Going deeper in your yoga practice - Aparigraha

To offer more yogic knowledge, in conjunction with Lisa at Yoga Loft Carrickfergus, we have asked our teachers to write short articles about the yamas and niyamas. 
They are the first two limbs of the eightfold path of yoga described by Patanjali in the yoga sutras. These are fundamental concepts offering ethical and moral guidelines to yogis.

Orla focuses on aparigraha, the fifth yama, non-grasping. 

Aparigraha, by Orla Wallace

Sūtra 2:39 aparigrahasthairye janmakathantāsambodhaḥ 

"When refrainment from covetousness becomes firmly established, knowledge of the whys and wherefores of births manifests" 
 

Aparigraha is usually translated as non-greed or non possessiveness. Graha translates as ‘to grasp’. I like the translation of non grasping. 
When I hear the word grasp I imagine a hand, a hand that reaches, takes hold, and grips tightly, perhaps a fist.

“What does that hand desire that he grips it so tight?” Joni Mitchell

To explore aparigraha more fully we need to look at our relationship to desire and our relationship to lack. Desire is essential to our survival as human beings. We need desire to fulfil our basic needs. Let's look at the desire to eat. A child experiences eating a banana for the first time: she sees the colour, the smell, the sounds of peeling the banana, the texture and the flavours. Then, the child learns the word for the entire range of this sensory experience. ‘Banana’ the experience has been framed as a concept or an object. A name has been given to form: nama rupa. The child then associates the whole sensory experience with that one word.  Of course if the experience was pleasurable she will seek to repeat it.

So we need our mind to reach towards pleasurable experiences in order to be fulfilled in life, but where does enough tip over into a place of creating harm himsa?

When does enough not satisfy us?  According to yoga and Buddhism dukkha, meaning bad space, is a feeling of lack we have inside us. If we continue to feel an empty space our minds will seek to fill it.  Dukkha was also the Sanskrit word used for an open wound. When we are feeling bad we may reach for something to fill the space, to soothe our wounds. This could be our phone, a person, a point of view, porn, coffee, fancy wine or our tenth pair of new shoes, or maybe you want to be the world's first trillionaire. We all have something that we reach for, but if we don’t fully experience it through our senses, then we objectify it, and we will continue to reach for another and then another and we get trapped in a cycle of stockpiling and we can’t let go. The bigger the wound inside us the greater the craving. Do you see where this can lead us?

So how do we practice non-grasping?

> By connecting to your sensory experience in the moment. Listen, look, smell, taste. feel. Stay with the sensation to develop and expand your sensate experience. When we fill our senses we feel more fulfilled.

> Though gratitude and appreciation. Make a list of what you have, the people you have in your life count your blessings and they will multiply the feeling of having enough. You are filling the empty space with good space sukha.

> Grieve moments that you can never repeat so you can be open to receiving this moment.  

> Follow your breath. On our inhale we receive the breath fully and on the exhale we let it go entirely.

> Finally, in a capitalist consumerist system that profits from our desire and our sense of lack, can you see how practising non-greed is a radical practice? On an individual level and on a collective level? Practicing aparigraha is taking the power back.
 

Thank you Orla for your thoughts on this yama.
We will endeavour to share more about these topics here regularly to build a mini accessible yogic knowledge online library :)

You can find Orla's profile here if you want to keep on exploring our website.