By Ritambhara
The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali is the root text of the Yoga darśana, one of the six orthodox schools of Indian philosophy. Its oldest surviving commentary is the bhāṣya attributed to Vyasa. In the second chapter Patanjali names five restraints, the yamas, and places aparigraha, non-possession, last among them. The Yoga Sutra on aparigraha makes the refusal to accumulate a vow that applies everywhere and at all times.
ahiṃsāsatyāsteyabrahmacaryāparigrahā yamāḥ
jātideśakālasamayānavacchinnāḥ sārvabhaumā mahāvratam
“Non-injury, truthfulness, non-stealing, continence and non-possession are the restraints. Unlimited by birth, place, time or circumstance, they are universal and form the great vow.” (Yoga Sutra 2.30–2.31)
What the sutras claim
The word yama comes from the root yam, to restrain. Parigraha joins pari, around, with grah, to seize, and names the act of grasping things on every side. Aparigraha is its negation. Vyasa defines it in a single compound: viṣayāṇām arjana-rakṣaṇa-kṣaya-saṅga-hiṃsā-doṣa-darśanād asvīkaraṇam aparigrahaḥ. Non-possession is the non-acceptance of objects, from seeing the faults in acquiring them, guarding them, their decay, attachment to them and the injury they bring. The definition rests on observation. The practitioner declines a thing after counting what it costs to get, keep and lose.
Injury as the root of the restraints
Vyasa opens his comment on 2.30 with ahiṃsā. The restraints and observances that follow have their origin in non-injury, he says, and they exist to achieve it. Aparigraha therefore names harm twice, once in its own definition and once through its place in the list. Sutra 2.31 then removes every exemption. A restraint bounded by class, place, time or occasion stays an ordinary rule. Freed of those bounds, it becomes the mahāvrata, the great vow, binding on all ground alike.
The sutras and the measure of extraction
The International Resource Panel of the UN Environment Programme reported in its Global Resources Outlook 2024 that world material extraction rose from 30 billion tonnes in 1970 to 106 billion tonnes in 2020. The same report found that high-income countries use six times the materials of low-income countries and generate ten times the climate impact. Each stage in Vyasa’s list appears in that record, from the mine and the quarry to the store, the landfill and the warming air. Possession on this scale is the parigraha the sutra names.
The text requires the practitioner to refuse goods whose acquisition, upkeep and loss cause injury. Under 2.31 the vow admits no exemption for wealth, country or era, and it binds most heavily where use and harm are greatest.
