Detachment

Swami Satyananda Saraswati

In the Bhagavad Gita, Sri Krishna was instructing Arjuna about detachment in the middle of the battlefield while the missiles were flying overhead and hundreds of people were dying in the war. Here the battlefield represents one’s own personal battle in life.

This means one should be able to practise detachment even when the scales are heavily loaded against one, when everything is going wrong, when one’s love has been betrayed, when one’s confidence has been shattered, when friends have deserted one, when one’s philosophy and deep-rooted convictions have fallen through and failed to help you.

The first mental disease that man suffers from is despondency, dejection, frustration, nervous breakdown. There is conflict all the time, and that is the first step to yoga. When one is angry, violent, terribly unhappy, what does one do? One fights, because one is trying to create a balance, come out of that situation. That is called detachment; that is called yoga.