Rajneesh Attachment Quotations

Your ego may be just a soap bubble. Maybe for a few seconds it will remain, rising higher in the air. Perhaps for a few seconds it may have a rainbow, but it is only for a few seconds. In this infinite and eternal existence your egos go on bursting every moment. It is better not to have any attachment with soap bubbles.

As long as the "I" is there, love cannot be. All that we call love is only desire, longing, passion and attachment; as long as ego is there, all these bind one.

A person who lives moment to moment, who goes on dying to the past, is never attached to anything. Attachment comes from the accumulated past. If you can be unattached to the past every moment, then you are always fresh, young, just born. You pulsate with life and that pulsation gives you immortality. You are immortal, only unaware of the fact.

Attachment is the root cause of all misery. Possessiveness is nourishment for the ego.

Everything comes out of nothingness and goes back into nothingness. Hence there is no need for attachment, because attachment will bring misery. Soon it will be gone. The flower that has blossomed in the morning, by the evening will be gone. Don't get attached; otherwise in the evening there will be misery. Then there will be tears, then you will miss the flower. Enjoy while it is. But remember, it has come out of nothing, and it will go back to nothing. And the same is true about everything, even about people.

Transcendence means going beyond duality. Attachment means remaining within duality.

Remember: no attachment should grow, no clinging should grow. They are all against your independence, your freedom, your individuality.

When your desires drop, the world is there, but it is a totally new world. It is so fresh, it is so colorful, it is so beautiful! But a mind attached to things cannot see it because eyes are closed with attachment.

Drop the idea that attachment and love are one thing. They are enemies. It is attachment that destroys all love.

It is your attachment that creates hell.

Attachment brings misery, unattachment brings blissfulness. So use things, but don't be used by them. Live life but don't be lived by it. Possess things, but don't be possessed by them. Have things - that's not a problem. I am not for renunciation. Enjoy everything that life gives, but always remain free.

A witnessing consciousness lives in life but with tremendous non-attachment, with great non-possessiveness; it possesses nothing. It lives totally, it lives passionately, but still knowing that I don't possess anything.

Attachment is not love. Where there is attachment there is exploitation.

All our attachments are outward oriented and hence this illusion.

All duality is a mind creation, all duality is created by the clinging and attached mind. When there is no attachment there is no duality.

All of our miseries are nothing but attachment. Our whole ignorance and darkness is a strange combination of a thousand and one attachments. And we are attached to things which will be taken away by the time of death, or even perhaps before. You may be very much attached to money but you can go bankrupt tomorrow. You may be very much attached to your power and position, your presidency, your prime ministership, but they are like soap bubbles. Today they are here, tomorrow not even a trace will be left.

Attachment is the food for the mind to continue. Non-attached witnessing is the way to stop it without any effort to stop it. And when you start enjoying those blissful moments, your capacity to retain them for longer periods arises.

Don't be attached to the things of the world, and don't be attached to the things of the other world, because things are things. It makes no difference whether they are of this world or the other world - attachment is the problem.

Just seeing the fact that this is an attachment, that attachment is a bondage - a beautiful word for bondage - that attachment is not love... just seeing the ugliness of attachment - it drops; then arises love. The same energy that was becoming attachment, released from attachment becomes a totally different energy; it becomes love.

Misery is nothing but the shadow of attachment. And hence all stagnancy. The attached person becomes a stagnant pool - sooner or later he will stink. He flows no more.

Much is being missed because of fear. We are too attached to the body and we go on creating more and more fear because of that attachment. The body is going to die, the body is part of death, the body is death - but you are beyond the body. You are not the body; you are the bodiless. Remember it. Realize it. Awaken yourself to this truth - that you are beyond the body. You are the witness, the seer.

My approach is neither of attachment nor of detachment, but of simple understanding.

One day you will disappear on a funeral pyre - just into nothingness, as smoke. Don't get attached to anything. This attachment takes you away from your real being; you become focused on the thing to which you are attached. Your awareness gets lost in things, in money, in people, in power. And there are a thousand and one things, the whole thick jungle around you, to be lost in. Remember, non-attachment is the secret of finding yourself, then awareness can turn inwards because you don't have anything outside to catch hold of. It is free, and in this freedom you can know your self-nature.

Remember remain alert that you don't get too much attached to the accidental - and all is accidental except your consciousness. Except your awareness, all is accidental. Pain and pleasure, success and failure, fame and defamation - all is accidental. Only your witnessing consciousness is essential. Stick to it! Get more and more rooted in it. And don't spread your attachment to worldly things.

This is the whole secret of non-attachment: live in the world, but don't be of the world. Love people, but don't create attachments. Reflect people, reflect the beauties of the world - and there are so many. But don't cling. The clinging mind loses its mirrorhood. And mirrorhood is Buddhahood. To keep that quality of mirroring continuously fresh is to remain young, is to remain pure, is to remain innocent. Know, but don't create knowledge. Love, but don't create desire. Live, live beautifully, live utterly, abandon yourself in the moment. But don't look back. This is the art of non-attachment.

To be unattached is not to renounce the world. If you renounce the world you are attached to the world; otherwise why should you renounce it? What is the point in renouncing it if you are not attached to it? Only attachment renounces. If you are really non-attached there is no question of any renunciation.

Attachment is the shadow of the ego. Attachments are immediately created wherever you see 'I am'.

You can change your attachment from this to that, but you will be in misery. Attachment creates misery.

If attachment is the conditioning factor, then non-attachment will become the unconditioning factor. If expectation leads you in misery, then non-expectation will lead you into non-misery. If anger creates a hell within you, then compassion will create a heaven. So whatsoever the process of misery, the reverse will be the process of happiness. Unconditioning means you have to understand the whole knotted phenomenon of human consciousness as it is.

Become alert about desire and non-attachment begins to appear. This is not to be made to happen, it follows naturally from awareness of attachment. Each one of us has to become aware of his attachments, and keep being so! Nothing should be done unconsciously.

Attachment is the root cause of all misery - and our mind is such that it starts clinging to each and everything. It starts becoming identified, attached, it does not know how to keep a distance; hence the misery.

Become detached from your ego, become detached from your possessions. Become simply detached from every possible source of attachment.

When you are not the doer how can the attachment happen? You do a small thing and you become attached. You say, "I have done this." You would like everybody to know that you have done this and you have done that. This ego is the barrier for the supreme understanding. Drop the doer and let things happen. That's what Tilopa means by being loose and natural.

If you get attached, then it becomes an obsession. If the person is not there, you are unhappy. If you miss the person, you are in misery. And attachment is such a disease that if the person is not there you are in misery, and if the person is there you are indifferent. Then it is okay; it is taken for granted. If the person is there it is okay - no more than that. If the person is not there, then you are in misery. This is attachment.