Is Picking Up Things Considered Theft?

If one loses property on the road but holds no attachment to it, having relinquished ownership, then if someone finds and keeps it for themselves, it does not constitute stealing. However, if one cares deeply about the property, with the manas unwilling to abandon ownership and continuously searching for it, and if someone finds it yet refuses to return it to the owner, then it constitutes stealing. When one person's joy coincides with another's sorrow, a bodhisattva does not wish to find lost items on the road, nor does he wish for anyone to lose belongings, nor for sentient beings to suffer afflictions—just as a physician treats illnesses without hoping for more patients or wishing for medicine to sell in greater quantities. Nevertheless, if one genuinely encounters others' lost belongings, they should be picked up. After retrieving them, efforts must be made to return them to the owner, sparing them distress and anxiety. This too is an act of charity and compassion.

If an item has been discarded by its owner into a garbage heap, signifying abandonment, anyone may freely retrieve and use it without it being considered theft. This is because the owner’s manas has already relinquished the item, rendering it ownerless and available for anyone to take and use. During the Buddha’s time, monastics would collect discarded, tattered clothing and burial shrouds from charnel grounds. After washing, mending, and patching them, they wore these as monastic robes. Those monastics embodied emptiness and selflessness, perceiving material form as empty, thus feeling no aversion toward the worn, reclaimed garments.

If someone gives an item to another but later regrets it and forcibly retrieves it back on the grounds that it still belongs to them, this constitutes stealing. Once an item is given away, ownership transfers; the giver is no longer its owner. Forcibly reclaiming it amounts to robbery and stealing.