Vairagy Non-Attachment Vs Non Attachment

In Hindu meditation texts, Vairagya, translated as “non-attachment”, is weaved throughout scriptures and sutras with both substantial gravitas and significance. To define non-attachment is no facile task, for there exists numerous components of its practice. As a yogic practice, non-attachment applies over myriad manifestations of nature. However, to grasp the role non-attachment plays in yoga, one must examine its qualities and obstacles. Why must one practice non-attachment? Understanding these obstacles to Viaragya is crucial to affirm the existence of a spiritual reality underlying the phenomenal world and to discover the inner Atman. Non-attachment is a process that evolves progressively as practice deepens. Throughout the process, it
As Christopher Isherwood commentates in the book, How to Know God, “The waves of the mind can be made to flow in two opposite direction – either towards the objective world or toward true self-knowledge. Therefore both practice and non-attachment are necessary” (2.15). If one attempts to practice spiritual disciplines without endeavoring to control the thought-waves of desire, the mind will turn “violently agitated” and “perhaps permanently unbalanced” (2.15). It must be more than simply a rigid negative control of desire. One must raise waves of compassion, love, and devotion and integrate these thought-waves into the practice. For it is important to realize that non-attachment is not indifference. Yoga is not a deliberate shunning of the world in order to withdraw into a selfish discovery of ones own salvation. To realize the inner Atman, one must do the opposite. There must be love of the Atman. For to love the Atman in ourselves is to love it everywhere; and to love the Atman everywhere is to go beyond any manifestations of nature and discover the reality within nature. Isherwood agrees when he wrote, “such a love is too vast to be understood by ordinary minds, and yet it is simply an infinite deepening and expansion of the…love we all experience” (2.15). If one begins to contemplate breaking free from samsara, they must first understand the exquisites of this love. To understand this love, one must practice
Emotions and thought-waves of “ignorance, egoism, aversion, and the desire to cling to life” (2.3) must become non-attached in order to reach the inner Atman. After the mind calms and stabilizes, these subtler levels are explored and set aside with non-attachment and discrimination. For instance, this includes meditation and non-attachment to pranic energy (3.40), the five elements (3.45), the senses (3.49), and the subtler aspects of mind (3.50). There are the myriad objects of our quotidian lives for which our mental impressions are colored with various degrees of attraction or aversion. This, as part of non-attachment, is the first level of developing freedom from worldly bondage and ascertaining greater inner