Non-Holding (Aparigraha)

by Nina

"Holding on to one's thoughts is also a form of possessiveness…." —BKS Iyengar

Untitled Drawing by Milton Zolotow, one of hundreds

Ram's recent post on aparigraha (non-hoarding) left a strong impression on me. In it, he mentioned several meanings for aparigraha, including "non-possessiveness, non-holding, non-indulgence, non-acquistiveness." Recently I've been thinking a lot about the "non-holding" aspect of aparigraha.

Non-holding has been on my mind because I've started to feel weighed down with possessions. That's partly because in the last few years, both my parents and Brad's parents died, and we ended up with a lot of their stuff. Some of the things were useful, like the beautiful dining room table we inherited from my parents. We are using that table now and gave our old table to our daughter who started her own household, so a kind of balance has been established. A lot of the other stuff isn't at all "useful" but still has a tremendous emotional power over me. For example, we inherited a couple of boxes of samples of my father's graphic design work, scrapbooks that Brad's mother created during the high school, college and the early years of her marriage, and some of my chic mother's favorite clothes that I'll never wear because they don't fit. It has been surprisingly hard to even consider getting rid of these things, and yet….

This is on my mind today because I just got back from a trip where I visited two longtime friends, each of whom happened to be in the same position, having things, either in her house or in a storage facility, that there was no real use for but to which she had strong emotional attachments. We all agreed that it was material we would need to part with at some point, and yet we all shared that it was surprisingly painful to even consider doing.

About a year ago, I started a practice of getting rid of at least one thing every day. I kept it up for a few months—in the beginning it was easy because every time I opened a cabinet I saw something of my own that I really didn't need—but then it became harder and harder. I would open a box of my parent's stuff, feel overwhelmed with emotion, and then close it up again. And I eventually gave up the daily practice. There's something about fall for me, though, that feels like the time to get back to business. My conversations with those two friends this weekend motivated me even more. So I returned from my summer vacation and decided to resume my getting-rid-of-one-thing-a-day practice. Today I went back and read Ram's post and a bit of the Yoga Sutras. This time I was struck by concept of "non-holding" as being about not holding on to thoughts (as Iyengar wrote) and emotions (as Ram wrote). Of course, with our parents' things that we three women are holding on to, it is not the objects themselves that we are having such a hard time letting go of, but rather the thoughts and emotions that the objects evoke.

I feel that this new understanding of "non-holding" will help make it easier for me to keep up with my letting-go practice this year and start to move from the easy tasks to the harder ones.

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Aparigraha (Non-Hoarding) and Healthy Aging

by Ram

Naushon Tree by Brad Gibson

In the Sadhana Pada of the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali we are introduced to the eight rungs/limbs/steps of yoga whose practice helps us to develop attention as a tool to discriminate between ignorance and awareness and truth from illusion, the means for liberation or enlightenment. One of the eight limbs is aparigraha, which has several meanings, including non-possessiveness, non-holding, non-indulgence, non-acquisitiveness. Verse 2.39 in the Yoga Sutras describes aparigraha as:

aparigraha sthairye janma kathanta sambodhah

When one is steadfast in non-possessiveness or non-grasping with the senses there arises knowledge of the why and wherefore of past and future lives. —trans. by Swami Jnaneshvara

 Aparigraha comes from the word parigraha, which means reaching out for something and claiming it for oneself; the "a" prefix' before parigraha turns it into an antonym. Thus, aparigraha is the concept of non-possessiveness or non-hoarding. Aparigraha means to limit possessions to what is necessary or important and taking what is truly necessary and no more. Nina briefly touched on this topic in one of her earlier postings (see Yama Drama).

Our senses are like portals or gateways into our body, mind and consciousness. We are what we eat, smell, see, hear and touch. Through our senses, we absorb the world around us. If we take in harmonious impressions, we will in turn be healthier. If we absorb disharmonious impressions through our senses, we are inviting with it all kinds of body-mind problems. Through these five senses we get attracted to material possessions and surround ourselves with them. Hoarding is the accumulation of things that may have little or no value. So great is the need to accumulate these things that they then becomes difficult to part with it. Hoarders accumulate and store old newspapers, food cartons, cans, mail, notes, clothes, garbage and other debris. Hoarding begins slowly and builds over time. Hoarders will not give up their possessions as they develop an emotional attachment to their belongings and have a distorted view about the importance/lack of importance of material possessions. People who develop a habit of hoarding identify their possessions as a part of their identities. Losing or disposing of a possession may produce extreme anxiety or a sense of loss and grief. Researchers believe that individuals who are experiencing emotional upheavals in their lives when faced with aging and the possibility of outliving their resources may begin to collect and save as these material possessions provides them a sense of security—sort of a comfort zone.

But hoarding is not just about accumulating material possessions. It is also about hoarding/holding thoughts and emotions that affect our normal mindset and thinking process. Hoarding, be it mental or physical, is associated with an inability to process information and make decisions when confronted with a large amount of information, attention and focus deficits and a failure of categorization. We tend to fill our minds with fear, worry, anxiety, grief, anger, rage, jealousy, and judgments, among others, and we do not let go of these emotions. Over time, these emotions—whether it be bitterness, fear, emotional damage, rejection or abandonment—build up. If you hoard/accumulate unexpressed or suppressed emotions and if they are not getting released, they keep building up in your body. Ultimately these pent-up emotions can trigger mental and/or physical pathological conditions. Thus, hoarding emotions can be devastating to both mind and body.

What is the easiest and effective way to ward off emotional hoarding? A simple method is meditation (dhyana), the cheapest and simplest recourse to a healthy body and mind (see Balancing Your Emotions with Your Breath). While meditation may not cure a person from the act of hoarding, the person having a meditation practice will react to life’s turbulence differently. This reaction and suitable action measures comes from a true awareness; awareness to the emotional turbulence arising from within that has remedial effects. As explained in an earlier post (see Never Go to Bed Angry), the individual will not only have the capacity to transcend the physical and emotional upheaval but will also not evoke the same physical and emotional reactions that are commonly seen in a person who does not meditate.

Just as you take a car for a regular tune up, you also need to detoxify and tune up our body and mind on a periodical basis. Disposing of any unwanted material possessions and detoxifying our mind-riddled emotions on a regular basis is a panacea for healthy aging and living. If you can do it for your car, you might as well think about doing the same for your mind and body.

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