The Profound Gain from Not Clinging

Anyone who stops clinging to father, mother, wife, children, land, houses, things are repaid a hundred times over and gains eternal life. Then you will so easily take leave of your possessions, that is, you will stop clinging, and you will have destroyed clinging’s the capacity to hurt you. Then, at last, you will experience that mysterious state that cannot be described or uttered—the state of abiding happiness and peace called the Kingdom of Joy.

Finding the Kingdom of Joy is the easiest thing in the world but also the most difficult. It’s easy because it is all around you and within you, and all you have to do is reach out and take possession of it. It’s difficult because, if you wish to possess the Kingdom, you can possess nothing else. That is, you must drop all inward leaning on any person or thing and forever withdraw from them the power to thrill you, excite you, or give you a feeling of security or well-being. Externally, everything will go on as before, but though you will continue to be in the world, you will no longer be of it. In your heart, you will now be free.

You probably think this is an unattainable ideal but there are and have been people who have attained this. The only reason why you too are not free is that your programming still stubbornly insists that reality be reshaped to conform to its demands.

Observe all of this from the outside so to speak and you will see the marvelous change that comes about in you.  You will simply enjoy things, refusing to let yourself be attached to them, that is, refusing to hold the false belief that you will not be happy without them. You will be spared all the struggle and emotional strain of protecting attachments and guarding them for yourself.

Has it occurred to you that you can keep all the objects of your clinging, your attachments without giving them up, without renouncing a single one of them and you can enjoy them even more on a non-attachment, a non-clinging basis, because you are peaceful now and relaxed and unthreatened in your enjoyment of them?  In your heart, you will now be free.