“Thou shall not steal” is the theme. By now, we are getting a hang of the yamas’ theme of “all the things that we consciously disapprove of doing, we may be doing them unconsciously, to some extent – investigate it.” There is no right or wrong, or acceptable levels – all are personal choices and assessments. While contemplating on Karma yoga (tenet 2) also, we recited an interesting story about stealing, including “karmic residues” and other relevant concepts.

So, what constitutes “stealing”? Explicit permission is the main one. Definitions are easy to find, but here are some common characteristics: 1. Permission, 2. Legality of the exchange 3. Competence of the parties involved, 4. Intention to return it to the owner. The first is obvious, the second at the least is about avoiding any criminal activity, the third one is more about not taking “candy from a baby”, and the fourth is about possible replacement, in its original form. When yogis talk about it, it’s more about what is fair than legal, because legality is space-time dependent.

Let’s consider some examples: 1. mining or taking minerals and other valuables from earth – do we have permission from Earth, and any intention of returning it in its original form (in this life)? We can think of several examples that involves the equation of providing equal value for what we are taking.  Forgetting about legalities, analogous to the blurb on first yama, living itself involves some “stealing” also. The first yama is about the use of force, while this yama is about obtaining required permissions. The purpose of this yama-practice is to minimize that permission-less taking.  Taking itself is not issue, as long as it is balanced with contributions back to the society – taking in the spirit of yagna.

Who owns earth’s minerals, air, trees, animals…? Who owns the space we occupy? Tat-Twam-Asi to the rescue. If you (twam) are that (tat), then do we need a permission? One way is to look at the environment (NotMine) as a shared common property. In that case, we do have a right to the space we occupy, and only to that much – we at least have a much stronger case. Just like a planet or a plant occupying its space…

Apparently, arguments similar to this, especially that he owns nothing more than what he’s standing on, were made to Alexander as he entered greater India on his military campaign. The details are sketchy and varied, but some notes on Kalanos (Kalyana), the philosopher that accompanied Alexander, are available and are interesting to read (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalanos).

So, we tacitly assume that we have all sorts of permissions: a contemplation-worthy axiom. Complete elimination of stealing, by definition, is impossible. In that case, the least we can do is to do it in a skillful way – take less than what we contribute back to the society – do it in the “spirit of Yajna” (Tenet 2 of Karma Yoga), to make the karma math work out.

May we all be blessed with a “vibrant” mind _/\_/\_/\_