Tuesday, August 21, 2007

aparigraha

Can the ancient concept of 'aparigraha' help an overpopulated developing country like India ?

'aparigraha' (अपरिग्रह) means non-possessiveness. The term usually means to limit possessions to what is necessary or important. The Yogic and Jain traditions have this concept.

A country of 1 billion can never become prosperous by managing to provide a luxury car to every family. We need algorithms totally different from a country like USA to attain prosperity. Karthick ponders on similar lines.

Optimal use of resources is the need of the hour.
But, the first step is to stop imitating the west like a monkey.

Happiness is often wrongly tied to the possession of things.

2 comments:

rajagopalan said...

hmmmm.. How true...

I bought a PC sometime back...
After sometime I felt I was wasting the PC and downloaded games. For playing the games I bought a gaming control. Since my earphones wasn't good enough for game SFX, I bought a creative speakers.
And now I have for which I need better graphics card. This story is endless. One leads to another and you amass so many things that you don't even realise what is happening around.

So many such real life examples... ;-)

Anonymous said...

"Aparigraha" also means not expecting things from others and believing in one's capabilities to earn his/her own livlyhood, and having this faith that nature will provide whatever is necessary (obviously, not being lazy and waiting for nature to take care of everything :-)).

This concept frees the mind from greed and saves it from doing unethical favors or doing unwanted things for someone else because of any obligation.

It is a very powerful concept, if understood correctly.

By not keeping things, it can also be understood that do not accumulating unnecessary things and do not worry about it. Rather focusing the energies on the things and goals which are necessary and beneficially. This will definitely help in making great progress.

I is my understanding of this concept. And, I just felt like sharing it with you.

Any mistakes are genuinely mine and all the good knowledge belongs to the my Master.