Further Thoughts on Black and White Thinking: Aparigraha (The Hardest and Most Subtle of the Yamas)

aparigraha [Sanskrit]: non-possessiveness, or explained as non-hoarding, or living without that which is essential

I want to return to the question of black and white thinking to share thoughts I brought to my classes last week, around the basic yama of aparigraha. In the Yoga Sutras, which are a collection of teachings passed down by the sage Patanjali, sometime in the few hundred years either side of the beginning of the CE, he outlines the tenets of yoga, which he calls the eight limbs. The yamas and niyamas are offered as the first two of these eight limbs, as guides for our personal practices (niyamas), and our interactions with others (yamas). There are five yamas, including non-stealing, truthfulness, and non-violence, but one of the yamas that seems most relevant in our current situation is aparigraha, which translates as non-possessiveness, or not taking more than you need. BKS Iyengar offers this exposition of the sutra referring to aparigraha in his classic translation (Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, p.152-153): “When one is steady in living without surplus possessions and without greed, one realizes the true meaning of one’s life….When the [seeker] is free of worldly aspirations, he is a…happy and satisfied person.”

This is certainly relevant to our condition right now. With so many of us on lockdown, or struggling to get to work to serve others and still take care of ourselves and our own loved ones, it is hard to witneses others’ scarcity mindset or plain greed, which leads them to make less-than-optimal choices around hoarding….This pandemic and people’s differing reactions to resources gives us perhaps the plainest example of this yama, at its most basic level.

And yet Mr. Iyengar, in his wisdom, takes us one step further in his explanation and asks us to dive deeper into self-study, (here he links the yamas and niyamas). He encourages us to see that the non-possessiveness to which Patanjali refers is not just for the things in our world, but also our own thoughts (we must apply deep self-examination here to see it). He notes that we can cling to a kind of right and wrong thinking, and that as we cling to our right thoughts, accumulating them in relation to others we consider wrong, we are also exhibiting possessiveness, which is ultimately coming from a misguided perception of separation, that we are different or separate from others.

“Aparigraha means not only non-possession and non-acceptance of gifts, but also freedom from rigidity of thought. Holding on to one’s thoughts is also a form of possessiveness….”

He notes that this yama is the subtlest of all, and hardest to achieve: what he is asking for is nothing less than seeing that we are all one, and that the possessiveness of thought (right and wrong), is one of the main ways we bring ourselves to distance, to “othering” our fellow humans, animals, our planet, etc. 

Working this is a deep personal practice: we might ask, in what way am I focussing my lens on one-ness today, and in what way am I focussing on distance, or separation? For me, I catch myself finding separation the more I focus on people’s differing approach to the virus moving around the globe. Iyengar guides us to this question, coming instead, from a place of love. He tell us we must constantly ask: “What am I meant for?”

And he leaves us with one last word on the subject, which has sat with me so much as I consider my yoga off the mat during this time of crisis. Mr. Iyengar writes: “I should like to emphasize here [p.147], that yama and niyama are not only the foundation of yoga, but the reflection of our success or failure at its higher levels.” He reminds us again and again, it’s not about the postures; we must look beyond them, and do the harder work of yoga all the time.