Mahatma Gandhi Community Forum
APRIGRAHA ------- 2
A friend has written to me that Aprigraha is a very ancient concept and may not be possible to practice it in today's world. I think it can be practiced. It is more relevant today than at any time in the past. Gandhi gave it a new meaning. He called it a life of voluntary poverty. In today's world poverty is consider as a curse. Of course poverty is a curse. But voluntary poverty has a altogether new concept. It does not mean at all to live in misery. Voluntary poverty means, consume whatever you need but with a spirit of renunciation. Donot run after accummulations blindly.
Biggest crisis in the world today is, for example, is the crises of Energy. We have been destroying our ecology and environment at the cost of our future generations, for the sake of Energy whatever it may cost. We are not thinking at all about our future generations. We are mad for more and more for the moment. This mad craze is making us all mad. We think of our own securiy only. Everybody is thinking of him or herself. This irrational way of thinking will be suicidal for one and all. We have to think about it seriously in a possitive way.I mean Think Positively, Act locally and Live Globally There is no other go. The trends of increasing social and personal violence in our daily life is directly linked to this phenomenon.
Therefore, it is important at this critical juncture to reconsiider and reevaluate the new meanings of Aprigraha in the context of Voluntary Poverty. The simple meaning of this concept is to look to the person behind you instead the person ahead of you economically and socially weak, Help him or her to come on equal footing with you. It is a simple task. There is no big philosophy.
Comment
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Comment by Christopher Wroth on February 20, 2010 at 9:51am - Namaste ~ Yes, there is such a spinning wheel. Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=69236§ionid=351020402
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Comment by Christopher Wroth on February 20, 2010 at 6:44am
- Namaste Arya ~ Regarding energy, all should learn about the benefit of feeding clean energy into an interconnected international grid. This was first proposed decades ago by the tech prophet Bucky Fuller. Because electricity is transported at roughly 186,000 miles per second, an interconnected global "smart grid" would require far fewer powerplants and offer far greater efficient energy use as electricity production anywhere becomes instantly available where most needed in the world. While we wait for politicians to cooperate to achieve such a grid, we can still access 12v solar and wind systems for household use in many parts of the world. I never heard of such, but perhaps someone has invented a spinning wheel that produces electricity as it spins? Link: http://www.geni.org
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Comment by Riccardo Gramegna on February 20, 2010 at 3:34am -
Aprigraha...Voluntary Poverty... Simple Living... twelve years ago i found in Seattle this magazine, printed on recicled paper, no color pictures, by the 'simple living movement'...
i went through the articles and i told myself "here they come... this is the avantguard of the american culture... sooner or later the mass will get there... I have been monitoring the american life for many years and i have even tried to understand their economy, jobs, social services, schools, mentality, win/loose competition, profit eccetera, and now that Obama is in charge for change, the economy is down, jobless % rise, poverty is the issue. Fear and worries create expanding market for legal and illegal drugs, but the advanced americans turn green, buy organic, and choose to simplify their life, downsize their excesses.
It is not jet official, but, like it or not, americans are eager to know about aprigraha because if they do not have the know how. Gandhi and Vinoba have now better chance to be understood by the western world!
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