Seek artha in both its senses – wealth and meaning

Talk at e-conference on business and spirituality

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
in the strength to do His will.
Thank you. Hare Krishna. Hare Krishna.
Strive for Artha in both its senses, wealth and meaning. In Sanskrit, wealth is referred to by the word Artha. Artha is considered to be one of the Purusha Arthas, the four primary goals of life.
So, one of them is Artha. Now, Artha is often translated as wealth or money. And as we have the post of say, Artha Mantri, finance minister of the country or whatever.
But the word Artha also has another connotation, that is meaning. So, what is the meaning of this? That the word Artha is used in terms of meaning. So, now, these two words, these two senses of the word Artha are significant because both of them are related when we apply it to the context of truly successful or prosperous business.
So, when we work in life today, often people think that the purpose of business is profit. Yes, that is definitely a business, is meant to be a money making activity. But money is not all that it is meant to make.
The business also has to be done for a higher purpose. That purpose brings meaning to our life. When we add value, when we create value, add value by our positive contributions, when we add value, we create value for all our stakeholders, then that brings a higher meaning, a higher fulfillment to our life.
And that ultimately is what we are striving for. Everybody needs, we all need food to live, but we all need to eat to live, but we do not live to eat. Those who live to eat, often they eat indiscriminately, they eat excessively, and they spoil their digestive system.
And eventually they may come to a level where because of excessive eating, their weakened digestion does not allow them to eat. And if they still keep eating, then they may not be able to live also. So, living to eat leads to a situation where we can neither eat nor live.
So, just as we are not meant to eat or to live, we are not meant to live for the purpose of eating. Similarly, business is not meant only for profit. Although profit is natural and necessary, a business that strives only for profit becomes often harmful in its overall consequences.
The consumers feel cheated, the employees feel exploited, the overall society feels has a negative approach, the environment gets damaged, even destroyed. And if we do not recognize all these consequences, then eventually there is a backlash. And most importantly, those who are the leaders of such business, they themselves do not get satisfaction when they work, because they feel that we are, they may achieve a lot of satisfaction, achievement externally, but they do not get satisfaction internally.
So, artha in the sense of wealth comes to them, but artha in the sense of mean doesn’t come to them. So, to get artha in both the senses, we need to raise our consciousness. And for raising our consciousness, spiritual wisdom is extremely helpful.
The Bhagavad Gita explains that our identity extends beyond our biology. Bhagavad Gita explains that our essential self is beyond our body. We are at our core spiritual beings.
And because we are not just material beings, material things alone cannot satisfy us. We want non-material fulfillment. And the Bhagavad Gita re-envisions work as a form of worship.
In the 18th chapter, the Bhagavad Gita says that, do your work, but how should you work? That you attain, you worship that absolute truth through your work. By that you will attain perfection, you will attain satisfaction, you will attain fulfillment. So, here the Gita talks about how we can, by infusing a mood of service, of contribution in our work, we are finite consciousness and there is an infinite consciousness.
And what unites the whole creation, the whole existence is love. When we understand that we are eternally parts of the absolute and when we link with the absolute in a mood of devotion, because the absolute is the source of everything and everyone, we become linked with everyone as an interconnected web of existence. And this awareness of our interconnectedness is the raising of consciousness, is the spiritualization of consciousness.
So, conscious entrepreneurship essentially means that we become conscious of ourselves and we become conscious of our higher purpose. Actually, the awareness of our higher purpose comes when we become conscious of our higher inner identity. If the more we realize, the more we think that we are our physical creatures, they’re just our bodies, then we will look only for physical pleasures.
And that unidimensional mode of living is like living only to eat. And that causes disharmony and distress. But as our consciousness arises and we understand that we are spiritual beings, then we seek not just artha in the sense of money, we feel more inspired and motivated to seek artha in the sense of meaning also.
And this vision of the interconnectedness of all of existence helps us to infuse our work with a mood of love and a mood of contribution. And in this way, we can bring value and we can attain artha in both its senses, in the sense of profit and in the sense of meaning and fulfillment. So, the external achievement in terms of profit is called in the Vedic context as abhyudaya and the inner fulfillment is called as nishreyas.
And yoga of bhakti, bhakti yoga, it sees this world as a part of a cosmic whole, as belonging to the absolute and as meant to be used in the service of the absolute. So, it brings about, bhakti yoga brings about the harmony of the external and the internal by connecting it with the transcendental. The transcendental absolute is the source of the external and the internal.
And when we offer in devotion, in a mood of devotion, whatever resources we have and we do justice to our God-given talents, perform effectively, and thus we achieve, that achievement will be external and that will lead to profit, but there will be fulfillment. That will be the attainment of a higher purpose, which brings fulfillment. And that is what business, when it is done in the mood of conscious entrepreneurship, leads to.
It leads to both achievement and fulfillment, and in this way, business can become an engine, not for exploitation, social exploitation, as it is thought about now, but for positive social contribution and transformation. Thank you.