Why Detachment Is Easy For Buddhists

Detachment (or Buddhist non-attachment) is not indifference—it’s a deep self-compassion practice and the freedom to separate your inner peace from someone else’s moods or opinions. What’s meant to stay, will stay. What’s meant to go, will go. There’s always more love, more peace, and more purpose waiting for you.

That goal is not trying to emulate what we think people like — because then we’re not coming from our core — and that game and that trap can last forever.

Transcript

So detachment,

My definition is being in harmony with the world,

And it's a kind of medicine.

When you fight with the whole world,

You feel helpless.

When you're always fighting with everyone,

With everything,

You never have energy.

You can't reach your full potential.

And attachment,

It's that fight.

You don't want to spend all your energy on this imagined ring.

Today we're going to talk about something really cool,

And that's detachment.

Detachment is detachment from your own perfect vision of yourself.

Detachment is detaching from your own need to perform,

Detaching from your need to control other people.

My goal is to do five minutes on everything you need to know about detachment A to Z.

And let's start from the Buddhist point of view.

For Buddhists,

Detachment is easy.

When do we get attached?

When there's suffering,

When someone causes us suffering,

When someone is like unfair to us,

Judgmental to us,

Speaks badly of us,

We get really attached to that.

We think about it.

We put our energy there.

Buddhists know that every time someone speaks badly of you,

Your karma gets better.

Every time someone does something unjust,

Yes,

You build boundaries.

Yes,

You try to fix it.

But when you don't react emotionally inside,

When you're calm,

Your karma gets better.

So a real Buddhist will watch these things happen without emotional resistance.

You can be active on the outside and totally calm,

Totally peaceful,

Totally well-wishing on the inside.

It's like watching your investment portfolio growing.

Your karma growing is like every resource in your life growing.

Your relationships,

Your good luck,

Your wishes coming true.

So when people are like,

Elizabeth,

How can I stay calm?

How can I not react?

This person said that about me.

Your karma is just getting better.

There's no reason for you to be unhappy about that.

So that's the Buddhist view.

And I always find the Buddhist view incredibly interesting.

It's completely counter to what we do in today's society.

And it has so much wisdom to offer us.

So that's the beginning of our detachment A to Z.

I always assumed that detachment is disconnection.

And then I understood that detachment is not aligned to disconnection.

Detachment is aligned to faith,

To intention,

To vision,

Which is actually connection.

Detachment is when you can look one level deeper.

When you're detached to what's on the outside,

You're connected to what's within.

When you're in a good mood and stay with your practice and stay aligned to your values,

No matter what,

You're aligned with the divine.

You're actually aligned to the divine in yourself.

And that is an enormous inner strength.

When you're not afraid of certain parts of yourself,

When you're detached from needing to be a certain way,

When you're detached from your rhythms not aligning with the rhythms of other people,

You're connected to who you really are.

When you know how to practice detachment,

Life actually becomes effortless.

You have more clarity.

I want to give you that gift.

When you're really attached,

Your world is small.

You suffer a lot.

Every wave rocks your boat so much.

When you're really focused on what's on the outside and it impacts you a lot,

You lose yourself.

So I recommend looking deep within because what's there is always there for you.

What's there is not going to change.

Whatever you're going through,

Including what's happening on the outside to you,

It's the path of your soul.

It's the path of your soul anyway.

Whether or not you try to control it or not,

It's still the path of your soul.

So you can exhale and know that things are happening as they need to.

Your job is your reaction.

How you take it.

What you do about it.

What you keep practicing.

What you're doing or not doing as a response to it.

So try this practice in the future.

Something happens and you say,

I agree.

This is happening.

I'll stay grateful.

I'll stay calm.

I'll stay with my vision.

Everything that needs to be in me is in me.

I agree with an open heart.

Life,

I'll work with what you give me.

There's this beauty to this attitude that life,

I am ready for what you give me and I will work with it.

And you'll see that the more you detach,

The easier things become.

And the more things come your way.

The quality of your surroundings become different.

There's more lightness.

You feel more open.

There's more flow.

And actually the things you want start to come your way much more easily.

According to psychologist Richard Miller,

What you're willing to be with,

You move beyond.

Everything around you changes when you change.

If you're in this mode of victim,

If you think someone is the end all and be all,

And that someone needs to behave in a certain way.

If you have this very strong attachment,

You don't have energy.

It changes your inner state.

It limits your inner state.

When you detach,

You actually get your energy back.

When you attach,

You send energy outside of yourself to those things you're attaching to that are like out there.

When you detach,

You send your energy back to yourself.

And you have the energy to change more from within for your spiritual,

Psychological,

Emotional transformation.

We all need energy to keep changing.

We all need energy for our wishes to come true,

For our lives to go a certain way.

We need to be healthy and we need a very big reserve of energy.

Detachment gives you that because it's harmony.

When you say yes to the flow,

When you distance yourself,

Detach from ideas of how things should be,

It's like floating up from underwater.

You're not stuck in this battleground against life itself.

And life is very,

Very strong.

The flow of life is very,

Very strong.

So as you detach,

It's like first you're underwater.

There's a lot of pressure.

Then you're on the ground floor,

You feel better.

As you keep detaching,

Then you're on the third floor.

You see a little bit more.

Then you're on the ninth floor.

There's a better view.

It's quieter.

And as you keep detaching,

Then you're on the 90th floor and you see the clouds and you see the sky and you see what's under you and you have this wonderful broad perspective.

If you don't detach,

There's a lot of stress because you're in that battle.

You don't want to live in this very,

Very stressful world around you.

You want to ride the wave.

You want to ride the flow.

And you want to be able to say,

Thank you.

I'll work with this.

Thank you,

Reality.

Thank you,

Reality.

Thank you.

I'll work with this.

So no matter what's happening,

Choose gratitude.

Choose joy.

Choose inspiration.

Choose lightness.

The compassionate universe,

Unfortunately,

Doesn't partner with us to make us happy or joyful.

It partners with us to make us holy.

It's here to help us grow.

That's why we have so much challenge.

And one of the challenges is actually finding detachment.

And when we find that,

We have the transformation on the inside.

And that's what really matters.

Detachment means detaching from what's on the outside.

And it means paying attention to what's on the inside.

Detachment doesn't mean detachment from your practice.

There's a harmony to compassion,

To acceptance,

To gratitude,

To the genuine.

When you're in harmony with the world and when your attention goes to what's inside,

The world gives you a lot more resource.

I've noticed that what we get in life is usually not dependent on how smart we are,

How hardworking we are,

How wise we are.

It correlates to some extent,

But I'm sure you've noticed that it doesn't correlate completely.

What we get in life correlates with how connected you are to yourself,

Which means by definition,

How detached you are from what's on the outside.

There's people who are very thorough,

Very meticulous,

Very hardworking,

Very intelligent.

And they build their business and they follow every rule.

They read every book and they don't have success.

Money doesn't come to them.

Clients don't come to them.

And then I've seen other people who are light,

Who are in a good mood,

Who maybe didn't even study that much,

Who don't overwork.

They have a pretty chill energy and money comes to them and clients come to them and opportunities come to them because they're great to be around.

They take things lightly.

People feel more expansive around them.

They want to work with them.

I've noticed that really the more attachment,

The more of a heavy hand and the less resource.

The more we try to control,

The more limited our world is.

We can't have a really big world and be very attached.

Skills and success actually don't go hand in hand.

To some degree,

They do.

They align to a certain degree,

But they do not align 100%.

Connection with yourself always aligns with happiness and with success.

The more connected you are to yourself,

The more you have of every kind of resource.

There's a bigger force to everything.

Mahayana Buddhists call it the compassionate universe.

You can call it the divine.

When you connect with yourself,

You connect with the whole universe.

When you connect with the divine in you,

You're connected to everything.

But connecting to that part in yourself means disconnecting from something else.

Disconnecting from other people's opinions.

Disconnecting from other people's moods.

Disconnecting from needing to change other people's actions,

Needing to change circumstances.

The perspective to bring in here is that we are eternal.

Nothing is the end.

Nothing is the be all end all.

We just keep living,

Transforming.

There is an endless present moment.

Nothing is that thing that everything hinges on.

What matters is the state of your soul.

What matters is your inner state.

What matters is how much energy there is running through you.

What matters is whether you can see your vision and your intention.

Detach from everything else and follow that thing that you feel in your soul.

At a certain point,

You just know something is right,

And it's irrational,

And it can feel scary to follow.

At that point,

You detach from ego.

You detach from visions of how you should be.

You detach from the rational.

You detach from what everyone has taught you.

You just try.

You just move forward,

And you follow that voice.

And that's how I've seen people reach great success.