Bhagavatam-daily 99 – 11.08.15 – Material accumulation by hi-tech means heightens anxiety

Thank you not being able to give in charity not being able to enjoy personally not being able to give in charity Madhuhevarthavin madhu Madhuha Madhuha is the stealer of honey Arthavin madhu so just as the honey stealer steals the honey from the honey bee similarly Arthavin people who are expert they steal money from others and in that way those who are accumulating money are unable to enjoy it so here the Brahmana is continuing imparting the lesson from what he has learned from Nietzsche and here he is describing how accumulation doesn’t lead to satisfaction accumulation doesn’t translate into gratification because there is intrusion by others there is misappropriation stealing by others so in this world actually the great irony of wealth is that wealth it has to be paraded in order to be enjoyed and yet when it is paraded then it leads to threat so what is the solution to this the solution actually is that one has to live there is no solution in the sense that one lives in great insecurity because of the desire for because of excessive greed for wealth people when they acquire wealth they try to create various means by which to secure wealth now firstly it is important to recognize that wealth is essential for life and Artha is accepted in fact recognized and celebrated we could say as one of the four Purusharthas of life Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha so Artha has its place and purpose in life but the important thing is this context when Artha is given the central place it becomes the primary purpose of life then there is imbalance there is misdirection there is distress and ultimately there is heartbreak there is heartbreaking pain agony now what exactly happens is that just as a honey bee laboriously works strives to collect honey but after it has collected all the honey then that honey is lost how is it lost because someone else comes and takes it away someone else comes and steals it so similarly with respect to people also actually they may work very hard to acquire wealth and they may create various means to protect that wealth also they may put it here put it there invest it in this scheme or place it in that plan but ultimately all this turns out to be futile because we cannot control things beyond a particular limit in life and eventually we do get trapped by whatever happens so there is some way or the other by which people will steal the wealth away from us and even if nobody steals eventually there is death which will steal and thus the whole thing gets reduced to futility nowadays as technology is advancing so at one level the opportunity for the earning money transferring money all that is also increasing but along with that the risks are also increasing and often increasing enormously because one just doesn’t know from where danger will come and how danger will how danger will create disaster so for example now there are crimes through cyber banking so people transfer money but if somehow there is hacking of the account then just through a few combination of numbers and keys some expert can reduce a millionaire to a pauper and so the more high tech things become there are attempts there should be attempts for security no doubt but the fact is that there is enormous danger and exactly how things are being done how things are being manipulated many people don’t even understand this and thus they don’t realize the gravity of the danger they are in and thus they fall prey to trouble serious trouble now the whole point of a discussion like this is to recognize danger and to find a lasting solution not just a stop gap solution so for example now there are now we have huge and complicated economic system in a globally connected economy that some problem in some part of the world a war breaks out in the middle east and then oil prices shoot up and all over the world there is a crisis because of that so the complexity of the situation in the world the complexity of the social economic system that we have in the world leads to a far greater level of anxiety and insecurity while creating a facade of sophistication and control so it appears to me that I just press one button I can transfer money from here to there it’s so easy so convenient but at a deeper level what is happening is that something happens in some part of the world and then like a set of dominoes falling one fall second fall third fall like that things just spiral out of control and people end up in a disastrous situation in a dangerous disastrous situation so just like there was a recession a global economic meltdown which happened which started with a set of small number of people being impotent in their finances and others taking advantage of them and then one thing led to another to another and then eventually the whole global economy went through a severe crunch and hundreds thousands of people lost jobs and it was a severe severe crisis that resulted so the point is that those who are greedy and those who think that they can possess money protect money and parade money and enjoy actually they get pleasure they don’t get pleasure in that they actually suffer very greatly in the long run throughout all and in contrast those who recognize that money is only one of the purposes of life and actually money is more than a purpose it’s a necessity of life so it’s a necessity which we have to meet with but after meeting the necessity there is there are other things also which we have to do in life and to the extent we recognize that there are higher purposes to life there are other things to be done in life and ultimately the greatest wealth is the wealth of devotion for Krishna because that is the wealth which will stay with us always and that is the wealth which will solace us even when everything else breathes down as it will at the time of death and as it may even before that also so there is a sense of balance that is required that greed makes one’s vision unidimensional and a person can’t see anything beyond money and now here it is said that one cannot enjoy the money but one can’t even give in charity because when you give in charity that is also noticed and a person who is very charitable that person also gets marked as a wealthy person and others target the person so now I have talked only about subtle dangers there are of course much grosser dangers also that there can of course people can be kidnapped, people can be taken as hostages and then they can be tortured and money can be extorted from them and so many other dangers can happen so the point is money it leads to great anxiety, danger and it can even lead to disaster so we need money for living but if we let it become the primary obsession of life primary purpose of life then we can sentence ourselves to a lifetime of anxiety and misery