Just Let Go

Sometimes the simplest advice can be the hardest to take. Here's how to practice detachment without giving up on life.

By Sally Kempton

The Bhagavad Gita, which is surely the basic text on the practice of detachment, is wonderfully explicit on this point. Krishna tells Arjuna that acting with detachment means doing the right thing for its own sake, because it needs to be done, without worrying about success or failure. (T.S. Eliot paraphrased Krishna's advice when he wrote, "For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.")

At the same time, Krishna repeatedly reminds Arjuna not to cop out of doing his best in the role his destiny demands of him. In a sense, the Bhagavad Gita is one long teaching on how to act with maximum grace while under maximum pressure. The Gita actually addresses many of the questions that we have about detachment—pointing out, for instance, that we are really supposed to give up not our families or our capacity for enjoyment but our tendency to identify with our bodies and personalities instead of with pure, deathless Awareness.

Questions, Questions

Yet the Bhagavad Gita doesn't deal with all of our questions. That's just as well; the real juice of the inner life is discovering, step by step, how to find these answers for ourselves. For instance, how do we fall in love and remain detached? Where do we find the motivation to start a business, write a novel, get ourselves through law school, or work in the emergency room of a city hospital unless we care deeply about the outcome of what we're doing? What is the relationship between desire and detachment? What's the difference between real detachment and the indifference that comes with burnout?

What about social activism? Is it possible, for example, to fight for justice without getting caught up in anger or a sense of unfairness? And then there's the relationship between detachment and excellence. It's nearly impossible to excel at anything—including spiritual practice—if we aren't prepared to throw ourselves in 100 percent. Can we do that and still be detached?

Then there are the really knotty issues, the situations that seem literally defined by attachment, like our relationship to our children or to our own bodies. How do we work with attachments so visceral that to let go of them feels like letting go of life itself?

I have a friend whose 18-year-old son dropped out of school and now lives on the streets, choosing not to get a job. My friend and her ex-husband did everything they could to keep their son in school, including promising to support him financially through any form of educational training he chose. When none of their efforts worked, they acted on professional advice and withdrew financial support. Now, when they want to see him, they drive six hours north and go to the park where he hangs out and look for him. Their son seems fine with the whole situation, but they still wake up in the middle of the night, imagining him cold and hungry or seriously injured, and they move daily through different stages of worry, fear, and anger.

"This is the choice he's making about the way he wants to live his life," they tell themselves, drawing on the spiritual teachings that have nurtured them. "It's part of his journey. He has his own karma." But how do you stop being attached to your son's well-being? Can you just cut the cord that binds you to that long-cultivated feeling of concern and responsibility? During times like this—usually times of loss, since loss is notoriously more difficult to detach from than success—we face the hard truth about detachment practice: Detachment is rarely something we achieve once and for all. It's a moment-by-moment, day-by-day process of accepting reality as it presents itself, doing our best to align our actions with what we think is right, and surrendering the outcome.

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