Does Picking Things Up Count as Stealing?

If you lose property on the road and are no longer attached to it, having already given up ownership of it, then if someone picks it up and takes it as their own, this does not constitute theft. However, if you are very concerned about and attached to the property, and your manas is unwilling to relinquish ownership, continually searching for it, then if someone picks it up and does not return it to the owner, this constitutes theft. When one person is happy, it is precisely when another is unhappy; therefore bodhisattvas do not wish to pick things up on the road, do not wish for anyone to lose things, and do not wish for sentient beings to give rise to afflictions—just as a doctor who practices medicine to cure illness does not wish for more and more patients, nor for more and more medicine to be sold. But if one truly encounters something that someone else has lost, one must still pick it up, and after picking it up, find a way to return it to its owner, so that the owner need not be anxious and distressed. This too is charity and compassion.

If it is something that someone else has already discarded, thrown into a garbage heap, anyone may freely pick it up and use it; this does not constitute theft. Because the owner's manas has already relinquished the object, the item is ownerless and may be freely taken and used. In the Buddha's time, monastics would pick up discarded ragged clothes and shrouds from piles of the dead, wash them clean upon returning, and after mending them, wear them as monastic robes. Those monastics were all empty of self in mind, viewing material form as empty as well, and did not disdain the worn-out clothing they picked up.

If someone gives something away and then regrets it, forcibly demanding it back on the grounds that it is still their own property, this constitutes theft. Because once something has been given away, its ownership has already changed hands—you are no longer the owner of that object. If you forcibly demand it back, it constitutes robbery and theft.