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અનાસક્તિયોગ
mmmmm attached even to science, art, speculation, philan- thropy. Yes, non-attached even to these. For, like, patriotism, in Nurse Cavell's phrase' they are not enough'. Non-attachment to self and to what are called the things of this world' has always been associated in teachings of the philosophers and the founders of religions with attachment to an ultimate reality greater and more significant than the self, greater and more significant than even the best things that this world has to offer. Of the nature of this ultimate reality I shall speak in the last chapters of this book. All that I need do in this place is to point out that the ethic of non attachment has always been correlated with cosmologies that affirm the existance of a spiritual reality underlying the phenomenal world and imparting to it whatever value or significance it possesses.
Non-attachment is negative only in name. The practice of non-attachment entails the practice of all the virtues. It entails the practice of charity, for there are no more fatal impediments than anger (even 'rightious indignation') and cold blooded malice to the identification of the self with the immanent and Transcandent more-than-self. It entails the practice of courage; for fear is a painful and obsessive identification of the self with its body. * : * It is unnecessary any further to labour the point, sufficiently obvious to anyone who chooses to think 'about the matter, that non-attachment imposes upon those who would practice it the adoption of an intensly positive attitude towards the world.
The ideal of non-attachment has been formu.
