Vairagya:
Detachment and Dispassion in Yoga
Attachment, Non-Attachment, and the Moody Nature of Experience
Written By: Balraj Persaud
Vairāgya is usually translated as detachment or dispassion. But detachment is not indifference; it is simply noticing the way(s) your awareness is consumed, possessed, or pre-occupied by something. Specifically, it is the practice of noticing how awareness becomes possessed by the desire to be freed from its dependence and contingency. This essay examines the meaning and practice of vairāgya as detachment/non-attachment, dispassion, and finding a freer relationship to what appears.
Vairagya as Detachment: “Unhooking” from How We Find Ourselves Preoccupied
What is the meaning of vairagya as “detachment”?
Detachment from something is just noticing the way(s) in which your awareness is absorbed in (or determined by) said thing; detachment is becoming conscious of how your awareness was pre-occupied at any given moment. The result of “detaching” from something is just a different sense of said thing; most basically, you become aware that there is something about “you” (as awareness/consciousness) this is not reducible to the thing that was determining your awareness.
In our practice of detachment, we are first able to see how our awareness is pre-occupied with conditional/temporary things in our experience such as thought/thinking, emotion, etc. Eventually, we are able to see how our awareness is consumed by our habitual ways of being. Freed from personal interest, we are then able to “complete” self-awareness as we recognize the ways in which our awareness is possessed or determined by certain non-optional features of our experience, such as embodiment. The practice of vairagya is the practice of bearing witness to the ways in which your awareness is consumed/possessed/incarnated. (We can think of these as “attachments”.) Detachment begins by cultivating a relatively stiller “mind” (usually via some form of focused attention).
Of the ways in which our awareness is possessed by our habitual ways of being (i.e., thinking, feeling, acting, perceiving), the yogin is particularly interested in noticing how our habitual ways of attempting to run away from any inner dis-ease/discomfort/anxiety (and running towards something what the habitual self thinks will eliminate its discomfort). The yogin is interested in noticing how being stuck in this cycle (of securing one’s identity and running from inadequacy—of attachment) produces and re-produces suffering. When we notice these things—i.e., when we experience “detachment” from them—the quality of detachment is something like loosening the “grip” (or attachments) that our habitual self has on the world (the very self that keeps us stuck in destructive habits associated with self-preservation and self-elevation). And, of course, the moment we try to fix any of this, we are no longer detached, and are only reinforcing the very problem we were attempting to subvert. Our awareness is now consumed by—attached to, determined by—the desire to fix/self-transcend.
Over time, as our attention becomes more and more focused, we are able to see the myriad (more complex/sophisticated) ways in which our attention is pre-occupied, the most important of which is the most primitive form of self-consciousness: desire—the impulse to self-transcend.
This is the meaning of vairagya as detachment.
Vairagya [vi-rāga] as Dispassion: Bearing Witness to the Pre-Reflective Mood/Colour of Experiencing
What is the meaning of vairagya as “dispassion”?
Among the many forces that are always already determining our awareness, some are not optional (such as embodiment). One such non-optional force is something like mood. Vairagya as dispassion is just the practice of noticing of the way(s) that mood is determining our experience.
But here we mean something more fundamental than what we ordinarily consider to be “mood”. Ordinarily, we think of ourselves as being “in a mood” when we are experiencing some emotion with particular intensity (whether we can name it or not); for example, we identify ourselves as being “depressed” when we are particularly sad, or we think of ourselves as being “angry” when we are particularly irritated (i.e., more sad/irritated than is “normal” for me). And we might even say that, more often than not, we’re not even in any particular mood.
Vairagya is the result of noticing how our awareness (always) already has something like a feeling-tone to it, and how this tone discloses the world to us in a particular way—and makes certain modes of being more/less available to me. Vairagya as dispassion just is making contact with the very (non-optional) moody nature of experience itself, of bearing witness to the way(s) mood “characterizes” or “colours” or “attunes me to” (or even “tunes”) my experiencing of the world in any given moment. Mood “discloses” the world to me in a particular way or, in other words, it discloses attachment or attachments. In other words, mood is not an emotion that you may or may not have in the world; rather, it is the background “weather”, so to speak, that determines how the world shows up for us in the first place. We do not first perceive a neutral world and then have a feeling about it; rather, just as weather is not optional, we are (always) already attuned to the world so that only certain things are ever available to us.
Vairagya in Meditation: A Case Study
Perhaps the simplest way of experiencing what is described as vairagya as “detachment” (in a very small, limited context) is in the practice commonly referred to as “noting” in contemporary mindfulness meditation practices. In introductions to mindfulness and “noting” practice, “noting” is just noticing that one is unfocused (e.g., that one is thinking) and is no longer focusing on one’s breath (or whichever object). In this moment of noticing, one experiences becoming re-focused. In so doing, one has “detached” from being absorbed in the momentum of thinking without needing to suppress or eliminate it.
Meditation can also disclose something less discrete than a thought/emotion: it can disclose a more pervasive mood or “atmosphere” within which some thought/feeling showed up. One may become aware of a sudden flatness, heaviness, agitation, urgency, unease, cloudiness, etc., through which the content of the meditation (breath, feeling, thinking, etc.) has been appearing. The point is not identify the mood correctly, explain its cause, or make it disappear. Rather, it is simply to notice that experience was being “coloured” in this way, that what had seemed to be the self-evident character of reality is also a condition affecting how reality appears.
In this moment of noticing, we are no longer completely “inside” of what had been determining our awareness. This is vairāgya as both detachment and dispassion: attention is released, however briefly, from absorption in a thought and from the unexamined mood that gives that thought its urgency, weight, or apparent truth. The practice teaches the meaning of vairāgya more directly than a definition can.
Stillness allows us to see movement, in this case to see how our (whole) habitual self is moved by (or attached to) the terms of the world, including attachment to the tacit hope that our existence will be saved from itself, from its vulnerability, dependence, relationality, and so on. As we cultivate a capacity for stillness so we might notice the self-movement of our attention, we are able to see increasingly complex/sophisticated ways in which our attention is pre-occupied in our everyday life, including—perhaps especially—by desire.
And, of course, the moment we try to fix any of this, we are no longer detached, and are only reinforcing the very problem we were attempting to subvert; our awareness is now consumed by—attached to or determined by—the desire to fix/self-transcend.
Sukha, Duḥkha, Rāga, Vi-Rāga: The Logic of Attachment
Rāga (from rañj) means “to redden” (or to colour or to dye) and is translated psychologically as “passion”, “attachment” or even “desire”; when you have rāga, your experience has been “coloured” or “dyed” by some affective charge. The prefix vi- is a privative/negating prefix here (meaning “without” or “apart from” or even “in opposition to”). Therefore, vi-rāga means something like “colourless” or “free from dye” or even “dispassionate”. [Vairāgya is an abstract noun derived from vi-rāga (adding the suffix -ya and lengthening the first vowel in Sanskrit morphology—called vṛddhi—turns the word into an abstract noun denoting a state/quality): the state of being “free from colour”, etc.]
Of course, contemplative traditions deployed this word figuratively. As a familiar example, the Yoga Sūtra (58, or 2.7) defines rāga in more specific terms: sukhānuśayī rāgaḥ. Sukha is conventionally glossed as, “having a good axle hole” [su = good, kha = axle hole]; imagine a wheel that rolls smoothly, that is reliable, not dangerous. Figuratively, sukha is often translated simply as “happiness”—it is the local (temporary) experience of ease: things feeling smooth, favourable, manageable, or safe enough. It can include anything that promises the felt smoothness of life: food, sex, praise, status, health, belonging, achievement, insight, meditation, emotional healing, spiritual attainment. Our pursuits may become more strategic/sophisticated (replacing temporary pleasure with pursuits that seem capable of making security more permanent), but the underlying orientation remains: this could make things feel right (either right now, or for good). Either way, sukha is conditional: it depends on a body, circumstances, other people, time, and countless conditions that remain only partly ours to direct (conditions, interestingly enough, that gave us desire to begin with).
We can contrast sukha with duḥkha*, the latter which is traditionally glossed as as “having a bad/difficult axle hole” [dus=bad/difficult] and is often translated as “suffering” or “unsatisfactoriness”. A chariot wheel with a bad axle-hole produces an uncomfortable, dangerous, friction-filled ride. Duḥkha isn’t just “sadness”; it refers to a (built-in) friction of experiencing (a necessarily dependent, contingent life). It is felt sometimes as grief, fear, pain, and frustration, and sometimes as the background, gnawing/haunting unease or restlessness of existing as a being who depends on conditions that cannot be secured in any kind of permanent way—that is, the restlessness of needing one’s life to (finally, completely) “work out”, the anxiety of waiting for circumstances to cooperate, the background awareness that what presently supports us may change or disappear; basically, needing the dis-ease/restlessness to go away once and for all. Duḥkha is not a judgement that every experience is unpleasant. Joy can be joyful, a meal satisfying, and a relationship nourishing. Rather, it names their inability to provide any kind of final security; it names the precarity or unreliability of that which cannot be fully authored or made permanently reliable.
Anuśayī [anu- = following after, śī = to dwell or lie down) means that which closely follows or dwells upon. In this sūtra, rāga can be translated as something like that which dwells on experience going smoothly. And so raḡa here describes this basic, pre-reflective orientation towards ease/pleasantness and away from friction—an orientation that we did not first “decide to have” or “learn” and that arises before we have chosen its particular objects/strategies. It is, basically, the craving/need for experiencing to go smoothly. This is not merely an occasional preference for pleasure, but a basic desire for experience to become smooth enough that we might finally feel secure—exempt from vulnerability, dependence, incompleteness, and not having ultimate control. This amounts to, basically, (the impossible task of) being able to author(ize) everything that shows up in experience, internally or externally.
Vairāgya is the capacity to notice the this pre-reflective desire for things to reliably “work out”, and how awareness has been coloured/organized by this desire. Note that vi-rāga does not mean dis-colouring, as in removing dye from something that was previously dyed. Vairāgya is not indifference to pleasure or the forced elimination of emotion/desire/mood, but is, rather, simply noticing the dye. In this framework, noticing attachment is the detachment, just as in how noticing that one is daydreaming, one is no longer daydreaming. Vairāgya is not less feeling; it is a freer relationship to the ongoing appearing of life—including (perhaps especially) what we did not author, cannot control, and cannot make answer to our demand for security.
This approach—of just noticing and not attempting to forcefully eliminate—is described in many classical contemplative texts, including in the Yoga Sūtra itself: even if we set aside references to witnessing or discrimination, vairāgya is explicitly defined as vaśīkāra-saṃjñā (15, or 1.15), which means remaining aware, where saṃjñā means something like awareness/consciousness/knowing. In other words, the different relationship with what appears that vairāgya requires is epistemic; its objects do not become, contrary to popular belief, something to be destroyed/avoided, if only because this disposition would only reinforce the very objects one was intending to destroy.
And so raḡa here describes, basically, the craving/need for experiencing to go smoothly. This is not merely an occasional preference for pleasure, but a basic desire for experience to become smooth enough that we might finally feel secure—exempt from vulnerability, dependence, incompleteness, and not having ultimate control. This amounts to, basically, (the impossible task of) being able to author(ize) everything that shows up in experience, internally or externally.
Vairagya and Freedom
In yoga, you realize your freedom in bearing witness to the ways in which you are determined. (Or, stated differently, freedom is self-awareness). Vairagya just is this practice: vairagya is noticing the ways in which your awareness is determined. Whether we call our practice “vairagya” (or dispassion or detachment) or not, it remains a central practice in yoga.
Yoga—and many other “spiritual” traditions—basically requires the recognition one’s individual existence is not a self-contained one—that “you” do not-self-exist but rather are a product of (or “belong to”) something that precedes (and exceeds) you. Vairagya is the practice of detaching from the myriad ways in which we are denying (and evading) the fact of this basic implication in the (self-moving) effort to try to self-elevate/self-perfect (much like an ocean wave trying to become its own entity). In other words, vairagya is the practice of detaching from (or “noticing”) desire. Desire is singled out not because it is the most obvious attachment but because it is the most primitive one—the one that organizes all the others—particularly the desire to secure oneself against one’s own (non-optional) contingency, dependence, and relationality.
This is also why vairagya is so difficult to sustain as a practice. Any practice—postures, breathwork, meditation, devotion, inquiry, even vairagya—can be recruited by the very desire it is meant to expose: the desire for for perfect inner peace, self-mastery, bulletproof mental health, et cetera. The moment a practice is enlisted in the pursuit of self-security, vairagya has been lost; this is not a reason for discouragement—it is simply what vairagya asks us to keep noticing.
Life “After” Vairagya
There is no “after” vairagya. The consequence of this practice is not that you arrive at some other place that is “outside” of experience where you are no longer subject to the vicissitudes of outer/inner life. Rather, the result of the practice of vairagya is just a (radically) different relationship with what is. Perhaps ironically, the result of “detachment” is more intimacy—with oneself, with others, and with something like “life” itself. This intimacy is cultivated as we become detached from our habitual ways of being in the world, ways of being that are defined by self-interest/preservation/elevation. In other words, the result of the cultivation of vairagya is experience that is less infected/affected by the kind of self-consciousness that re-produces suffering, the kind of self-consciousness that wants to self-transcend so it can self-exist, that wants to escape the discomfort of dependence—of incompleteness—and become its own ground. The result of vairagya is yoga (and yoga is just what remains when we’ve noticed—or “detached from”—this impossible quest).
But, of course, if you prioritize any of this (vairagya, yoga, meditation, detachment, dispassion, etc.) so that you can achieve freedom, or more recognition, or some form of personal perfection—i.e., invincible mental health, spiritual enlightenment, inner purity, etc.—you’re really only reinforcing the problem (and continuing to deny your freedom and, therefore, an essential component of yourself).
In yoga, you realize your freedom in bearing witness to the ways in which you are always already determined. (Or, stated differently, freedom is self-awareness).
Further Reading
FURTHER READING:
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
*Jonathan Gold, in his 2023 article, ‘Pyrrho’s Buddha on Duḥkha and the Liberation from Views’, argues that “unreliable”—or perhaps more precisely “precarious”—could function as a translation of the Pāli, duḥkha, in certain early Buddhist texts (a term which is usually rendered as “suffering” or, more recently, “unsatisfactoriness”).
For more on the moody nature of experience in western philosophy, see German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s 1927 work, Being & Time (Division I, Chapter 5, Part A, Section 29). Canadian philosopher John Russon presents an accessible discussion on the topic of mood in lectures 7-10 (particularly lecture 9) of his lectures on Heidegger’s Being & Time on his YouTube Channel.