Question: How can you cultivate purity with your family and the people you love and make sure it is not attachment to something else?

Sri Chinmoy: You have to know that one thing is detachment and another thing is devotedness. If you want to offer your devoted qualities to God, to the Supreme, inside your wife and children, then you can never, never be attached to anybody. You are loving your wife not because she is your wife, not because she is beautiful, not because she is full of love and affection for you or because she does everything for you. No, these are only the outer manifestations of somebody within her. God is inside her; that is why she has all these good qualities. From now on, if you show your devoted gratitude to God, then you will never be attached to your wife or to your children. If you are devoted to God within your wife and children, then automatically you will establish purity with them.

But if you only appreciate the good qualities that you are seeing in your wife and in your children, then you will be tempted. The good qualities will only make you forget your own reality and their reality. If you want to go to God through the good qualities of your family, it will not be possible. You have to know that it is from the root that you get the plant and the tree. The root is God. There will be no flower, no leaf, no plant, nothing if there is no root inside. The root comes first; then only will you have the plant and leaves and tree. So if you go to the root of the good qualities, then you will never be lost, because the root is absolutely divine. But when beautiful leaves and flowers appear, then the evil forces of the eyes may enter into the picture. When somebody looks at beauty, he can destroy it with his impurity. Nobody is able to look at the root, but with your eyes you will be able to see the flowers, the leaves, the branches. At that time it is up to you whether you will love them with joy and divine feelings or curse them with ego and jealousy and pride. But the best thing is to try always to go only to the root inside your nearest and dearest ones. Then there can be no attachment, because the root is all love. Impurity is attachment, but devotedness is all-love, and all-love is all-purity.