We are social creatures who need relationships to be emotionally nourished. Yet many traditions emphasize detachment as a primary requirement for spiritual growth. For example, the Bhagavad-gita recommends detachment from one’s family (13.09).

How can our need for relationships be reconciled with the emphasis on detachment? By refining our understanding of detachment.

What detachment doesn’t mean: It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t care for others. Why is that meaning not valid? Because spiritual growth is essentially a growth in selflessness – it centers on learning to care for something beyond ourselves, something bigger than ourselves. While this journey culminates on the bhakti path in caring for the ultimate reality, Krishna, that journey begins for most people by caring for someone other than themselves. For most of us, such caring happens primarily through relationships. If we stop caring for others in the name of detachment, we may well sink into self-obsession, which would be spiritually toxic, even spiritually destructive.

What detachment means: Detachment means that we aren’t driven by a need to prove ourselves to others: While relationships can help us grow spiritually, they can also become spiritual obstacles if we become fixated on those with whom we are in a relationship. Suppose they have certain priorities and certain expectations from us that are different from, or even opposed to, what is conducive for our spiritual growth. If we make them the center of our life and make it the purpose of our life proving ourselves to them by succeeding according to their definitions of success, we will end up spiritually distracted, if not worse. That’s why we need sufficient detachment to free ourselves from the pressure to bend backward or to bend out of shape just for pleasing them.

One-sentence summary:

Detachment in relationships doesn’t mean not caring for others; it means not needing to prove ourselves to others (Inspired by Bhagavad-gita 13.11)

Think it over:

  • If we stop caring for others, how will it affect our spiritual growth?
  • If we care too much for others, how will it affect our spiritual growth?
  • Analyze your relationships to better understand where you need to care more and where less.

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13.10 … Detachment; freedom from entanglement with children, wife, home and the rest, even-mindedness amid pleasant and unpleasant events; … [ – all these I declare to be knowledge].

 

To know more about this verse, please click on the image