Detached Attachment

“Nonsense can be spoken about in a sensible way,” said Dr. Narasimhan, and then he proceeded to do the converse of that, speaking about something that made plenty of sense in a manner that was somewhat nonsensical, or at least paradoxical.

I had wondered aloud about the concept of detachment or dispassion in the yoga sutras; Patanjali writes that the yogi should cultivate non-attachment; Sutra 1.15 is translated by Swami Prabhavananda as “Non-attachment is self-mastery; it is freedom from what is seen or heard.”

But I was puzzled because it seems to me that there are many things to which we ought to be passionately attached: the welfare of our families, for instance, or fighting against injustice, or even, for that matter, our own yoga practices.

But Dr. N. explained that Patanjali isn’t saying we ought to not care about things; “Detachment is not to be like a stone," is how the good professor put it.

We should be passionate, it’s just that “passion should be a detached passion so (we) can see the whole action in the field.”

The problem, apparently, is that a single-minded passion for an idea, a person, a cause, the next yoga pose in the series, you name it, “loses your ability to be aware of the nuances.” “Single-mindedness,” said Dr. N., “is not evolutionary.” It doesn’t allow the object of our passion to grow or change, or for our reactions to develop as well.

What we want, in other words, is a “detached attachment” so we can continue to evolve along with the situations in which we find ourselves. I can be as committed to my family, my life projects, social justice, or to dropping back and standing up on my own from urdhva dhanurasana as I want to be just so long as I don’t lose myself (or the object of my passion) in the process.

“Attachment with understanding is detachment,” concluded Dr. N.

With that in mind, then, I think I can safely say that now I’m a little more detached from the concept of attachment than I was before.