"We are the things we possess, we are that to which we are attached. Attachment has no nobility. Attachment to knowledge is not different from any other gratifying addiction. Attachment is self-absorption, whether at the lowest or at the highest level. Attachment is self-deception, it is an escape from the hollowness of the self. The things to which we are attached, property, people, ideas, become all-important, for without the many things which fill its emptiness, the self is not. The fear of not being makes for possession; and fear breeds illusion, the bondage to conclusions. Conclusions, material or ideational, prevent the fruition of intelligence, the freedom in which alone reality can come into being; and without this freedom, cunning is taken for intelligence. The ways of cunning are always complex and destructive. It is this self-protective cunning that makes for attachment; and when attachment causes pain, it is this same cunning that seeks detachment and finds pleasure in the pride and vanity of renunciation. The understanding of the ways of cunning, the ways of the self, is the beginning of intelligence."
"There is only attachment; there is no such thing as detachment. The mind invents detachment as a reaction to the pain of attachment. When you react to attachment by becoming "detached" you are attached to something else. So that whole process is one of attachment. You are attached to your wife or your husband, to your children, to ideas, to tradition, to authority, and so on; and your reaction to that attachment is detachment. The cultivation of detachment is the outcome of sorrow, pain. You want to escape from the pain of attachment, and your escape is to find something to which you think you can be attached. So there is only attachment, and it is a stupid mind that cultivates detachment. All the books say, "Be detached" but what is the truth of the matter? If you observe your own mind, you will see an extraordinary thing that through cultivating detachment, your mind is becoming attached to something else."
"We have all had the experience of tremendous loneliness, where books, religion, everything is gone and we are tremendously, inwardly, lonely, empty. Most of us can't face that emptiness, that loneliness, and we run away from it. Dependence is one of the things we run to, depend on, because we can't stand being alone with ourselves. We must have the radio or books or talking, incessant chatter about this and that, about art and culture. So we come to that point when we know there is this extraordinary sense of self-isolation. We may have a very good job, work furiously, write books, but inwardly there is this tremendous vacuum. We want to fill that and dependence is one of the ways. We use dependence, amusement, church work, religions, drink, women, a dozen things to fill it up, cover it up. If we see that it is absolutely futile to try to cover it up, completely futile, not verbally, not with conviction and therefore agreement and determination, but if we see the total absurdity of it , then we are faced with a fact. It is not a question of how to be free from dependence; that's not a fact; that's only a reaction to a fact. Why don't I face the fact and see what happens?
The problem now arises of the observer and the observed. The observer says, "I am empty; I don't like it" and runs away from it. The observer says, "I am different from the emptiness." But the observer is the emptiness; it is not emptiness seen by an observer. The observer is the observed. There is a tremendous revolution in thinking, in feeling, when that takes place."
J. Krishnamurti; "The Book of Life"
