PUBLISHER’S DESK • OCTOBER 2010§
We Are Whom We Meet
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The company we keep affects our attitudes, speech and actions as profoundly as the foods we eat§
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WE ARE ALL FAMILIAR WITH THE PHRASE “We are what we eat.” The Hindu viewpoint on this is that the different types of food we consume have a significant influence on our state of mind and emotions. For example, eating meat, which is known to be a tamasic food, opens the door to lower consciousness and makes it harder to stay out of the states of fear, anger, jealousy and the remorseful emotions that follow. Consuming too many spicy foods and stimulants, or rajasic foods, can overexcite our physical and intellectual activity. On the other hand, pure, or sattvic, foods, such as fresh fruits and vegetables that grow above the ground, foster our intuitive or soul nature. For maximum spiritual progress, it is best to eat plenty of sattvic foods, to be moderate in the intake of rajasic foods and to avoid tamasic foods. The Chandogya Upanishad (7.26.2) teaches: “When the food is pure, mind becomes pure. When the mind becomes pure, memory becomes firm. And when a man is in possession of a firm memory, all the bonds which tie him down to the world are loosened.”§
Today I want to expand the idea that “We are what we eat” by pointing out that our companions are an equally important influence on our state of mind and emotions—hence the title “We are whom we meet.” The ethical scripture Tirukural, in Chapter 46, “Avoidance of Base Company,” has ten insightful verses describing how powerfully we are influenced by the company we keep. Here are two of the verses. “As water changes according to the soil through which it flows, so a man assimilates the character of his associates.” “Even perfect men, possessing the mind’s full goodness, are fortified by pious fellowship.”§
Our actions, speech, state of consciousness and attitudes toward life are all strongly influenced by our companions, just as they are by the food we eat. Therefore, it is important to surround oneself with good, religious, higher-consciousness people. Every few months, I receive an e-mail from someone saying that he or she used to perform sadhana (regular religious practices), but stopped some time ago and now wants to get started again. The advice I give always includes attending a weekly satsang with others who are also performing sadhana. It can be difficult to sustain sadhana if you are striving alone. We need the companionship of others on the path to keep our sadhana strong, especially during difficult times in life. As my Gurudeva, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, often said: “The group helps the individual and the individual helps the group.”§
Of course, we must choose wisely, as companions can also influence us negatively. Here is a story to illustrate. A teenage boy starting his first year at high school made new friends who had a habit of swearing. The boy never swore previously, but because he spent significant time with his new friends, he soon adopted their crude language.§
One of the times in life when religious companions are extremely important is during the university years, especially for students living away from home. The most obvious negative influence comes from fellow students who are more interested in partying than studying. A less visible, but equally erosive, influence comes from anti-religious instructors who propound atheism or existentialism and may even overtly demean Hinduism. Such encounters can instill negative habits and bring about loss of faith.§
How to find suitable religious companionship? Universities are not necessarily close to satsang groups that could be attended regularly. For students whose university is close to a temple, we suggest visiting it weekly. If the temple is too far for a weekly visit, at least make an effort to attend during major festivals. Joining a Hindu students’ group offers prime opportunities for interacting with peers who are spiritually inclined. If there is none at your school, but there are a good number of Hindu students at the university, consider founding a branch of an established Hindu students group on your campus. Other possibilities are to participate in an Indian cultural group, a yoga class or a meditation program.§
Reinforcing Your Aura: Despite our best intentions to maintain pure companions, sometimes it can be necessary to interact at length with people who are strongly materialistic or even hedonistic. The challenge is to do so without letting their emotions penetrate and influence our own. If this does happen, you will experience their moods and emotions and may interpret them as your own.§
If you could see the subtle energies of such an exchange, you would know that you have absorbed into your aura the dark reds, muddy browns and greens from another person’s aura. You simply did not have enough prana in your aura to ward off the intrusion. Such thought forms and undesirable colors from others’ auras are often called psychic influences.§
The aura is a luminous, colorful field of subtle (or astral) energy radiating within and around the human body. The colors of the aura change constantly according to the ebb and flow of your state of consciousness, thoughts, moods and emotions. Fortunately, there are yogic exercises you can employ to vitalize your aura. Here is one such exercise from my guru:§
“Sit quietly, breathe deeply and mentally get in touch with your pranic (energy) body, first by visualizing it and secondly by feeling it. The pranic body of most people extends out from the physical body about one or two inches, depending on the level of vitality. Of course, the pranic body also completely permeates the entire physical body. As you sit quietly, breathing deeply and slowly, become intimately aware of the vitality, the prana, running throughout the physical body. As you breathe in, feel the vitality of your body. Feel the magnetic energy within it. Feel its life. Then, as you breathe out, mentally and through feeling release some of this vitality, this prana, this life force, and send it out into your aura. Keep sending it out on the outbreath to the aura’s outer edges all around your body, from your head to your feet. The outer edge of the human aura is about three or four feet away from the physical body. After you have charged your aura with vital prana in this way about nine times (nine breaths), you should begin to feel a magnetic shell being built around the outer edge of your aura. You will feel very secure and content as you sit within your own aura, which is charged with prana from your own pranic body. You are protected from all kinds of psychic influences, seen and unseen.”§
Despite our best efforts to keep our aura strong and not take on the worldly emotions of others, some of their thoughts and emotions can end up in our aura and influence us by lowering our consciousness and depressing our mood. What can be done? These darker colors can be changed to lighter colors—and hence a more positive mood—by the blessings we receive from the Deity and devas when we go to the temple or home shrine. They can also be changed by the practice of meditation. The practice of regularly purifying our aura by temple attendance and meditation keeps our consciousness higher and our state of mind happier.§
A very important time to purify the aura is when we return home from being out in the world. The practice I prescribe is to first bathe and then enter the shrine room for the blessings of the Deity and devas which, when received, will dispel worldly forces and help us regain a state of God consciousness.§
Attending temple pujas can be an even more powerful way of purifying the aura. An aspect of puja in the temple that is not widely understood is how it relates to the flow of prana. Except for the concluding arati, puja is a process of giving prana to the Deity. This is done through offering cut fruit, cooked food, water, fragrant flowers and milk. Then, during the final arati, the Deity and his helpers, or devas, reflect back this prana into the aura of each devotee, purifying it of subconscious congestions. The devotee so blessed leaves the temple feeling uplifted and relieved of mental conditions he had been burdened by.§
Here is a final word of advice from my Gurudeva on the importance of spiritual companionship: “To sustain shaucha, purity, it is important to surround oneself with good, devonic company, to have the discrimination to know one type of person from another. Too many foolish, sensitive souls, thinking their spirituality could lift a soul from the world of darkness, have walked in where even the Mahadevas do not tread and the devas fear to tread, only to find themselves caught in that very world through the deceit and conniving of the cleverly cunning. Let’s not be foolish. Let’s discriminate between higher consciousness and lower consciousness. Higher-consciousness people should surround themselves with higher-consciousness people to fulfill shaucha.” The Tirukural observes: “Purity of mind and purity of conduct, these two depend upon the purity of a man’s companions.”§
PUBLISHER’S DESK • APRIL 2017§
The Power of Kindly Speech
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Words can hurt others, so it’s always good to avoid harsh language, backbiting and even friendly teasing§
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ONE OF THE KEY TEACHINGS OF MY guru, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, is that we are a soul, a divine being. However, we live in a physical body, as embodied souls, with strong thoughts and emotions. Thus, we have a soul nature, an intellectual nature and an instinctive nature. He describes this plurality as three phases of the mind: superconscious or spiritual (which is the soul); intellectual or mental; and instinctive or physical-emotional.§
It is the instinctive, animal-like nature which contains the tendencies to become angry, jealous, fearful or hurtful to others. Part of making progress on the spiritual path is learning to control the instinctive mind. This is where the yamas, the ten ethical restraints, come into play. They provide a list of tendencies we need to subdue. The classical Hindu depiction of restraining the mind is the charioteer pulling back on the reins of a team of three, four or five horses to keep them under control. The yamas are the reins which help us control our instinctive and intellectual natures, which are like strong steeds that can work for us or run wild if not kept in check.§
The first yama is noninjury, ahimsa: not harming others by thought, word or deed. Noninjury, as we all know, is a central Hindu principle. Of course, most of us do not indulge in physical violence. We may conclude from this that ahimsa presents no challenge to us. However, looking more closely at the definition of ahimsa, we see that it includes not harming others by our thoughts or words. Hence those following a spiritual life need to practice noninjury in our speech and even our thoughts.§
To make progress on the spiritual path, we need to focus on our weak points and strive to improve them. Furthermore, we need to hold the attitude that no matter how well we are doing in a particular practice, we can always do better, find ways to further refine our behavior. Speech is perhaps our most powerful tool for communication and a worthy focus for our attention.§
Gurudeva provides a fourfold guideline to judge if our speech is appropriate: “Speak only that which is true, kind, helpful and necessary.” Let’s take the example of a friend who is overweight. We are genuinely worried that it is vital for his health to lose some weight. We voice our concern by saying, “Ravi, you are way too heavy.” Our message passes the test of helpfulness but fails the test of kindness. We need to express our concern more diplomatically. Perhaps, “I hope you won’t mind my saying this, Ravi, but it would be good for your health to get serious about diet and exercise.” Even helpful words need to be expressed in a kindly way if they are to have the intended effect. There are four common forms of hurting others with our speech: joking, teasing, gossiping and backbiting.§
Joking & Teasing§
Let’s look at some examples that illustrate joking and teasing. First example: a peer has a special privilege or position. We grumble, “Look at Mr. I’m-better-than-you! Why was he exempted from the work we had to do today?” Second example: someone speaks with a foreign accent. You mimic his faulty pronunciation and laugh. Third example: a coworker has difficulty multiplying numbers. When she struggles with a calculation, you make fun of her. The rationale is “I’m joking,” “Just being humorous,” “Entertaining my friends.” In truth, your words are himsa; you are harming others through your speech and justifying it by saying you are just joking, as if humor removes or exempts the hurt. Words can cause real pain, even if they are said in jest. Many don’t realize this. Critical humor comes at the expense of the person you are joking about. In evaluating these examples with our fourfold test, we can see that they are neither true, kind, helpful nor necessary.§
Gossip§
Gossip is talking about the details of others’ personal lives for the delight of it when they are not present. It’s like creating and watching our own soap opera. Such talk entertains those present at the expense of the person being gossiped about. Some wives regularly gossip about their husbands, on the phone or on the Internet, with other wives. Some husbands complain about their wives among coworkers. Such idle talk may perhaps pass the test of being true, but it fails the other three tests: kindness, helpfulness and necessity. Husbands need the support of their wives to be successful. Wives need the support of their husbands to be secure. Telling tales and teasing disastrously undermine support in any relationship.§
Backbiting§
Last but not least is backbiting. Finding faults in another and sharing such shortcomings with others is a hobby many enjoy. It is so much easier to look for faults in others and complain about them than to see the same faults in ourselves and correct them. The Tirukural challenges in verse 190, “If men perceived their own faults as they do the faults of others, could misfortune ever come to them?” And in verse 188: “If men are disposed to spread the faults of friends, what deadly harm might they do to strangers?” Backbiting clearly fails our speech test.§
The fact is that unless we are responsible for someone’s upbringing or training, such as parents to their children or supervisors to their staff, it is best to ignore the faults of others and focus instead on finding and improving our own shortcomings. Improving ourselves produces positive spiritual advancement; criticizing others does not. The next time you find yourself dwelling on the faults in others, ask if you might have that same fault, for what disturbs you in others often indicates what you need to improve in yourself.§
Focusing on Three Virtues§
For those on the spiritual path, it is not terribly difficult to avoid backbiting, gossip and hurtful humor. But controlling and refining our speech on more subtle levels is a lifetime sadhana.§
Three virtues we can focus on are courtesy, tact and sensitivity. Courtesy is being polite, respectful and considerate of the needs and feelings of others. Tactfulness is being diplomatic and skillful in dealing with people and situations, responding to disagreements judiciously, and maintaining harmony by seeking solutions that offend no one. Sensitivity is holding a delicate appreciation of others’ ideas, attitudes and natures, listening carefully in conversations and not interrupting, striving to uplift rather than dominate. The Tirukural warns, “Not knowing the companionable art of cheerful conversation, men estrange even friends by divisive discourse” (verse 187).§
As a general strategy, Gurudeva directed us to “Think before you speak.” Reflecting on what we are going to say is necessary, as it protects us from speaking inappropriately. Thus, control of speech has two parts. First, before you speak, stop and consider what you will say. Second, determine if your words meet the test of being true, kind, helpful and necessary. This simple practice can avert many difficulties. It can also be applied after a comment has slipped out, providing important lessons to guide future conversations.§
Tirukural Verses§
We can learn much about speaking pleasant words from the ancient weaver, Tiruvalluvar, who devoted chapter ten of his Tirukural to the subject. Here are four verses to live by.§
“Poverty-producing sorrow will not pursue those who speak joy-producing words to all they meet” (verse 94).§
“If a man seeks to do good while speaking sweet words, his virtues will wax and his vices will wane” (verse 96).§
“Words yield spiritual rewards and moral excellence, when they do not wander far from usefulness and agreeableness” (verse 97).§
“To utter harsh words when sweet ones would serve is like eating unripe fruits when ripe ones are at hand” (verse 100).§
PUBLISHER’S DESK • JULY 2018§
Achieving Affectionate Detachment
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Peace of mind requires letting go of the past. Here are tools that help, including burning up our hurts and reactions.§
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MOVIES OFTEN DEPICT A SON OR daughter who, now an adult, holds deep-seated hard feelings toward one or both parents for things that happened while growing up. For example, in one emotional film scene, a daughter rattles off a long list of unhappy interactions with her mother: “When I was ten years old, you did this to me, and then on my twelfth birthday that happened. When I was fifteen, you said this.… When I was twenty, I brought a boy home and you were unkind to him. When I was twenty-two, …”§
Piling up childhood reactions is as natural as it is debilitating. As grown-ups, we can continue adding to our subconscious stockpile of you-did-this-to-me resentments. Recently a man who was filled with resentment told me about how unfairly his business partners had treated him. His mind was totally absorbed in the past: “One partner cheated me by doing this four years ago. Two years ago another partner did that; and last month this happened!”§
Did the son or daughter demonstrate any good feelings toward the parents? Did the businessman like or respect his partners? No. There were only disturbed feelings between them. There was no affection; it was “unaffection.” Was there attachment to the hurtful memories? Yes, powerful clinging to the past and frequent mental rehashing of unsavory events.§
I call this common condition “unaffectionate attachment.” It’s a state of mind filled with bitterness, misunderstandings, bad memories and even grudges. Anyone can fall into this abyss. Some live there throughout life. On the spiritual path, our goal is to remain free of such burdens. So, if we become overwhelmed by past acrimonies, we need to learn how to extract ourself.§
My Gurudeva, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, emphasized the art of working with the mind’s natural tendencies as a fundamental part of spiritual life. “When the aspirant is able to meet ordinary happenings and respond to them in the effortless wisdom born of detachment, that indicates that his striving is genuine. When he is able to encounter conditions that send ordinary people into states of disappointment or discouragement and when his emotional nature indicates mastery over these lesser states of consciousness, he is well on his way toward filling the gaps of a natural growth of the instinctive vehicles—body, emotions and intellect.”§
To maintain equilibrium on the path, we need to clear the subconscious mind of such negative attachments. Significant “unaffectionate attachments” in the subconscious will cause the mind to constantly dwell on the past. It’s not hard to see how this hampers our creativity and progress in the present, diminishing our quality of life. One of the victims is our ability to meditate. Unresolved emotional issues in the subconscious can make it impossible to quiet the thinking process when sitting for meditation. In his Yoga Sutras, sage Patanjali describes these blockages as externalizing samskaras that need to be transformed. My guru gave specific practices for removing them from the mind. The primary method he gave is vasana daha tantra, known as journaling in Western terminology. He defined it as writing down the events that trouble us and then burning the paper in an ordinary, non-ceremonial fire. Watching our concerns, our hurts and negative recollections disappear in the flames is cathartic, impressing the mind with the possibility of riddance of past traumas. We can even write and burn letters to people we hold animosity against. This simple practice is effective in removing from the subconscious mind unaffectionate attachments to past experiences. It needs to be said that we don’t forget those past hurts and unfairnesses. Rather, the negative emotion is dissolved, released or burned away. Watching the paper burn is helpful in achieving this result. For deep-seated hurts, the writing and burning may need to be repeated several times.§
For powerfully traumatic memories, such as being beaten frequently by a parent, simply writing it down may not be sufficient. The negative impression, or samskara, may be so deep that you have to do something physical to achieve release. For such instances, Gurudeva has given the flower prayashchitta, or penance. It consists of putting up in the shrine room a picture of the person you are resenting and then every day for 31 days placing a flower in front of the picture while sincerely forgiving him or her.§
What happens when we perform practices like vasana daha tantra and the flower penance? We arrive at stage two, “unaffectionate detachment.” We still don’t like the person, but at least we are not thinking negatively about them all the time. We have partially detached ourselves. We may have no fondness, no love, but we are no longer dwelling endlessly on the past, no longer resentful. We have understood the situation.§
Returning to our movie example, in the next scene the mother responds to the daughter’s outburst, “I did the best I could in raising you.” Suddenly the daughter accepts that her mother had her own challenges and was not perfect. She realizes it was unrealistic for her to expect a perfect childhood. They had now reached an understanding that released the attachment. But, still, it didn’t awaken affection. They maintained a cold relationship.§
Of course, that is not the goal. The goal is “affectionate detachment.” Early in his ministry, Gurudeva gave a deceptively simple method to reach this next level: “The best way to keep the actinic (spiritual) force flowing through the physical body is practicing the art of giving—doing little things for others you have not been asked to do.”§
That’s not difficult, right? Try it yourself and you will find that, yes, it does work. It actually takes us from unaffectionate detachment to affectionate detachment. It builds up love and good feelings toward those to whom we had hard feelings in the past. Of course, one act of giving doesn’t change everything. But repeated over and over again—offering little gifts, doing things for others that they don’t anticipate—changes the feelings between people. It creates more love, more kindness and warmth.§
This is an important practice to incorporate as a perpetual behavior, because life always gives us the opportunity to develop new hard feelings. Harmony is something we have to work at the rest of our life, because we will be interacting with people the rest of our life. For those on the spiritual path, getting along with people, ensuring that new hard feelings don’t develop, is an essential part of karma management.§
The resultant harmony is empowering, but Gurudeva takes it even further. He says that giving “eventually leads to greater actinic understanding.” That means we not only have good, kind feelings about others but we also understand their nature better. Part of the reason we don’t get along with some people is that we don’t understand them. A natural assumption is that “everyone is like me.” In reality, you may not meet anyone just like you your whole life. People are different, sometimes very different. If we are unaware of or fail to appreciate such differences, misunderstandings and hard feelings can arise. Our attitudes and interactions naturally improve when we are sensitive to the differences, needs and limitations of others.§
When the attitude of affectionate detachment is the daily norm, not only do we have kindly feelings toward others; we also understand them in an intuitive, actinic way. It is not an intellectual analysis. It is an intuitive sense of who a person is, what karmas he or she has brought into this life. And because we appreciate that person’s nature, we make allowances and get along with them better.§
That completes the process of achieving affectionate detachment. We start with unaffectionate attachment and then move to unaffectionate detachment. From there we move to affectionate detachment, which comes in two stages. The first stage is expressing more love and kindness towards others. The second stage is understanding others more clearly, cognizing the nature of family, friends and acquaintances in an intuitive way, from the inside out, and therefore loving them more and being able to get along with them better. The deeper truth is that we are learning about ourself the whole time, and our inner changes are reflected in our relationships.§
PUBLISHER’S DESK • JANUARY 2010§
Giving’s Secret Gifts
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Consistently contributing to your religion has the power to draw spiritual fulfillment and material wealth into your life§
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GIVING, KNOWN AS dana IN SANSKRIT, is built into all aspects of Hindu life—giving to the holy man, giving to the temple, giving to the astrologer, giving to the teacher, giving to a swami or a satguru for his support, over and above all routine giving to his institution. The Tirukural, an ancient South Indian ethical scripture, says, “The foremost duty of family life is to serve duly these five: God, guests, kindred, ancestors and oneself.” This is understood by all Hindus. However, the idea that giving can be a powerful tool for attracting financial abundance is an idea that many Hindus do not have in mind.§
In two verses in its chapter on hospitality, the Tirukural provides compelling reasons for giving: “If a man cares daily for those who come to him, his life will never suffer the grievous ruin of poverty.” “Those who never sacrifice to care for guests will later lament: ‘We hoarded wealth, estranged ourselves, now none will care for us.’”§
Materialistic thinking holds that if we hoard all the wealth we get, we will end up with more riches in life’s full season. The Tirukural is saying the opposite: If you use your wealth to help others and care for guests, you will prosper more than if you hoarded it. Why is this? Because if we generously give to others, we will—by karma’s unfailing law—attract more wealth in this and future lives.§
The merit we earn through giving to others comes back to us through attracting abundance in the future. The Tamil word punniyavan relates to this idea. It has a double meaning: “a person of great religious merit” and “a lucky person.” This concept also appears in astrological readings in which it is clear that an individual will easily attract abundance because of the good he did in past incarnations, such as in this assessment from a computerized chart: “This is an intelligent devotee, born to get money effortlessly due to past life merit.” Clearly our ability to attract lasting financial abundance is directly related to the amount of religious merit we have accrued through our previous good deeds. But not all wealth comes through good deeds, and people do become rich in unrighteous ways. The Tirukural speaks of such wealth: “A fortune amassed by fraud may appear to prosper but will all too soon perish altogether.”§
It is easy to see other practical advantages of giving, too. Our reputation grows in the community. Our circle of friends expands. We become someone people want to associate with, want to do business with and, yes, want to give to. That doesn’t happen with people who are stingy and selfish.§
A third verse from the Tirukural shares another secret about giving: “Charity’s merit cannot be measured by gifts given. It is measured by measuring the receiver’s merits.” What a brilliant insight, and so counter to common thinking. It is natural to presume that giving one hundred dollars would create more merit than giving fifty dollars. But the saint tells us it’s not just about the money, it’s also about the merit of the recipient. Giving a little to a man of great spiritual attainment is more meritorious than giving a lot to an ordinary beggar.§
My satguru, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, spoke of this concept: “Karma is an unfailing natural law, simply explained by this example: Give a beggar 10 rupees. You are not giving, you are investing in your future. Somehow 20 rupees will find its way back to you. He has given you the opportunity to give. When we give expecting to receive, the law will still work, but if we give 10 rupees, we get back 10 rupees. Unselfish giving doubles the return. Giving to a temple is different again; every 10 rupees given brings back 100 rupees in return. God pays a better interest. Giving is an investment in the future; it is not parting with something.”§
We can learn more about charity’s efficacy from a story I heard about the Nattukottai Chettiars at Palani Hills Temple, an account documented in the temple’s palm-leaf manuscripts. It begins around 1600 with the arrival in Palani township of Kumarappan from Chettinad district in India’s southern region. Kumarappan was the first merchant to establish a salt trade in the region of Palani. He stayed in the house of the Palani Temple priest and operated his business in the nearby street. From the beginning, he marked up his margin of profit by one-eighth and gave the markup as a makimai offering to the Deity of Palani Temple, Lord Velayutha. Makimai is a Tamil word for a donation to charity consisting of a fixed percentage of profit, income or harvested crops.§
Kumarappan’s donations were used, in part, to buy food that was prepared by the priest’s wife and offered to the Deity by the priest. So successful was he that four years later he brought five more salt traders to Palani. All followed his example of tithing to the temple, and all flourished. News of their success reached the Pandyan king in Madurai, and Isaniya Sivachariar, the king’s guru and chief Saivite priest of South India, at whose behest Kumarappan established an annual pilgrimage to Palani, which is popular to this day. Later, when entrusted with managing all funds donated to the temple, he established an endowment to provide food and shelter for pilgrims. Not only did the salt trader’s generosity bring him and his clan material success and social prominence, it supported pilgrims and built up the resources of Palani Hills Temple, so much so that today it is one of India’s richest temples.§
S. RAJAM§
Giving to God: A husband and wife, having flourished in life, credit their religion for the abundance that has come to them. Each month they bring one-tenth of their income, placing it at the feet of Dakshinamurti. It is their way of supporting the temple that has been their refuge and the swamis (behind) who have guided them on the path.§
How can we determine how much to give to religious endeavors? One guideline for this comes from the Dharma Shastras, which caution that a householder should never give gifts beyond his means and should not make his family and dependents suffer on account of his generosity. In his Hindu Encyclopedia, Swami Harshananda notes that these shastras suggest ten percent of earnings as a general guideline, and they extol giving as a sacred act that helps earn religious merit and conquer greed.§
Our own Saiva Siddhanta Church has, at its core, a membership that gives ten percent of their gross income to the support of our mission, monastery and monks. But we are not alone. Consider this verse still followed today by members of the Gujarat-based BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, written some two hundred years ago by Bhagwan Swaminarayan: “My disciples shall give in donation one-tenth of their income, or food grains, if that be their agricultural income, in the service of Lord Krishna.” BAPS is one of Hinduism’s most wealthy and dynamic spiritual institutions. How much stronger and more effective would Hinduism be if all Hindus followed these examples and tithed to the institution of their choice?§
A useful way to assess the extent of one’s means to give is to create (if you don’t already have one) a detailed monthly household budget showing income and all the major categories of expense, such as rent or mortgage, transportation, food, clothing and religious giving. No matter if your income is small or large, a valid approach is to start with a modest monthly donation to your favorite religious institution that easily fits into your budget.§
As that regular giving accrues merit, which in turn attracts more abundance into your life, you will be able to periodically increase the amount of your religious donations up to the ideal of ten percent. Some individuals may have the ability to give more than ten percent, such as those who are single or those who are self-employed, as exemplified by our salt merchant, Kumarappan.§
The best way to approach religious giving is to make it the first expense when you receive your paycheck. This has a number of advantages. 1) You do not forget to make your donation. 2) You do not spend that money on yourself and find you are unable to give to your religion this month. 3) Because you have made the religious donation your first priority, you become more conservative when faced with buying unnecessary or frivolous things.§
Many Hindus do not give in a systematic way to the Hindu institution they support, such as a local temple or ashram. Instead, they wait to be asked for a donation, which they then willingly give. Compare this to setting aside money for retirement. How many people rely on their investment manager to call and remind them to send in funds for their retirement account? None. Disciplined people are consistent in contributing monthly to their retirement savings, without being reminded, because they know they will benefit from it. Similarly, it is beneficial both to yourself and the institution you support to be just as regular in your charitable giving, and not wait to be asked. You benefit, because your religion is strengthened, and you don’t miss months when you weren’t reminded and thereby lose the merit of that giving. And the institution benefits by receiving a steady, reliable stream of income.§
In conclusion, consistent, ardent giving to religious institutions, to God, is a duty of all Hindus. The abundance of merit you earn by giving regularly and generously creates for you—through the law of karma—greater spiritual rewards, worldly success and financial abundance in this and future lives.§