Editorial

Saving your Wealth for the Future

Saving your wealth for the future is a natural tendency of all human beings. Not just humans, even animals and insects etc are seen to save for the future. Since a long time, keeping much of your earnings in banks has become a natural trend. Earn, spend less, save more for the future. There are intelligent people who don’t just rely on banks but have other forms of saving their wealth, like investments, etc. In the end, it all means saving for the future and to increase it’s worth somehow.

So far so good. Suppose you have to leave the world. All that you have saved without spending will go to your progeny, or to somebody else. Your hard work ended with your leaving your body. If you have hidden money somewhere underground, you can’t even disclose it to your family. You are gone. You earned, you saved every penny, and you go away for some others to enjoy all that you earned without effort! How is it?

There is therefore the idea of giving. You must give. As you save, so should you give also. Giving to the deserving is important. Why should you give? Two reasons. The first reason, your life does not end with your leaving your body. This is a question beyond religions and philosophies. It is an eternal fact of nature. “My religion does not think so, my religion does not accept rebirth,” is all fine. But even if your religion vehemently denies the existence of the brain inside you, it is there. These things are not questions of religion. So you shall be reborn. Where, how, when, why is all decided by whom? By you! You decide where you shall be born, how, when, and why. How do you decide that? By preparing now. This leads to the second reason. The second reason for your need to give is, you prepare for the future. You are saving for your own future. Strange, but true.

When you give physical wealth to someone in charity, when you offer to God, when you help the needy, you are just adding to your apurva, the sanskrit for internal bank account. When you are selfless in this way, you are increasing your spiritual bank balance. This prepares you to a better new birth in a possibly rich family, where you inherit wealth like your children do now.

So there are two bank accounts for you. One of the physical earth. The other of the spiritual world. It is the karmic bank. As you sow, so you reap. If you curse charity, if you hate giving and die a miser, neither did you use the money you saved, not are you rich enough to lead a good life in the next birth. Maybe a beggar before a church? Maybe a porter in a train station? You have to earn your own life through unselfishness now. Blaming God or others will not do.

This leads to the important statement of Swami Vivekananda: Unselfishness is more paying, only people have not the patience to practice it. It is more paying from the point of view of health also.

You invest money, keep money in bank, buy property–all for the future. But before that “future” arrives, you are gone from the world. But not for ever. You return back in a new form. If you were not unselfish and charitable in the previous life, you have not saved much apurva  or good karmas. So your bank balance is almost zero. What can you “buy” with zero bank balance?

What is the meaning of all this? Our dharmic scriptures do not want anything from you. They are not after your two cents. They only want to help you, warn you, and awaken you to your bright future.

Give plentifully, serve with humility, and add to your other bank balance for a bright future.

May Sri Ramakrishna, Mother and Swamiji bless us all.

Swami Sunirmalananda