Vedas on Money

Where does money come from? What is the best way to gain it? Where does it go?

Let’s refer to the pure well of Vedic knowledge. The ancient scriptures say that the strongest currency which will not devaluate for millions of years, the safest capital ever is Purva Punya. Purva Punya is the sum total of virtuous deeds we ever did, the past life credit. This earned capital comes to us in four forms:
money (or material goods),
good health,
love,
knowledge (not any knowledge but spiritual knowledge, knowledge about our source and purpose).
The amount of combined material goods we will have in this life is fixed at the moment of birth. Since that capital is limited for the current life intensive use of only one aspect of those four values will decrease the three others.

Imagine a container made of four communicating vessels: one tube for money, one for health, one for love and relationships and one for spiritual knowledge. All those tubes are designed differently due to our past lives. Some people have a wider health tube and a thinner money tube and so on. But the most important thing is that they are connected and even then their diameters are different the level of liquid is even. We have to lean the vessel or jostle something into the other tubes to get the higher level in the tube we think is important for us right now. There are certain ways to increase one aspect of them for the cost of the others. We tilt the vessel and – Hooray! Money! Does it matter that there is no health, love, or knowledge? In everyday life we see for example how a workaholic earning more money sometimes lets his relationship and health go downhill. Since there is no health, relationship, or knowledge, one decides to work harder to get more money to feel secure in the future. This is a vicious circle that ends tragically. The money sometimes is taken out of our health, our personal life and our capacity to be happy through knowledge about the true path to happiness.

The most important thing to understand about money is that in our current life we are harvesting the fruits of the past and sowing the fruits of the future. The result of today’s effort is always obtained in the distant future. The belief that today’s effort yields today’s result is an illusion. It is easy to observe in our life. Look at the past 5 or 6 years. Almost everyone is making the same or greater effort gaining fewer outcomes. On the other hand there are always people who come into big money effortlessly. Vedas explain that there is no direct linkage between the current effort and the current outcome. My current effort will bring results in the future. My current circumstances come from my past.    Being happy with what we have today creates a better future. Struggling to get results we think we deserve right now worsens the future. This is hard to believe and even harder to think and act accordingly.  Failure to realize that the effort and outcome are not related in time results in psychological problems such as depression, fear, and anger.

Imagine that you used to live in City A and then moved to City B. Every day you lived in City A you went to the post office and sent a package to your future house in City B. One day you had candies, so you put them into the package. The other day there was nothing to put in, so you sent an old shoe or a dead rat. Time passed by and you forgot what kind of stuff you sent to yourself. At the new location you started going to the post office and receiving those packages. And you think: I got this beautiful vase because I went to the post office. But the next day you get an empty package. You are perplexed: you went to the post office as usual but the result is miserable. When it comes to the dead rat you start making trouble and shout at the clerk: “Where is my chocolate? I came here as I always do! Where is my good stuff?” And the clerk says: “We have nothing to do with that. We are delivering what just came…”

If we believe that results come according with today’s effort, not having any positive outcome makes us feel like a loser, depressed, and disappointed, which is a mild form of suicide. The other possibility we use is to blame someone else: colleagues, chief, friends, loved ones, government, crisis… you name it. So we destroy either ourselves or our relationships. Life becomes miserable and we stop making efforts, which will make our future miserable as well.

One, who understands the nature of money, knows, that the fact that we were born here on Earth means that we will always get enough material goods not to starve to death. That our destiny has carefully laid out the material goods at different stages of life. There are sometimes more, sometimes less, but always just right for the moment. That in this world I do not make money, I am just graciously given it due to the fact that in my past I had fulfilled my duties, took care of others, or supported those who are less fortunate. The way to increase aggregate welfare is to commit voluntary renunciations or restrictions, philanthropy, and not harm other beings.

Where does money come from?
As already said the amount of combined material goods we will have in this life is fixed at the moment of birth. When we interact with other people our karmas combine. For example even if only one spouse is working, the potential of other partner is added to the monetary ability of the family. The money the husband or wife is earning is equivalent of combined karmic money.
Some families postpone having babies to the time they get more money. But the fact is that baby comes with her own money karma which can remarkably improve the family finance. All at a sudden the father would find a better job or the mother win the lottery. And nobody will assume that that money belongs to the baby.
Thus, shaping good relationships can add greatly to our prosperity. See also (The law of karma,Vedas on Cosmos, Fulfillment of all desires, Time, Cycles of Material world )

TODAY’S TIP: Everyone can sure recall situations when money or other material goods were earned with little effort, if any. And how many times our biggest effort was useless? Let’s act in harmony with cosmic rules, so we someday harvest fruits.