Quotes & Sayings About Attachment To Material Things

The commentaries usually mention nine kinds of internal formations: desire, hatred, pride, ignorance, stubborn views, attachment, doubt, jealousy, and selfishness. Among these, the fundamental internal formation is ignorance, the lack of clear seeing. Ignorance is the raw material out of which the other internal formations are made. Although there are nine internal formations, because "desire" is always listed first, it is often used to represent all the internal formations. — Thich Nhat Hanh

We must be able to appreciate and enjoy the places where we tarry and yet pass on without anguish when we are called elsewhere. In our spiritual development we are often required to pull up roots many times and to close many chapters in our lives until we are no longer attached to any material thing and can love all people without any attachment to them. — Peace Pilgrim

Seeking can become stressful when you apply the same laws that you apply in the material world - hard work, exacting plans, driving ambition, and attachment to outcome. — Deepak Chopra

Men are more evanescent than pictures, yet one sorrows for lost friends, and pictures are my friends. I have none others. I am never long enough with men to attach myself to them; and whatever feelings of attachment I have are to material things. — John Ruskin

I do not write this in a spirit of sourness or personal disappointment of any kind, nor do I have any romantic attachment to suffering as a source of insight or virtue. On the contrary, I would like to see more smiles, more laughter, more hugs, more happiness and, better yet, joy. In my own vision of utopia, there is not only more comfort, and security for everyone - better jobs, health care, and so forth - there are also more parties, festivities, and opportunities for dancing in the streets. Once our basic material needs are met - in my utopia, anyway - life becomes a perpetual celebration in which everyone has a talent to contribute. But we cannot levitate ourselves into that blessed condition by wishing it. We need to brace ourselves for a struggle against terrifying obstacles, both of our own making and imposed by the natural world. And the first step is to recover from the mass delusion that is positive thinking. — Barbara Ehrenreich

We get attached to people, a job, material things and a certain state of being. And, when something around us changes we suffer.

Release the need to control people, release the believe there is only one job you can do, release the need to accumulate material things, welcome the unknown and set yourself free. — Ana Ortega

When our attitude towards our material possessions and wealth is not proper, it can lead to an extreme attachment towards such things as our property, houses and belongings. This can lead to an inability to feel contented. If that happens, then one will always remain in a state of dissatisfaction, always wanting more. In a way, one is then really poor, because the suffering of poverty is the suffering of wanting something and feeling the lack of it. — Dalai Lama XIV

My-ness (mamta) is indeed parigrah [attachment to material objects]; material object is not a parigrah. Gnani doesn't have My-ness (mamata), He has the eternal element (experience of Pure Soul). — Dada Bhagwan

The common belief is that religion is always opposed to material good. 'One cannot act religiously in mercantile and such other matters. There is no place for religion in such pursuits; religion is only for attainment of salvation,' we hear many worldly-wise people say. In my opinion the author of the Gita has dispelled this delusion. He has drawn no line of demarcation between salvation and worldly pursuits. On the contrary he has shown that religion must rule even our worldly pursuits. I have felt that the Gita teaches us that what cannot be followed in day-today practice cannot be called religion. Thus, according to the Gita, all acts that are incapable of being performed without attachment are taboo. This golden rule saves mankind from many a pitfall. According to this interpretation murder, lying, dissoluteness and the like must be regarded as sinful and therefore taboo. Man's life then becomes simple, and from that simpleness springs peace. — Mahatma Gandhi

In the mountains, worldly attachments are left behind, and in the absence of material distractions, we are opened up to spiritual thought. We should be attempting to carry the spiritual experience of the mountains with us everywhere. — Jamling Tenzing Norgay

There is a wide difference between having poison and being poisoned. All apothecaries have poisons ready for special uses, but they are not consequently poisoned, because the poison is only in their shop, not in themselves; and so you many possess riches without being poisoned by them, so long as they are in your house or purse only, and not in your heart. It is the Christian's privilege to be rich in material things , and poor in attachment to them. — St. Francis De Sales

Some people have a very strange idea that material success does not coincide harmoniously with self-realization, which is absurd. The aversion to material success, or the clinging to it, is an attachment. — Frederick Lenz

Cars aren't merely modes of transit or material possessions to Texans; they are something of a state treasure. We share a special, almost religious attachment to the automobile, rooted, I suppose, in our mythological relationship to the horse, our economic underpinnings in the oil industry, and the inescapable fact that to get anywhere in this state, you have to cover a lot of ground. — Jim Atkinson

Been Contented goes beyond our material wants; contentment sets us free from the illusion of having more or "Better things", or expecting "better times" it sets us free from the illusion that somehow things should be different. — Martin Suarez

We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paying our way by what we are and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly - the more athletic trim, in short, the moral fighting shape. — William James

An adept of Kriya Yoga conquers death by taking the soul beyond identification with the physical body, consciously and at will; and then returning to the consciousness of the mortal form again. By this process, he experiences the body as merely the material dwelling place of the soul. He can remain therein as long as he wants; and after that body has fulfilled its usefulness, he can quit it at will without suffering physical pain or mental pain due to attachment, and enter his omnipresent home in God. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Nothing in life is yours to keep - not your children, not your friends and family, not your lover, not your material possessions, not your youth and vitality, not your struggles (which is great news) or successes, not your body and not even your life. Everything in life is given to you for a short period of time, to enjoy, to learn from, to appreciate and to love, but never to keep. — Luminita D. Saviuc