ECONOMICS AND MAHAVIRA
By Upadhyaya Gupti Sagar Muni

If anyone believes that he can dispel his heart's darkness by powers outside him or by his wealth, he only deludes himself. If anyone thinks he can reduce his grief, and turn his afflictions into happiness by relying on someone or something outside his inner self, he is sadly mistaken. Wealth etc. lead only to further unhappiness. There is circularity to our desires for possessions; therefore, your deliverance is not through possessions. To want to possess some thing is like an obsession. Exploitation and hoarding are its other names. Violence and possessiveness go hand in hand. Unless you let go of both, you would be churning only sand or water instead of butter.

Grand Gift
An extremely poor Brahmin scholar went to see his king. He tied a few sticks of sugarcane together as a gift for the king. While in the forest he fell asleep. A man who spotted him stole the sugarcane from him and replaced it with dry wood. The scholar, unaware of the switch, carried the dry wood to the king. When he offered his gift to the king he was petrified to see that it was only dry wood. Kalidas, the great poet, was present in the court. He understood that someone had stolen the scholar's original gift. He said to the king. "Sir, you have never received such a great gift. The king asked, "How is that?" Kalidas said,

"Sir, the great Khandav forest was burnt to ashes by Arjuna; Lanka was burnt to ashes by Hanuman, Cupid was burnt by Lord Shiva. But poverty which burns all of us cannot be burnt by anyone. The poor scholar has offered wood to you to burn up his poverty. Only you can do it." The king was really pleased and made the scholar rich.

Poverty is not desirable. To be poor is not good anyone. Neither in the past nor today does anyone advocate poverty. Everyone wants poverty and exploitation to disappear. However, this is hard to achieve. Though no one wants anyone to be poor and servile, yet no solution can be found to this problem. The solution is perhaps not possible. We think of ourselves only. Our desires are like a cyclone. Economists old and new have come to the conclusion that nothing motivates man like the desire for personal gain. Self enhancement or gain moves and inspires man. What fans the fire of personal gain is our endless desire. Temperamentally, man remains dissatisfied with what he has and runs after what he does not have. What he runs after may not even be beneficial, yet man runs towards it. Lord Mahavira says :

1.    Our selfishness is not good for us but we love it.
2.    Medicine and truth are good for us but we do not love them
3.    Dharma and our duties are good for us and we love them also."

If we remember these three points, no one will be hungry in this world; no one will be without clothes to wear; no one will be without shelter or the means to earn a living. Each will have enough to meet his basic needs in life.

But who wants to follow such advice? Who wants to give up unnecessary desire? Who wants to blow the bugle of selflessness? Everyone is held in the crab-claw of desire. There is a lovely saying : 'Swarrnbha Tandulprasthmulan'.

The entire desire of man was for. One pound of rice; it still is for that pound of rice, the rest of our misery would not follow. Today's man has forgotten that id you have sufficient rice you do not need anything else. But economic growth has made man so obsessed that he is dying each day to grow only in wealth.

Obsession for Money : Limit to Foolishness
A true story: There was a poor farmer whose wife encouraged him to go to another village for a better livelihood. The farmer begged the zamindar of this new place to give him a piece of land. The zamindar said, "Come with me to the river. Across the river my land stretches in four directions and you can take as much land as you wish." Early next morning the two left for the river. The zamindar said, "Friend, this is my land. Take as much as you wish. However, there is one condition: walk from morning till sundown and the ground you cover by walking will be yours. By sundown you must quit walking." The farmer accepted this condition happily. He did not want to lose time, so he staked the ground and started walking fast. He walked at a speed of eight kilometers an hour. First he moved from south to east. He walked 24 kilometers. He marked the land by huge stone. Then he started running to north, but his throat was parched. However, his greed was overpowering. He thought 'if I look for water I will waste 15-20 minutes.' So he kept running. By noon he had covered another 24 kilometers. His legs were bucking under him and his mouth was dry. But he got up and said, 'Oh my God, I have only half a day in hand! I can't lose anymore time. The waves of sea don't wait for anybody. It's only a matter of one day. Tomorrow I will wake up rich.' His thoughts titillated him but he had no time even to feel his happy thoughts. He marked the land by a big banyan tree and started running faster than before. His dreams of a wealthy future made him forget his thirst, and his feet too were strong again. Surely wealth is health!

He started moving westward. For three hours he walked. It was almost evening. In a few hours it would be time to stop. He thought. 'I should finish my task before sundown. I still have to walk from west to south. How much have I covered? Why should I calculate, it's all safely mine. Three hours later I will sit down and add everything up. Right now I will just mark it.' He looked around; but he could not find anything to mark the land with. Faraway, however, he saw a flag. He ran toward it. But his body began to fail him. It was like a car running dry. He called the zamindar from far and said, 'Look I am on my way. It's not sundown yet. The sun still shines on my efforts.' Little did he know the meaning of the sun's smile, he did not realize that God himself was saying, "Poor man! Your journey too is about to end!" The farmer resumed his walking. He was breathless when he fell at the zamindar's feet. He said. 'Look how much land I own now!' And as he was saying this his breath stopped. What did he gain by losing his life? Who told him to run for so much land? Did his wife ask him to do it? No! His own desire led to his death. He loved possession, but this love only hurts. Mahavir had said, 'What you love is not necessarily good for you!' So fruit, which is sweet on the outside but bitter inside. The one who does not understand this cannot be a man following aparigraha. We should know, and endeavour to know, that only contentment born of noncovetousness can ultimately remove our poverty and cure the disease of possessiveness.

Lord Mahavira's economics proclauns that contentment alone is wealth - all other wealth is dirt in comparison. Some argue that dharma hinders man's progress. Modern economists say that : ' Dharma inhibits us by forbidding us to do this or eat that. Such teaching obstiucts progress.' Their argument is onesided. The great philosopher saint Samantbhadra  says : 

If you bow to the saintly you earn higher caste; if you make offerings to the ones whose sole wealth is spiritual wealth, you get consumable wealth; if you worship the saintly, you yourself are respected; if you venerate the saintly, you become good-looking; if you praise the saintly, you yourself earn fame.

When you perform acts of dharma you receive all the above boons. Dharma also helps you to gain wealth. Money after all is only a means to good living and not an end in itself. If you use it well, and it takes you in (into) the heights of contentment; you use it wrongly, it pushes you to the pits of discontent. Dharma cannot be misused. There is no room for doing wrong through dharma. Where dharma is misused, it's false dharma. You may cheat, pretend etc. in dharma's name, but that is not dharma. Dharma promotes the seeker's growth just as the sun makes man cruel and selfish. It dries up a man's sensitivity and empathy. He gets obsessed by money. The moneyed man exploits and ruins the lives of thousands of people. The difference between dharma and money is this : the former makes you fearless, the latter fearful. There is peace and joy where there is dharma; there is only conflict and stress where there is money.

I am not suggesting that you stop earning money. Earn surely, but remember your business should not be blind. And it should not be ruthless. Let your business have sight. Not physical sight, but the vision of wisdom. Your earning should not be soaked with another's blood. Exploitation should not be the foundation of your business. If you keep this in mind you are truly religious and truly non-violent. You will help surety reduce the number of people below poverty line, even though poverty may never disappear completely. (the karmic cycle shows its own hand in everything).

Piety : Essential for Collective Welfare
A human being desiring a livelihood increases his efforts and, in the process, becomes ruthless, arrogant, petty, clever, unethical, violent, a liar, thief and hoarder. He uses all possible tactics to beg, borrow and steal. He keeps duplicate accounts, takes bribe, blackmails, murders, abducts and finally drowns in a sea of possessions. Today, wealth has replaced dharma. Money is now God. Each hour is tied to money : 

The fourth line is worth pondering over. People pretend to love you so that they may slit your throat. Wealth has corrupted the wise, the brave, the discerning, the gentle and the strong equally. Just as a jewel loses its lustre when dust coated, similarly wealth dims the human heart and mind.

If you take someone else's money it stays with you for ten years, but by the eleventh year it disappears alongwith the interest

It is like the bait which eventually kills the fish. Dharma is to earned by hard work. This is Lord Mahavira's economics. Just as frogs belong in ditches and fish in ponds, similarly all wealth resides where work is done honestly. Lord Mahavira has warned the economists that money cannot be made by ignoring dharma. The four types of purusharths of human action are as follows : dharma, wealth, passion and deliverance. To labour for wealth without labouring through dharma is unjust; passion without dharma is lust; and deliverance without dharma is but an empty dream. Therefore, to attain the last three follow the first - your dharma.

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Source :-  From 'INNER LIGHT' Authored by Upadhyaya Gupti Sagar Muni translated by Dr. Sunita Jain.
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