If people knew this they would look at life from a different point of view. They would understand the meaning of the moral that we cannot retain anything that does not really belong to us. And we come to realize after the study of this philosophy that even our body does not belong to us. It is a borrowed property and it must be returned one day. Therefore the wise disown it before they are obliged to give it up. All the spiritual exercises given by teachers are practiced for this purpose: that we may begin to disown our body from today, that we may not have the pain of having lost something we thought to be most precious.