Non-possession (Sanskrit: अपरिग्रह, aparigraha) is a religious tenet followed in Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain traditions in South Asia.
The precept of aparigraha is a self-restraint (temperance) from the type of greed and avarice where one's own material gain or happiness comes by hurting, killing, or destroying other human beings, life forms, or nature.
[2] Aparigraha is related to and in part a motivator of dāna (proper charity), both from giver's and receiver's perspective.
This particular iteration of aparigraha is distinct because it is a component of Gandhi's active non-violent resistance to social problems permeating India.
Parigraha means 'to amass', 'to crave', 'to seek', 'to seize', and 'to receive or accept' material possessions or gifts from others.
[4] That aparigraha is a means to liberate the soul from the cycle of birth and death was first asserted by the first tirthankara in Jainism, Rishabhdeva.
[5] Monier-Williams states that the word parigraha has roots in the Vedic texts as well, referring to fencing an altar, enclosing something, assuming or putting on a dress or receiving something.
[6] In the Brahmanas and later texts, the term contextually means accepting or taking a gift; acquiring, possessing, claiming, controlling something such a property; assistance; or constraining force on others.
[10] Aparigraha includes the psychological state of "letting go and the releasing of control, transgressions, fears" and living a content life unfettered by anxieties.
[4] In Jainism, worldly wealth accumulation is considered a potential source of greed, jealousy, selfishness, and desires.
[12][13] Giving up emotional attachments, sensual pleasures, and material possession is a means of liberation in Jain philosophy.
[12] Similarly, all consumption is more appropriate if it is essential to one's survival, and inappropriate if it is a form of hoarding, showing off, or for ego.
According to Jain texts, both internal and external possessions are proved to be hiṃsā (injury[clarification needed]).
[19] Traditional In the Yoga Sūtras (II.30), aparigraha is listed as the fifth of the yamas or code of self-restraint, after ahimsa (nonviolence), satya (non-falsehoods, truthfulness), asteya (not stealing), and brahmacharya (chastity in one's feelings and actions).
While Yoga Sutras distill the ten yamas and niyamas, these virtues appear, in various discussions, in Vedic texts.
[23] James Wood states that aparigraha is the virtue of abstaining from appropriating objects because one understands the disadvantages in "acquiring them, keeping them, losing them, being attached to them, or in harming them".
[25] In the outer world, aparigraha manifests as non-possessiveness with simple living; while in psychological terms, it is a state of non-attachment, non-craving, and contentment.
Ownership takes into account the entitlement to priority of access, which is based on agreements and other social protocols.
The concept of ownership could have been invented, in part, to resolve this dilemma, by instating a system of social protocols.
Using social protocols, ownership establishes one or a group of entities' permanent priority of access to something.
In application, ownership is often asserted when it is challenged by possession (de facto claim to access exclusive of the owner.)
Sense of entitlement has to do with emotional attachment beyond practical benefit and usefulness to an entity's perceivable physical survival.
The myriad of ways a sense of entitlement can arise include legal claim, length of time spent with the object, birthright, labour exerted, labour not exerted, comparative social standing, inheritance, perspective, lack of perspective, etc.
Absence of conventions and protocol undermine the ability for humans to understand each other at the conscious level, without which, civilization is not possible.
Boundaries between individual entities is an essential component of any grouping, including civilization; they exist in empirical reality and by definition.
While some systems of thought would contest this even on a limited level, and there are counterexamples, especially when dealing with ideas, in general, it is accepted that boundaries exist at least in some areas of consensus reality.
Taking into account both the logical provisions and also that non-possession is a social philosophy specifically applicable to sentient beings (e.g. people), the act of breaching another entity's sense of entitlement constitutes theft.
Exploring the cause of that joy, I found that if I kept anything as my own, I had to defend it against the whole world.... And I said to myself: if [other people] want it and would take it, they do so not from any malicious motive but... because theirs was a greater need than mine.
Aparigraha suggests the reduction of waste and adds a spiritual dimension to preventing destructive consumption of ecosystems and nature.
[30] It is the virtue of non-stealing and not wanting to appropriate, or take by force or deceit or exploitation, by deeds or words or thoughts, what is owned by and belongs to someone else.