Detachment

In order to arrive at spiritual attainment,
two gulfs must be crossed:
the sea of attachment and the ocean of detachment.
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

The ability to dissociate from the negativity
around you and inside you
is know as the power of detachment.
-Dadi Janki

We must be able to observe
the meanness, the mediocrity, and the selfishness of other people
without becoming personally or emotionally involved.
-Charles Bowness

Detachment means that one stands back from them
[the imperfection and weakness of the nature],
does not identify with them
or get upset because they are there,
but rather looks on them as something foreign
to one's true consciousness and true self, rejects them.
-Aurobindo Ghose

[Detached Observation is]
to observe with unconditional love and discernment
the activities of the phenomenal world
as if you were not part of that world.
This is assuming the role of the beholder.
You witness the Law of Cause and Effect in operation 
as you see individuals and groups
sow and reap from the many levels of consciousness -
from the grossest to the finest.
You observe all without judgement, no labeling anything good or bad.
-John Randolph Price

Detachment means not to be caught by the glamor
of the physical, emotional or mental possessions you may have.
As a person detaches, he becomes more involved in life
in such a way that he is not involved in personal interests
but in doing something good for the whole world.
-Torkom Saraydarian

The first step in detachment
is to be detached from the body
with which you feel so much identified.
-Sivananda

Being detached does not mean running away from life
or being insensitive.
-Subramuniya

Detachment is a state,
it is not a totalisation of achieved indifferences.
-Wei Wu Wei

Indifference looks like detachment, but it is not;
indifference is simply no interest -
detachment is absolute interest, tremendous interest,
but still with the capacity for non-clinging.
-Chandra Mohan Jain, "Osho"

In the real practice of detachment,
one feels greater love, kindliness, compassion, and unity -
never a lack of interest or indifference.
-Ashokananda

Detachment means letting go
and non-attachment means simply letting be.
-Stephen Levine

Detachment is being close
to what you most want to be free from
and using it to make you grow.
-Dadi Janki

Detachment is a plant of slow growth.
-Sathya Sai Baba

Detachment is like flying high:
the higher you fly,
the wider a landscape you are able to view.
-Jyotirmayananda

The detached observer's view
is one window on the world.
-Kenneth L. Pike

Detachment is not that you should own nothing,
but that nothing should own you.
-Ali Ibn Abi Talib

A mind which really lays hold of a subject
is not easily detached from it.
-Ida Tarbell

We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, 
if only for a moment.
-May Sarton

To be detached from something that is not present
seems easier than to be detached in the face of full temptation.
-Peter Marchand

Learn to hold loosely all that is not eternal.
-A. Maude Royden

Those who are firm in their discrimination
excel at detachment.
-Haribhadra

Life's tangle is cut with detachment;
Uncut, the thread is endless.
-Tiruvalluvar

Attachment is the great fabricator of illusions;
reality can be attained only by someone who is detached.
 -Simone Weil

One must pass thru the portal of detachment into new horizons
leaving something of the old self behind.
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

To detach oneself from one thing
always implies an attachment to something else.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov
 
Before you detach yourself
from something that displeases or limits you,
you must attach yourself to something new,
something better quality.
-Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov

The power of detachment
is the power of silence, of peace.
-Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

This is what Zen means by being detached -
not being without emotion or feeling,
but being one in whom feeling is not sticky or blocked,
and through whom the experiences of the world
pass like the reflections of birds flying over water.
-Alan Watts

Detachment from the mental flux
is followed by detachment from even the observing ego,
eventually resulting in the realization
of the pure self as absolute freedom.
-Haridas Chaudhuri

True detachment is nothing other than this:
the spirit stands as immovable in all the assaults
of joy or sorrow, honor, disgrace or shame,
as a mountain of lead stands immovable against a small wind.
This immovable detachment brings about in man
 the greatest similarity with God.
-Meister Eckhart

He who would be serene and pure,
needs but one thing,
detachment.
-Meister Eckhart

We cannot be detached, we are never detached.
Life is one and nothing can separate it.
Detachment is only an illusionary aspect of life.
There is no such thing as detachment in truth.
How can there be detachment when life is one!
-Hazrat Inayat Khan

Remaining conscious of yourself as a spiritual being
while playing your part in the material world
requires great detachment.
-Dadi Janki

True detachment from the world becomes possible
when there is increasing attachment
to the Divine Self within one's heart.
-Jyotirmayananada

Attachment to God -
that is what is called detachment.
-Ashokananda

The last bond of attachment may be snapped,
but this does not mean, however,
that we go away from the world.
It just means we participate in the Being of the world,
in the evolutionary process of this world,
in a spirit of non-attachment. 
This is the highest health and harmony we can attain,
because we are in the world but not of the world.
-Haridas Chaudhuri

The highest form of detachment comes from knowledge,
knowledge of the oneness of reality,
that exists equally between subject and object.
-Mathaji Vanamali

This absolute detachment renders him master of all things
because having passed beyond all oppositions inherent in multiplicity,
he can no longer be affected by anything.
-Rene Guenon

Detach from whatever you find
inside or outside yourself
and only then will you attain liberation.
-Lin-Chi 

This state of immaculate aloofness
can be likened to that of the sun,
which is untouched by the activities of life,
or to that of the all-pervasive ether,
which is not affected by the interaction of the complex qualities
of the other four elements.
-Ramana Maharshi

Detachment is as the sun.
-Baha'u'llah