Aparigraha - A philosophical Viewpoint

Which of your possessions matter to you the most? Is it the gift you received from someone special or the one bought from your first salary?

I want you to think of that while reading further. Jainism or known traditionally as Jain Dharma, Shraman Dharma or the religion of Nirgantha by ancient texts, dates back to Later Vedic period (1000 BC-600 BC). After attaining Enlightenment, Mahavira (540 BC-467 BC) laid down the foundation of very religion, Jainism. The teachings of Mahavira revolve around the basic five principles that became the core of Jainism:

1 . Ahimsa: Non-violence

2. Asteya: Non-stealing

3. Brahmacharya: Celibacy

4. Anekantvada: Multiplicity of view points

5. Aparigraha: Non-possessiveness

Aparigraha or the idea of non-possessiveness is one the five principles of Jainism and holds immense meaning in itself. How many of us actually understand the idea behind the Aparigraha? Sub-consciously we do think about “not possessing” things that we have but still we do. Aparigraha means giving up your worldly possessions like wealth and property without attaching thoughts of what you have given up. The thoughts can comprise of sadness or happiness. By giving up I mean, one should not attach himself to the very thought of owning something. This does not only apply to materialistic things but also to the baggage that we carry within ourselves from the past. One should learn to detach himself/herself from the possessions of property, people and feelings. The point is, what we have today can be someone else’s tomorrow be it a house, money, family or someone you love the most.

We have to give up the attributes of life that do not help us become what we are or what we should be, still we keep them within our soul, mind, heart and body and stop ourselves from attaining moksha (is the liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth and all of the suffering and limitation of worldly existence). According to our Tirthankars (a human being that attains enlightenment), moksha is attained when we attain Samyak Darshan, or true perception. It’s then we remain in the nature of soul without raag (attachment) and dwesh (repulsion) and have finally reached a state of knowledge, bliss and enlightenment. We confuse ourselves with ourselves and with what people want to see us as. There was a reason behind every principle formulated by jain Tirthankars, to help us liberate our soul from the negative effects of unenlightened thoughts, speech and action. Attachment leads us to different karmas and we keep moving between birth, suffering and death. There are two sides of a coin; pleasure and suffering, happiness and sadness, love and hate, wealth and poverty. This is just a perception and one does not exist without the other. Once we have trained ourselves to think beyond these perceptions, we have attained what is called moksha. We have freed our soul from the dirt of this world.

With time, we tend to mold the principles according to our needs and we all know we have done that to an extent that our self consciousness also justifies the change. But isn’t change the only constant thing in this world? Then why not change ourselves by changing our habits and our thinking and spreading the word of Jainism across the world in its purest form. We do not need to give up everything in order to do this. As it is we have molded the principles to our requirements. The adapting of non-possessiveness comes only with a simple understanding that nothing in life is consistent or immortal. Everything today is going to change tomorrow, may it be things, status, money, relations or situations- good or bad. It is just waste of time and energy to get possessed with worldly things and people and then get grief-stricken on losing them. But this state of mind is much easier told than experienced. It takes a lot of thinking and understanding to achieve a state of Non-possessiveness towards something. Life should be taken as a Journey and Not a Destination. There will be indefinite stations in the way and each station/ phase has something new and different to show. Your best bet would be Get the Best out of every phase and dump the rest.