What actually is non-attachment?

Buddha says the root of suffering is attachment. What actually is this? And why is the monastic way of life relevant?

You don't need to be a monk to find non-attachment. Eckhart Tolle did, but its interesting that once he found it he initially did the same thing as Buddha: nothing. Buddha sat for 40 days under a tree and Tolle became homeless and slept on park benches. So naturally we think non-attachment is abandoning worldly interests and "dropping out."

Well maybe. Those who have found non-attachment often drop out. But most who droop-out have not found non-attachment: they are absolutely not the same thing. After dropping out both Buddha and Tolle went on to teach, live conventional-ish lives and Tolle even went on to have a relationship.

Non-attachment can't be measured by material things like this. Instead it is simply not seeing yourself anywhere in the world. Completely no where.

This means while you may have possessions they have nothing to do with you. If one breaks it makes no difference whether it is "yours" or someone else's: it's the same experience. It means even when you encounter a thought, memory or emotion you do not find yourself in it anywhere. It just is as it is, and whether it is yours or someone else's makes no difference, even no sense.

Its very hard to do. Almost all the time we grasp at things as "ours." Especially with mental phenomena we "let them immediately into the exclusive club of ME as VIP guests" we don't even stop them at the door they are already inside ME. If we arrest that process and ask how are they really in as difference space from anything else then we get back to non-attachment.

The problem with all these VIP guests in our club is that everything that happens to them happens to us! If we empty the club then nothing happens to "us", it just happens. And that is non-attachment and enlightenment.