Practicing to let go

I sometimes hear people say around here that it is so hard to practice around people that are not practitioners and that they need to find a more practice-suited environment. This always confuses me a bit. Off course, it can be helpful to find favorable conditions for personal growth, but in the end, if you do away with everything that does not help your practice, just to replace this with things that you think do suit your practice, you are no better than all those people you left behind.

We do not practice to replace all things we think are 'bad' with things we consider 'good'. We are still trying to get rid of the things we don't like in order to replace them with things we do like. We are still caught up in hatred and greed. We are still caught in attachment. You can even be a monk and have done away with all worldly affairs, just to become attached to the simple monastic life and still not be a real practitioner.

No, we do not practice to replace good with bad, we practice to let go, to let go of all attachments and of all ideas about 'good' and 'bad'. And the funny thing is, the more you let go, the more open and compassionate you become towards all people, and the less likely you become to try and get away from certain people. If we let go of our own ideas about good and bad (our ego!), and stop judging, there is no longer anything that separates us from our fellow man and we become naturally compassionate to all people.

So is it harder to practice to practice around non-practitioners? I think it is easier, it urges us all the more to let go, and to become truly open and compassionate.