Noble Use of Money

Author(s): Dada Bhagwan
Publisher: Mahavideh Foundation

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Noble Use of Money
of money is encouraged because it destroys your greed and allows you to keep giving.
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Upyoga is awareness. When you do something auspicious or give to charity, give with the awareness and intent that others will benefit from your donation. Give anonymously in order to avoid fame. That is called giving with awareness! That is called upyoga. There are some people who refuse give again if they did not receive any recognition or publicity for their donation.
Even when you do good deeds, you must maintain awareness. This awareness must be focused on what will be beneficial to you in this life and the life to come. That is called awareness. If this awareness is not there, then despite giving charity or service to others, everything you do will be done in sleep (ignorance). All of your deeds will go to waste. If you give with the desire of being recognized for your benevolence, then that too goes to waste. Awareness is when you have an understanding of what is beneficial and what is detrimental for you. How can one claim to have awareness if he continues to give charity and yet has no idea what his next life entails?
This Is How Obstacles Are Created
If one man is giving charity to a poor man and another man interferes with his intellect (buddhi) and asks him, "Why are you giving to this man?" he creates an obstacle for himself by interfering. This obstacle will prevent him from getting any help from others when he comes across hard times himself. In whatever situation a person creates an obstacle, that obstacle will surface and hinder him under the same situation.
Questioner: What if the obstacle was created through the mind and not through speech?
Dadashri: The obstacles created through the mind have an even greater effect. These effects will be experienced in the life to come whereas the effects of obstacles created through
Noble Use of Money
speech will give visible results and will be experienced in this life.
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This Is How Obstacles Are Destroyed
Questioner: So should we make sure that we do not have any negative thoughts?
Dadashri: That is not possible. You cannot help having such thoughts. However, your job is to erase them. The decision not to have such thoughts is called nischaya. You cannot stop your thoughts; they will continue to come. You must however, erase them before they create a new karma for your next life. If you were to have a thought that a person should not be given any help, because of this knowledge that you received about creating obstructions, you will have the awareness and you will erase that thought. This is similar to erasing the contents of a letter before you mail it. Then the problem is solved. But without gnan you cannot erase anything! A worldly person (who has not taken Gnan) will never erase his mistakes in this way! On the contrary he will say, "Such thoughts are necessary, you don't understand." Thus he only complicates his life further. By saying and maintaining this, he doubles his faults and reinforces them. The ego does the wrong thing; it causes harm to the owner. It is like slashing your own legs with an axe. It is selfdestructive.
From now on you can erase everything through repentance. If you hurt someone through your speech, first make a decision that you should not speak that way again and then ask for forgiveness. This will erase your bad deeds. This is similar to changing the contents of a letter before you mail it. Your initial negative thought of, "Charity is not necessary for him," is now changed to, "It is good to give charity." In this way your initial thought gets erased.
To give charity, to help others, to have an obliging nature,