Aparigraha the Humane Solution

Author(s): Kamla Jain
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith

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CONSUMERISM-ANTI-HUMAN GOAL
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stage when one achieves one's mission. Thus simplicity begins with (1) riddance from totally irrelevant, and continues to (2) riddance from less relevant, to (3) focus on necessities associated with mental peace. This is the state of happiness with oneself and riddance from the business of material over-abundance, and removal of the obscuring paraphernalia. It is thus, the discovery of one's true self.
Practical solution in icchā-parimāņa
The main problems taken up in this essay have their permanent cure in one significant principle of Indian ethics which needs intellectual awareness, practical revival, and social implementation, that is the principle of iccha-parimāna (limitation of one's desires) and aparigraha (non-possession). Indian classical tradition has offered a very systematic social system of economic growth and distribution. This system does not impose 'equality' from the outside as in communism but it brings about orderliness and acceptable equality from within, with a human consideration for others and for oneself. As āsana and prānāyāma are the best medicines for physical fitness of the body, icchā-parimāna is the best medicine for social fitness of the individual. The solution is that science, technology and economics have to orient themselves with ethics, without this nothing is possible. We cannot afford to have science, technology and economics sans mankind.