The Philosophy of Detachment

I am suddenly reminded of someone in my family who turned poet-cum-philosopher after his long cherished ambition didn’t get fulfilled. I think it was more like a dream for him since he had set his mind on it right after 10th exams and did what he thought best to materialize it but at the end even after getting tantalizingly close to it several times he couldn’t really grab on it. This took a heavy toll on him as it usually happens and he detached himself from everybody and everything. Like team Australia he had no plan B and really couldn’t figure out what alternate course his life should take. Many years passed and he gradually turned to Jeevan-Darshan (philosophy) and writing poetry (gloomy and reality-bites type, of course). It took 8-9 years before he could pull himself out of that failure-triggered-depression but at the end of it wisdom dawned upon him. I call it wisdom because it changed him completely and for the better. He longed for companionship and family attention again (not that we had forgotten him), applied for other “low-profile” jobs which he would have considered untouchable earlier. Got married and settled for a simple and happy life. Although he never opened up completely, I did understand his outlook of life had changed a lot. He had realized that no goal, no dream gets bigger than life itself. I wonder is this another way of saying that life is full of compromises? Setting a dream for oneself, working towards it but being aware at the same time that it still may come to nothing if fate decides otherwise. May be we should never lose focus of the fact that nothing really belongs to us. Detachment is what Bhagwat Geeta also preaches but getting the motivation to accomplish something without being attached to it or worrying about the outcome is kind of difficult, almost impossible. Buddha preferring middle path in the hindsight of what he saw coming out of his palace is just another way of looking at it. Moderation is not always a single practice but sometimes a mix of two approaches, passionate about putting in your best effort but dispassionate about what follows. And this kind of “applied” moderation is justified (and practicable) if life must be led for its own sake. Like some highest or final good, which Aristotle calls eudaimonia that is desired for its own sake and for which everything else is desired. I remember reading somewhere that you can’t understand the system from within the system or in other words, to see the pattern you shouldn’t be a part of it. So step back and look at it in its entirety. We are trying to figure out whether the dreams and goals are worth grieving over if they go unfulfilled. No amount of consolation can convince us unless we accept the futility of the whole process itself and subsequently detach ourselves. In that sense the philosophy of detachment is more like a practical tool aimed at making us impervious to chequered nature and ups and downs of life, to keep us going. But then if we are not part of the process, what drives us to start all over again after every failure? What really is the force that never lets us abandon everything even if adhere to this philosophy of detachment? I think it is instinct that rules supreme in all of us. It is above every logic, every rationality. Our instinct is still above the thought process that has taken thousand of years to evolve. No matter how I support or refute the meaning of life, I can’t say it is dispensable and it is owing to the instinct in me. The most basic of all probably is this instinct to keep oneself alive, assert oneself and this inspires us to take such indifferent look at anything beyond life itself. Of course there are things like ambition and dreams but they are no more than amusements, a whole lot of them, in every form and shape, day after day to ensure that we don’t die of boredom. But to confuse these amusements, which are meant to make our lives colorful, with life itself is to confuse means with end. Deeper I delve into it more I’m led to believe that this instinct of ours knows that too much excitement or depression can kill the life and therefore it has inspired this philosophy of detachment as a kind of self-preservation measure.

"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us." E. M. Forster