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Aparigraha-Non-acquisition.
Has it not been said, “It is easy to free oneself from iron chains but not from the attachments of the heart ?"
What are, these "attachments of the heart ?” They are things that you desire so much that you spend all your energy in acquiring them and when you have acquired them, you get so attached to them that their loss would render your life most unhappy. The principle of non-acquisition teaches us not to give too 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 even a layman to set a certain limit to his desires and wants so that he does not keep on acquiring and accumulating and in the process deny others their needs.
The ideal is to cut his requirements to the bare minimum.
This non-acquisition or non-possession 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 which 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
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