Dispassion
What is dispassion? To be without longing for the enjoyments of this world and of heaven.
What is dispassion (vairāgya)? The absence of any craving for pleasures here on earth or in heaven.
- vairāgya
What is left when wanting falls away
Dispassion is the absence of longing for what can be enjoyed, here in this world and hereafter in heaven. The two together close every door. What the senses reach for now, and what ritual and merit might win later in some brighter realm, are named in one breath and set down together, because both are won, both are kept for a while, and both are lost.
This is not the rejection of things, and not a hardness toward them. It is what remains when craving quietly leaves. And craving leaves not by being crushed but by being seen through: once you have looked, by the discernment that comes just before this, and found that nothing impermanent can hold you for long, the wanting has nowhere left to stand. Dispassion is the settling that follows that looking, the way a mother's pull toward lesser things falls away of itself when her child is in her arms.
So it sits here, second among the four, for a reason. The first means sees that Brahman alone lasts; this one lets that seeing reach the heart, where the wanting lived. Until then the mind is still spent on what it chases. When the chase loosens, the mind is free, and free is what it must be before it can turn and inquire into the Self.
What would you stop reaching for, if you saw clearly that it could not hold you?
In the commentaries
Vairāgya is not coldness toward the world, and not the wish to be rid of it; it is the falling away of craving once discernment has shown that nothing impermanent can finally satisfy. Sankara places it second among the means because it guards the first: the seeing that Brahman alone is lasting stays mere words until the pull of objects, the seen pleasures here and the unseen fruits of ritual won in heaven, loosens its hold and frees the mind to turn toward inquiry.