Detachment

“Detachment is not the inability to focus on things, material or other; it is the spiritual capacity to focus on all things, material and other, without attachment. It is primarily something spiritual; it is an attitude of life.” 

-John Chryssavgis, In the Heart of the Desert

Non-attachment is a state of being attentive without a desire to own or make what you experience permanent. Detachment, non-attachment—it sounds like such a distance and cold word. Like a bridge that keeps on going and we are visible on the other side, the size of a thumb. 

In reality, it’s a word of intimacy with all things: not turning away but focusing. To focus wholeheartedly without the egoistic desire to control or possess, without situating what we focus on in our past or the future. Once we situate something in a point in time other than now, we cling to it, in our memories or our plans for the future. 

Strip away our time and desires until nothing is left except our heart to see what we see and love it when it is available to us. In a practice of non-attachment, we reach our hands out, always, but we know that those hands don’t try to grasp.