By HH SB Kesava Swami
I recently connected with a childhood friend who also became a monk. As you can imagine, we had lots to talk about, and lots in common. In his tradition, one of the monastic vows is to never touch money; and if he does, even by accident, he observes complete fasting for a day. Serious detachment. Admittedly, if I had adopted that vow I’d be dead and cremated by now – financial transactions seem a staple part of my daily life! But money is dangerous, and time and time again we see how it can attack the integrity of life. It’s so easy to sell out on principles and purpose, in return for profit and pleasure.
The Biblical reminder of money and evil, then, still stands strong today. Its destructive influence is all pervading. In the pursuance of profit, lawyers have destroyed justice, and the media has destroyed information. Money has caused the medical Industry to destroy health, and triggered educational establishments to destroy real education. The pursuance of wealth has even attacked spiritual institutions. It seems that where financial gain is involved, all other rationale goes out of the window! If the price is right, people will sell out on just about anything, oblivious to the long-term ramifications of their acts.
But clearly we need money – to buy groceries, to pay rent, to travel the world… and to do good. Money is useful, and without it, you can’t get much done in today’s world. The famous mendicants in the Bhakti tradition, therefore, mastered the art of utilising ‘material’ in the pursuance of ‘spiritual.’ In sanskrit, they called it yukta-vairagya – embracing worldly things, and connecting them to a higher purpose and noble cause. After all, it’s not money that’s the root of all evil, but the love of it, and the subsequent greed and materialism that surfaces. Thus, when we selflessly utilise such assets in a spirit of detachment, without misappropriating a dime, not only do we remain unaffected, but we can create powerful positive change in the world.
Yet it must be exercised with thoughtfulness. In the 1800’s, Karl Marx described money as the “universal agent of separation” – an enchanting elixir, which could unpredictably and instantaneously divorce us from our good intelligence, cherished principles and higher nature. Nowadays I’m more cautious. After all, nobody is rich enough to buy back that which is lost through greed, mundane desire and selfishness.
One of the concepts i perceive in the establishment of Varnashrama dharma within an internal economic model is to by-pass money in the "hand". In the external material world as an interaction, money has its uses to a very limited role. The idea within Self-sufficiency and a simple living experience, the idea of money is minimized, because within Simple Living there is very little need and occasion for using money itself.
The whole concept is based on Simple Living not Simpler Living.. As an example of this we can see how in Community the time may arise when Buildings need constructing. So to effect the internal economy dynamic a spreadsheet can be formulated to just record the cost of construction through paying for food for workers to eat whilst construction, coming from your own land. That cost for food, for cooking etc can
be recorded in a spread sheet to illustrate how much you have attained self-sufficiency by providing meals for construction workers for the duration of the build.
Now when that holistic principle is expanded and maintained across the whole of life a picture is slowly built up to obtain a level of self-suffiency. By recording more and more elements of the cost of life on a spread sheet its possible to show you have become self-sufficient. This methodology is present in our local Council to help people buy land and provide a self-sufficient lifestyle to day in Wales. The initial goal is to become 75% self-sufficient in 5 years and then progress from there. Thus our whole life style becomes tempered and ecologically based on Simple Living so that the need for money in the "hand" becomes minimized because Money in the Hand is so powerful it wont change itself, unless we do it.
Thats an economic goal of life for devotees which is also illustrated in the 6th purpose of Iskcon;
6. To bring the members closer together for the purpose of teaching a simple, more natural way of life.