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Enlightenment Journal | Summer 2012

making. We can ask: Will this 

choice support my purpose? Will 

it support spiritual awakening, or 

will it take me further from my 

goal? This inquiry helps us live 

intentionally, avoiding the accu-

mulation of things or involvement 

in situations that are not in align-

ment with our purpose.

In support of intentional living, 

Thoreau wrote in Walden: “Our 

life is frittered away by detail… I 

say, let your affairs be as two or 

three, and not a hundred or a 

thousand; instead of a million 

count half a dozen, and keep your 

accounts on your thumb nail. 

Simplify, simplify. Instead of three 

meals a day, if it be necessary eat 

but one; instead of a hundred 

dishes, five; and reduce other 

things in proportion.”

It takes insight and vigilance 

to not accumulate more than we 

need. It is easy to collect things, 

more difficult to keep our lives 

clear of superfluous possessions. 

The practice of aparigraha, or 

nonacquiring, can help. Apari-

graha means renunciation of 

nonessentials. This doesn’t mean 

we can’t have things we enjoy, 

it means we acquire only what 

we actually use—whether that use is 

simply appreciation of the beauty of 

something or its utilitarian nature. 

A lesson in aparigraha came to me 

through travel. Almost every special 

destination whether it is a sacred 

place, a natural wonder, or historical 

site, has a souvenir shop attached to 

it. I’ve carried a few things back home 

and noticed that the luster is lost over 

time. It becomes something else to 

dust or find a place to store. I started 

asking myself why it was so tempting 

to buy something in those shops. What 

I discovered was a desire to hold onto 

the experience. While things may jog 

our memory of something, it is not 

possible to hold onto experiences. 

Things cannot do that for us. 

A discernment process can be 

applied to everything we have or 

intend to acquire. What is it that we 

expect it to provide for us? Can it do 

that? Even Thoreau found himself 

confronting this desire to acquire, 

when he brought some lovely pieces 

of limestone into his cabin. He said, 

"I had three pieces of limestone on 

my desk, but I was terrified to find 

that they required to be dusted daily, 

when the furniture of my mind was all 

undusted still, and threw them out the 

window in disgust." 

“It takes insight and vigilance to not accumulate  

more than we need. ”