"You must be ready to give up everything, not only material attachments but also human attachments - father, mother, wife, children - everything that you have. But the one thing which you have to abandon unconditionally is your self"
About this Quote
Griffiths pushes renunciation past the point where it still feels safely pious. Lots of religious language asks you to loosen your grip on possessions; he deliberately escalates to the most inflammable territory: family. Father, mother, wife, children - the inventory is meant to sting. He’s not auditioning for moral purity through minimalism; he’s staging a confrontation with the ways “good” attachments can still become a fortified ego.
The real provocation is the last clause: abandon your self. In Christian terms, this echoes the demand to “lose your life” to find it; in Griffiths’s own life and teaching - a Benedictine turned Hindu-Christian bridge figure - it also nods toward non-dual spirituality, where the self is not merely selfishness but the very structure of separateness. The subtext is that you can donate your money, even practice kindness, and still preserve the central idol: the story of “me” as owner, achiever, loyal son, devoted spouse, righteous believer. Family here functions less as a target than as proof: if you can’t relinquish your most socially celebrated identities, you haven’t actually touched the root.
Context matters because this is a clergyman speaking from a tradition that prizes vows, celibacy, and obedience, but also from an era when Western seekers were newly fascinated by Eastern disciplines of ego-dissolution. The line is intentionally absolute - “unconditionally” - because half-measures are precisely what the self loves: bargaining, curating, keeping a hidden reserve. Griffiths is arguing that spiritual freedom is not self-improvement; it’s self-surrender.
The real provocation is the last clause: abandon your self. In Christian terms, this echoes the demand to “lose your life” to find it; in Griffiths’s own life and teaching - a Benedictine turned Hindu-Christian bridge figure - it also nods toward non-dual spirituality, where the self is not merely selfishness but the very structure of separateness. The subtext is that you can donate your money, even practice kindness, and still preserve the central idol: the story of “me” as owner, achiever, loyal son, devoted spouse, righteous believer. Family here functions less as a target than as proof: if you can’t relinquish your most socially celebrated identities, you haven’t actually touched the root.
Context matters because this is a clergyman speaking from a tradition that prizes vows, celibacy, and obedience, but also from an era when Western seekers were newly fascinated by Eastern disciplines of ego-dissolution. The line is intentionally absolute - “unconditionally” - because half-measures are precisely what the self loves: bargaining, curating, keeping a hidden reserve. Griffiths is arguing that spiritual freedom is not self-improvement; it’s self-surrender.
Quote Details
| Topic | Letting Go |
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