ENDS AND MEANS
Non-attached to wealth, fame, social position. Non-
attached even to science, art, speculation, philanthropy.
Yes, non-attached even to these. For, like patriotism, in
Nurse CavelTs phrase, 'they are not enough/ Non-
attachment to self and to what, are called 'the things of
this world' has always been associated in the teachings of
the philosophers and the founders of religions with attach-
ment to an ultimate reality greater and more significant
than the self. Greater and more significant than even the
best things that this world has to offer. Of the nature
of this ultimate reality I shall speak in the last chapters
of this,book. All that I need do in this place is to point
out that the ethic of non-attachment has always been
correlated with cosmologies that affirm the existence of a
spiritual reality underlying the phenpmenal world and im-
parting to it whatever value or significance it possesses.
Non-attachment is negative only in name. The practice
of non-attachment entails the practice of all the virtues.
It entails the practice of charity, for example; for there
are no more fatal impediments than anger (evetj 'righteous
indignation5) and cold-blooded malice to the identification
of the self with the immanent and transcendent more-than-
self. It entails the practice of courage; for fear is a painful
and obsessive identification of the self with its body.
(Fear is negative sensuality, just as sloth is negative malice.)
It entails the cultivation of intelligence; for insensitive
stupidity is a main root of all the other vices. It entails
the practice of generosity and disinterestedness; for avarice
and the love of possessions constrain their victim to
equate themselves with mere things. And so on. It is
unnecessary any further to labour the point, sufficiently
obvious to anyone who chooses to think about the matter,
that non-attachment imposes upon those who would
practise it the adoption of an intensely positive attitude
towards the world.