Detachment or Non-attachment

Enlightenment teacher David Hawkins makes a distinction between the idea of detachment - which signifies a non caring remote isolationist standpoint to the world – and the idea of non-attachment which involves engaged action without attachment to your own desires or expectation of particular outcomes.

Compassion is active.

A story illustrates:

A man walking thought he forest saw a fox that has lost its legs, and he wondered how it lived. Then he saw a tiger come up with game in its mouth. The tiger ate its fill and left the rest of the meat for the fox.

The next day God fed the fox by means of the same tiger. The man began to wonder at God’s greatness and said to himself, “I too shall just rest in a corner with full trust in the Lord and he will provide me with what I need.”

He did this for many days but nothing happened, and he was almost at death’s door when he heard a voice say, “O you who are in the path of error, open your eyes to the truth! Stop imitating the disabled fox, and follow the example of the tiger.”

Non-attachment is compassion in action: