest step towards a life of simplicity is to learn to let go.

The reason many people in our society are miserable, sick, and highly stressed is because of an unhealthy attachment to things they have no control over.

Attachment is the still water in which the mosquitoes of stress grow."

Don't desire anything except the end of desire.

I'm in the strange position of the world drifting away from me, but you know what? I'm actually quite content with that. It doesn't bother me in the slightest. I don't feel like, 'Oh God, I'm being left behind.'

There is nothing in the world that I loathe more than group activity, that communal bath where the hairy and slippery mix in a multiplication of mediocrity.

But now I feel off the grid. I feel that I am not part of the culture. And because I don't have a car I don't really go anywhere to buy things. In fact, I have been in a slow process of selling and giving away everything I own.

I am not really attached to my films and work. The film industry is just a small part of my life.