MONEY MEAN OR MEANINGFUL

Money is very closely connected to Laxmi, the "goddess of fortune"-- consort of Lord Narayana.

In many spiritual traditions money  is  considered as a  root cause of all evil. It is also considered to be an intoxication greater than an intoxicating drug, a cause of all conflicts....

Certainly Dharmik scriptures talk about wealth, however they despise making wealth as a goal of life, at the same time do acclaim that money is a tool for stability in life.

A challenge with anything in this world is to find out whether we are making something which is supposed to be a tool into a goal.

In the  Mahabharata there is a constant discussion to bring out this understanding  in the forefront of our intellect so that we can  act according to that wisdom.

Action many times conflicts with wisdom, consciously and more dangerously, unconsciously, most of the time. Unconscious activity which makes us slide towards making money as a goal is adharma.

Conscious adharma or unconscious adharma, the effects are the same. Like fire burning knowingly or unknowingly.

Therefore many people feel  that wealth abnegation is a safe road to  tread and others feel it is impractical and life denying. So they indulge  in wealth hoarding. Both are easy paths to escape or covet. Of course both are not user friendly rather imaginary friendly. 

Therefore when Arjuna was hesitant to fight, Krishna gave a wealth of wisdom to Arjuna in the form of the Gita, which would guide him to win and not lose to covetness.
Krishna also made Arjuna alert about the sin of abnegation.
About  losing to weak heartedness and making adharma win such that squandering would be  made into a legacy by adharmik people.

Wealth has to be with some people . Good  people avoiding it, only helps the bad to misuse it. Therefore mahabharata says making money is one thing. But how does  one make it?  One does not create new wealth. Rather wealth changes from person to person, community to community and country to country.  In Sanskrita, Laxmi has another name "Chanchala," meaning flickering one. She does not stay constantly in one place. So increasing is another challenge with money. Thirdly it is more difficult  to protect it.  Most  important is utilizing. So at all the four stages there is war. In making, in growing , in protecting and finally using it.

Therefore money creates two kind of struggles the Dharmik struggle and adharmik struggle and there is no third stage that money has , if someone claims  that stage exists then it is a  myth.

Money,  therefore forces us to achieve but  we have the choice---
to make  money useful or abuseful
to use it for right reason or might  reason
and lastly to make it a tool or a goal.

In conclusion in mahabharata Rukmini asked Laxmi, "where do you  reside? ". Laxmi said "the only place I stay permanently is with Lord Narayana".
Choose wisely  when you make money  or spend money.