How and Who decides that the involvement in the stock market is cautious and won’t effect the mind?
From Ashutosh P
How and Who decides that the involvement in the stock market is cautious and won’t effect the mind? I can get involved thinking I am quite careful but in reality it may be just opposite. So how to define it??
Transcript
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Shri Prabhupad ki Jai. From Ashutosh Prabhu, Who and how decides that the involvement in the stock market is cautious and won’t affect the mind? I can get involved thinking I am quite powerful, but in reality it may just be the opposite. So how to define it? This is based on a earlier answer, that it does.
Dealing in shares in the stock market go against the principle of no gambling. So the answer was that, as long as one is not getting into things that are going to agitate the mind too much, and one is not involved in basically the greed for quick money, without hard work, which is the essence of gambling, one can trade in stock shares. So I checked with several devotees who are actually in the stock market, and I am especially grateful to Anand Vrindavan Prabhu, who is a stock broker in Mumbai, associated with Radha Gopinath temple, primarily, and he gave some valuable inputs, so based on his inputs as well as the inputs of V.S. Vishwa Prabhupada’s books in general, I will try to answer this question.
Firstly, each of us has to ultimately decide how serious we want to be in spiritual life. And our seriousness is a function of our sincerity. So, in material life, all of us have to take up anxiety.
So whether it is in stock market, or whether it is in some other field, anxiety will be there. But, there is manageable anxiety, and there is unmanageable anxiety. So, when things are up to a threshold, like in our workload also, when we have, say, this level workload, we can manage it, but when it goes way above our head, we feel crushed.
We feel as if we are submerged into work, and we feel as if we are choking. We can have a nervous breakdown also. So, like that, sometimes when we get into some anxiety, for example, if I invest in some shares, and then, after investing in the shares, as soon as I wake up first thing in the morning, instead of praying to Krishna, or taking bath, or chanting, or whatever, the first thing I do is turn on the television, or turn on the computer, and then check what is the price of the shares, and immediately I get on the phone to invest or transfer, or in the middle of the night I wake up, or even when I am supposed to be with my family, or doing my other activities, I am half present only, because half of my mind is thinking what will happen to those shares, what will happen to those shares.
So, if I am taking, all these are signs that I am taking anxiety that is unmanageable. Manageable anxiety means that the anxiety doesn’t disrupt our normal life, it doesn’t disrupt our remaining professional activities, it doesn’t disrupt our family life, it doesn’t disrupt our spiritual life, it goes along with it, normal anxiety is there, but excessive anxiety means all these get disrupted. Now, somebody may say that I am not going into excessive anxiety, but that could well be the rationalization of the mind.
We can ask our family members, we can ask our close friends, what is happening? Is it that I am becoming too jittery? Am I distracted? Am I always worried? And if we also position ourselves in the mode of goodness, at some times we do get into passion when we are doing our daily activities, but if we are in the mode of goodness, in normal times of contemplation, not normal daily times, but normal times of contemplation when we take a break and think about things seriously, we can also see and honestly evaluate whether we are getting into undue anxiety. So, if our normal working is getting disrupted because of that anxiety, then that is unmanageable anxiety and such anxiety should not be taken up. Now, sometimes unmanageable anxiety may come up of its own accord and that time it’s not a matter of choice, it’s a matter of necessity.
Suppose some say somebody in my family gets a serious disease, then I am extremely worried. So that will be, it is a part of my responsibility and I have to do that. But here, it’s not that this anxiety is coming of its own accord, here we are purchasing anxiety by getting involved in such things.
Now, what anxiety will be unmanageable for whom, that may vary according to person to person. So, just because somebody else is able to do something peacefully doesn’t mean that I will be able to do something peacefully and just because I am able to do something peacefully doesn’t mean that somebody else will be able to do it. Each of us will have to take our own moral and psychological inventory and see where we get fueled by greed and its associative anxiety.
Now, we need money for earning and there are various ways of earning and stock market is also one of the ways. But when we purchase unmanageable anxiety and it disrupts our normal way of functioning, then we can understand that we are going beyond the desirable way of functioning and there we are going toward the threshold of succumbing to greed and breaking the principle of no gambling. So, there are certain activities, like if I go to a casino and gamble, that is clearly gambling.
But, there are other situations which may be on the threshold and if that is what I have been trained to do, that is what I have been doing, for me to give it up may not be possible and may not be necessary also. If somebody is trained as a professional broker, that person doesn’t have to give it up. But then, that person knowing that this can drag me away into unmanageable, undesirable anxieties and it can drag me towards breaking the principle of no gambling, I need to check myself.
So, by our own calm observation, by consultation with others, when the anxiety goes beyond unmanageable levels, we should pull back from there. Thank you.