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much importance to acquiring worldly things -a house, a car, all kinds of comfort, and not to value them so much that their loss would mean the end of the world for us. Every man needs things to make life comfortable. Jainism does not enjoin a layman to renounce everything—that is only for the Sadhu, the ascetic. But Jainism does enjoin that even a layman should set a certain limit to his desires—his wants-so that he does not keep on acquiring and accumulating and in the process denying others of their needs.
The ideal is to cut his 'requirements to the bare minimum. . .
This nonacquisition or nonpossession should extend even to attachments to human beings-to our dear ones. It would be unnatural for a parent not to love the child, but there should be no possessiveness about this love. It is this possessiveness that is called attachment, and one should try not to be bound by it.
How. strange is the mind of man! It does not appreciate what it has and hankers after what it has not. Neglecting the light of the soul that burns within it, how long will it grope in the darkness of the world without chasing shadows that ever elude him?
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