Who among us feels truly wealthy? Do we shun wealth as a sign of spiritual corruption or do we embrace if as a tool to help others? Money is just another form of energy, but so many of us have very conflicted ideas about it. We are ashamed if we have too little or feel frustrated if we think we don’t have enough. So many men have conflicting beliefs about money. Should they simplify their lives as yoga practitioners? Do they give everything away and become ascetic? It turns out wealth is a tool for spiritual well being. The amount of money we have; however, has very little to do with our true wealth – our sacred wealth.
I will not agree with others who may have told you that money cannot buy you happiness. To some degree, money offers stability in order that one might seek higher spiritual development. No matter how many hours a day you meditate or pray, you still need to fill your stomach. If you get sick, you need to buy medicines to heal yourself, and if you are a householder, you have a responsibility to your family. This is the concept of dharma in yogic science.
Dharma comes from the Sanskrit language. It is formed from ‘dhri’ meaning to support or maintain, to sustain or uphold. Dharma is how we keep up our human form while seeking a spiritual goal. It is the right and responsibility of all human beings. The idea of dharma was talked about extensively in the Rig Veda, one of the oldest surviving Vedic texts. It encompasses spiritual principles, but also social values. Dharma is also in the Bhagavad Gita. Using Krishna as its pupil, it teaches that, of Bhakti, Jnana, and several other types of yoga, Dharma yoga, or upholding your family or society with righteous acts, was the most effective way to reach enlightenment. This is often called the duty of the householder.
The dharma of anything is innate. You might say that the dharma of water is to flow, or the dharma of a forest is to house trees. As a human being, it is our dharma to serve others. Dharma and karma yoga are very closely related. Money, like any other energy, flows most freely when it is not held too tightly. You could even say the dharma of money is to support service. Material wealth alone is not evil. It is our use of it that determines whether it is sustaining and upholding or corruptive and evil. In Sanskrit, the word to describe material wealth is artha. It is considered to be one of the four noble goals (purusharthas) of life, as long as its acquisition follows the Vedic principles of morality. If you earn wealth in a righteous way – without stealing, greed, or making money a false idol, then you have achieved one of your purusharthas.
A good example of living with dharma is Muhammed Yunis. He recently received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work helping to give the working poor stability in the form of microcredit loans established through Grameen Bank. In his recent Nobel Acceptance speech he said, “the world’s income distribution gives a very telling story. Ninety four percent of the world income goes to 40 percent of the population while sixty percent of people live on only 6 per cent of world income. Half of the world population lives on two dollars a day. Over one billion people live on less than a dollar a day. This is no formula for peace.” Yunis has helped to facilitate the lending of money to farmers and textile workers, to a man in India who just needed a bicycle to more easily transport his humble goods instead of walking 20 miles a day from village to village. Billions of dollars have moved through Grameen Bank, and other microcredit banks popped up after his incredible work. Yunis is an example of using wealth to sustain or uphold. He believes that poverty can be a thing of the past, “I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social system that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts that make up that system; the policies that we pursue. Poverty is created because we built our theoretical framework on assumptions which under-estimates human capacity, by designing concepts, which are too narrow (such as concept of business, credit-worthiness, entrepreneurship, employment) or developing institutions, which remain half-done (such as financial institutions, where poor are left out). Poverty is caused by the failure at the conceptual level, rather than any lack of capability on the part of people.”
The Buddha reminded us that, “To live a pure, unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.” He did not advise us to live in squalor so that we might find absolution through suffering. He did not tell us not to peruse our goals and dreams, or even that commerce was bad. He did advise us to share our wealth. As long as one person in the world is still poor are we really rich? We must only protect our egos from believing that “our” wealth is our own. Sri Ramakrishna advised, “If you first fortify yourself with the true knowledge of the Universal Self, and then live in the midst of wealth and worldliness, surely they will in no way affect you.” In this way we will not use wealth as a way to separate ourselves further from the world, but to bring us closer to it.
Democritus told us “Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold, the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.” The truth is, though, that gold can change poverty. It can create employment. It can teach a man to fish or to farm. Sacred wealth is the kind of wealth used to sustain the human form, to give him food and shelter, or more in order that he might sustain a spiritual goal, not only for himself but also for millions of others in the world.
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Nobel Prize