Get involved or fall dead
Everybody talks about detachment. If we want to be detached from life, the best thing is to fall dead. Then we will be completely detached. Isn’t it so? If we get detached from life, that means death. If we talk of detachment, we are talking of avoiding life. Because of all this sort of talk there are a lot of half-alive people on this planet. Detachment is a crime against life. That’s why I am saying the best way to avoid life is to fall dead.
Why do we want to exist here and yet avoid life? We have come here to live and to experience life. Our life should happen in the most exuberant way possible. We talk of detachment because somewhere there is fear of getting involved with life. We must understand that fear should not be about involvement but about entanglement. We talk of detachment because we do not know the distinction between involvement and entanglement. Life can be known only by involvement. If we are not involved, it doesn’t mean anything even if we are in heaven.
Let’s say, right now you are sitting with your family but are not involved. If you are not involved, do all these people mean anything to you? If you are involved, suddenly all these people will mean so much. Isn’t it? Whether it is our family, society or the life around us, only if we show involvement in that moment will we know life. If we knew how to be absolutely involved with life and not be entangled, we wouldn’t have started this whole philosophy of detachment.
Entanglement has come not because there is something wrong with life but because we are handling life improperly. If we have to be involved and not entangled, our involvement should not be partial either. Right now our involvement is only with certain people and certain aspects of life, and because of this we naturally get identified with them; it is due to lack of involvement that we are getting entangled.
If our involvement is unbridled, if we are involved with everything that our five senses are making us aware of at this moment — the air that we breathe, the atmosphere around we and the life around us — then there is no question of entanglement.
Entanglement comes because of our discretion of involvement. The more we can control our involvement, the more entangle we become. People who have a larger scope of life are less entangled than people who have a smaller scope for their life. Why do we want to control your involvement? Controlling involvement is curtailing the very possibility of experiencing life. And those who do that have completely misunderstood the fundamentals of how life functions. We must be actively and consciously involved with everything around us, with every moment of our life. Then there will be no question of entanglement.
— Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, a prominent spiritual leader, is a visionary, humanitarian, an author, poet and internationally-renowned speaker. He can be contacted at www.ishafoundation.org
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