Quotes About Detachment

The poorest man in a religious community is not necessarily the one who has the fewest objects assigned to him for his use. Poverty is not merely a matter of not having things. It is an attitude which leads us to renounce some of the advantages which come from the use of things.

The beginning of love is truth, and before He will give us His love, God must cleanse our souls of the lies that are in them. And the most effective way of detaching us from ourselves is to make us detest our­selves.

The tighter you squeeze the less you have.

And everything seemed to conspire to encourage me to cut myself off from everybody else and go my own way.

There is a monastic outlook which is common to all those who have elected to question the value of a life submitted entirely to arbitrary secular presuppositions, dictated by social convention, and dedicated to the pursuit of temporal satisfactions which are perhaps only a mirage. Whatever may be the value of life in the world there have been, in all cultures, men who have claimed to find something they vastly prefer in solitude. (p. 10)

For me—the betrayal I have to look out for is that which would consist simply in attaching myself to "a cause" that happens to be operating at this time, and getting involved, and letting myself be carried along with it, simply making appropriate noises from time to time, at a distance.

To those of us who survived [...], it also means that we have learned to stand outside our history and watch it, without feeling too much. A little schizoid.

What did garden-parties and baskets and lace frocks matter to him? He was far from all those things. He was wonderful, beautiful.

Remember that you can't fix other people's problems. Nothing you do will remove the misery they feel, if they don't want to let go of it. Being a scapegoat or whipping post for someone else's anger, frustration, grief, or misery is really only enabling them to stay in the same old patterns. There's absolutely nothing wrong with removing yourself from a difficult situation and getting on with your life. I wish you peace and healing.

wish to find, let him be content to lose Ã¢â'¬Â¦ —MULAY AL'ARABI AD-DARQAWI, Rasa'il

Then what is the opposite of love?" Because whatever that is, that's what I feel for Daneska. "Indifference.

she was never, I felt, truly emotionally warm towards anyone

I often see it in people who have attained what the monastic tradition terms "detachment," an ability to live at peace with the reality of whatever happens. Such people do not have a closed-off air, nor a boastful demeanor. In them, it is clear, their wounds have opened the way to compassion for others. And compassion is the strength and soul of a religion.

Oh, for God's sake. Save your piss. Don't save your piss. It's all the same to me.

I was slowly learning that love did not mean holding on, which I had always thought, but rather letting go.

Badger hates Society, and invitations, and dinner, and all that sort of thing.

The fact of life is that the appreciation of true beauty cannot start without total renunciation. [...] But to live beautifully, one needs an unfettered mind, a mind that is not clogged up with all kinds of attachments, opinions, or fossilized ways of looking at things. There is no need to get rid of anything as long as we can sever our attachments to it.

There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.

I stood / Among them, but not of them; in a shroud / Of thoughts which were not their thoughts.

La escena, de por sí, me deprimía. Encender el televisor... Abandonar el mundo, la riqueza y variedad de la vida en ese mundo en el que yo ya no tenía nada que hacer, para encerrarme en la fascinación idiotizada de las imágenes [...]

Cuando uno lo ha abandonado todo, puede decirse que le queda la contemplación del vacío.

You will find that it is necessary to let things go; simply for the reason that they are heavy. So let them go, let go of them. I tie no weights to my ankles.

If you want to forget something or someone, never hate it, or never hate him/her. Everything and everyone that you hate is engraved upon your heart; if you want to let go of something, if you want to forget, you cannot hate.

After a dozen deaths, you learn not to care. After a hundred, you can't even if you wanted to.