Gandhi on “Hoarding”

Gandhi at Mangalprabhat PP 18-20, talks about hoarding – he calls it the other way “Aparigruh” – it is an act of not hoarding something.

Hoarding here is stocking something that you do not need for the time being. It is like gathering unnecessary things. According to Gandhi – “if you stock things that are unnecessary – it is just a theft. God does not stock things. God creates all that He needs and as He needs everyday. If we trust God then He furnishes us with necessities of our daily life. Perhaps saints or incarnations experience this. The natural law of creating things that you need at a time you need is unknown to man and if known he does not wish to follow it. Due to this habit of hoarding things, we invite unhappiness and pain. Rich hoard things that get spoilt and lost without being used and many who need simply suffer without some basic necessity. If people take things that they need and do not run after things that they do not basically need, there will be no pain. Today both rich and poor are suffering. Millionaires want to be billionaires and billionaires are in higher competition. The poor who get enough to eat are not happy because they want more of other amenities. No one should be without food and it is a duty of people to make sure that no one sleeps hungry. The rich should come forward. The rich should give up enough so that poor get enough for their basic needs and later both have to learn about complacence.”

Gandhi further says – “In context of soul – the body is redundant – thoughts in this context can lead us to sacrifice of supreme nature. The body should be used for service and to such an extent that service becomes true food for the body. The body should wake up, sleep, eat, sit and do every act for the sake of service. Happiness out of such a state is true happiness”.

Gandhi in a Gujarati book called “Gandhi Ni Vichar Shrushti” at p.52 says “Nature produces sufficient for all of us and if each of us just take what we need and no more, there will be no poverty in this world. There will be no starvation. The existence of inequalities implies existence of theft. I am not a socialist. I am not asking the rich to donate away their properties. But I can say those who want to move to light from darkness should stop theft. I do not ask you to leave your possessions. If I do so, I am leaving the path of “Ahimsa – Non violence”. If somebody has more than I do, be it so. But to reorder my life, I can say I do not keep things I do not need. Do you know that in India there are thirty million people who eat only once every day? They eat flat bread of millet and a pinch of salt. Until these three million people have sufficient clothes and food we have no right to hoard things. We should try to make changes in our basic necessity. If necessary, we may voluntarily starve so that we can maintain those people, so that we can give food and clothes to them”.

MY INTERPRETATION ON GANDHI THOUGHTS:

I think Gandhi’s thoughts are mind boggling. Sometimes they are too difficult to digest but they are great in intuition, great in ideas, great in life and great to experience. They are intoxicating in spiritual aspects – once you get used to it – you would never want to leave it.

Look at the big houses some of us live in; those splendid cars and the air travels are hard to leave, staying in hotels and eating good food is a joy of life. Partying late night and boozing makes our lives complete. Now by contrast – the teachings of Gandhi sound redundant. They seem obsolete. What about our aims, our ambitions of high pay, high perks and for those yet to get married boys – beautiful women and cushy life. For those girls in their teens: what about those entertainments of life that they dream or enjoy every day?

You know what – says our mind – Gandhi lived in a different age and what he talks is just not applicable. Many of us live in surroundings where poverty is intriguing term. We do not know about hardships and even if such hardships do exists – why should we care? These are some of basic questions that rise to our mind and for many they have not time to think about all these – care a hang!

Okay – what gets picturised in our mind is a sort of soundless black and white film of eary 20th century in contrast to those high resolution movies we see now. Obviously – the former is lackluster.

To my understanding, people like Gandhi are incarnations. You can read Bible or Bhagwat Gita or any such holy book and all that sounds unappealing when you have fullness and happiness of life. These appear to some extent boring. Disease in eyes cause no change in the surroundings that eye looks at – same way distortions in our thoughts do not change basic eternal facts of life that become valuable during times of crisis all of us at some point of life have to pass – be such crisis of nature that are different. Crises does not only mean financial crisis but could extent to mental, emotional and spiritual crisis.

If thoughts of Gandhi must be enjoyed, they have to be interpreted correctly.
It is true that Gandhi lived in a time when there were high problems of food and people were starving. But as human race, we do not have much to brag because starvation is still a basic problem in many nations and many places in nations that seem developing or the third world countries.

We may write off starvation for the moment in personal lives because that problem does not immediately or in near future affect us. In such a situation obvious question that may come to our heart is how is Gandhi and all his thoughts on “Hoarding” or not-to-hoard philosophy useful to us?

There is saying “Wise man points at the star and fool looks at the finger”. Misinterpreting or interpreting sayings or teachings of wise men like Gandhi (people like me may like to call him incarnation) or other men like Christ – Buddha – Krishna – Ram or call by any name you like are similar & contain secrets of happiness, bliss and spirituality. But we must learn to interpret them.

Now take the teachings of Gandhi on hoarding. Can we extent the concept of hoarding to non-physical parlance. Hoarding thoughts that are not necessary –hoarding ideas that are unnecessary – hoarding plans that are useless?

Say for example somebody tells you things that are unkind – you hoard those words in your life and those words simply resonate in your mind hundreds of times. The words were not big. The unkindness was not too severe to kill you. But you allowed the words to resonate. You hoarded them. Instead of dumping anything bad you or I simply stock them perfectly preserved for years and years. Even after years of our lives we are sometimes full of complaints. Why?

We feel our lives are a misery because we do not wish to see lives of more miserable people. What is misery? Is it a state of things around you or a state of your own mind. You are a scientist and placed on a high position earning lot of money to support your family or you are a lawyer or a public accountant or an engineer or whatever. Your profession and vocation is giving you enough. You have enough to buy a house, buy a car, buy a school seat for your child or a college admission or enough of ornaments. Now you see your neighbor driving a better car than you do and you see another colleague in your college whose child is faring better then yours and you see a woman more sensual then your wife. There comes misery. These are derived misery. Those misery that did not exist but you created them out of your extraordinary capacity to nurture dissatisfaction. “You” here does not just mean “you” but I include myself in this “you”.

So what happens – we start comparisons and we call these comparisons healthy because we feel our excellence is promoted by such social or financial comparisons. What a logic? Gosh. You know you can call such ideas “bad ideas” because they are unnatural. God does not create excellence because He has to compare. He creates excellence because that is His nature. But we are hoarding. We want to show off. We want to impress people. We want two houses if our competitor has one and three if our neighbor has two. Our necessities keep expanding upon the necessities of our neighbors and theirs expand seeing ours.

We start expansion and hoarding in our expectations out of other people. We hoard expectations. We create expectations that are unnatural. We encroach upon liberty of others and we call them our “rights”. We carry expectations and when they break we blame. We find people whom we can accuse of breaking the expectations. Then there is a lunatic whom you or I can see. There are others of us who look okay but are not okay basically. May be we can bracket ourselves in those “others” – we are normal at times and not-normal at other times. But the problem is very fundamental. These are some pigeon holes. They exist eternally with our evolution until we will find ways to subside and destroy them permanently and merge with unity. But that is all about spiritual journey. We are too far and so we do not want to discuss all that right now. Let us get back to our world. This world where we live in. The world which Gandhi talks about amongst other things.

So we talk about hoarding right now. What is this? Is it just physical and if applied we may extend this concept to meta-physical states that we just discussed. But where to start? We are like a novice finding way in an unknown town. We have to ask – keep asking until we reach our destination of choice. Gandhi from a plain interpretation talks about hoarding physical things like wealth, food and consumables. So he is asking us to give up our habit of hoarding these physical things. He is asking us to use as much as we need and leave rest for others who may need it.

The physical aspect that Gandhi talks about must not be mistaken to be constricted only to physical realm of things. But that point could be first point to start. It could be a point where we can begin the journey. Since the mental and spiritual levels of human life are on different stage we can say that physical state is most palpable. It is something we can feel and experience more immediately. Therefore first the lust has to be ridden over. There is a human life and an animal life. The difference is in existence.

The human life is existing in mental and the spiritual state and perhaps has potential to coexist together (whether or not it may really coexist). Therefore when we talk of human life it could mean three parallel stages coexisting. But since we are so clouded by lust, greed, fear, envy and so many of disorders that we have created or contracted ourselves, we must first start with the physical stage – that stage being most natural to us. It is this stage where we learn to train the mind. It is like the “Upvas” – sort of fasts that some religions like Hindu or Muslim or Jain preach. The importance is not on fasting but it is a control. It is a method by which we learn to balance. The physical aspect is therefore important particularly for the beginners. So it is a habit of restraint that we must cultivate. Restraint may not be misinterpreted as denial of self pleasures, denial of sex, denial of good food. But there is a balance. The moment we catch that term “balance” we understand that there is no denial. Denial itself may hide deep desire and a fear of desire overcoming self. Therefore we can say we are not talking about denial when we talk about balance. Balance is not falling either way. It is not a strict denial and not a complete seduction. So once we learn to balance, we can have a pudding and there is nothing wrong with that. But there is no lust for pudding. We may want to drive in a great car, but that car does not become a source of happiness. It could only be a minor instrument of use.

The concept of teaching children to share is important. It encompasses the concept of not hoarding. But teaching children is easy and perhaps gratifying. But teaching self is difficult. We are always in a state of battle with self that we lose. This is because we often deny our weaknesses. Why should we admit where we were going wrong? Can I go wrong? Never. Yes – that is perhaps a starting point – me and not you. So here we can just learn to control our desires, our lust, our greed and our expectations. Once we do that in physical terms, and once we are more acquainted with the physical part – we then delve up to mental standard. Then there will be little reason to complain. We will start attaching less importance to gifts and more importance to people. Then the financial value of things will not be so important.
So what do we want to say – do we say money is not important – certainly no. Gandhi was a great lawyer and a great manager managing various institutions. But he did that with a feeling of detachment. The moment you are I are detached in real sense, we are away from all emotional stress that is attached with failure or success of things.

The concept of hoarding and the philosophy of not-to-hoard therefore to my mind is very appealing.