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Let us collect our thoughts for a second and come together through an invocation.

AUM saha navavatu, saha nau bhunaktu

Saha veeryam karvaavahai

Tejasvi naa vadhita mastu

maa vid vishaa vahai

AUM shaantih, shaantih, shaantih

“Let us together be protected and nourished. Let  us work together to increase our welfare. Let there be no discord among us.  Peace. Peace. Peace. This beautiful mantra is used as invocation in some of the upanishads.  It is a reminder to why we are here and to bring our intention fully here.

I named the talk “The Monk who did not sell his Ferrari.” You must have heard of the book by the title “The Monk who sold his Ferrari” by Robin Sharma published in 1997.  The title of the book hints at a fundamental difference we all have struggled with in our life. The conflict between material success and spiritual success.  Or more fundamentally, it is about Capitalism and Spiritualism.  The two systems–capitalism and spiritualism–appeal to most people but in different ways and sometimes on different days.  In our work life, we believe that the capitalism is the best system.  We admire Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerburg who ruthlessly followed their own selfish views of how the world works and created amazing businesses.

At the same time, we also admire Swami Vivekanand or Mother Teresa.  They dedicated their life to serving other people through selfless service.

So are the two systems completely different ways of living.  Is it necessary to sell your Ferrari if you want to be a monk?  If we put our faith in capitalism our spirit is left dry, we somehow feel that just pursuing money is not our life’s mission.  We find it cheap and particularly as we accumulate money we find our passions are weakened.  Selfish desires do not have the passion of a devotee.  Money itself seems to give no satisfaction, it is at best means to satisfaction.

On the other hand, if we put all our faith in spirituality then are we to give up our iphones, and internet based global calling and advanced knee replacement surgery.  For most of us, giving up these modern advances maybe something aspirational like running a marathon but not really practical.  Should we stop taking our profits from our investments or salary for our job?  Should doctors see patients for free and restaurants serve free food.  Is self denial essential to spiritualism?  And if we still find selfish desires in us, does it mean that spirituality is not for us.

What if I told you that the deep understanding of both systems leads you to the same underlying truth—the one unifying universal truth.  That the capitalist creed and spiritual journey lead you to the same realization.  And that implementing that truth in your life will result in success in the capitalistic competition as well as the contentment and end of suffering promised by spirituality.

Let me tell you a story.  In ancient India, there was a traveling salesman who used to go door to door selling household goods.  There lived a family which used to be rich, but had become poor due to early death of the head of the family.  They could not afford to buy anything from the salesman.  One day, when the salesman was passing by, the woman of the house, invited him in and asked him to look at a room full of black metal pieces.  She offered to give the salesman some of the metal in return for some supplies.  The salesman looked at the metal pieces and realized that they were gold coins which had become blackened with soot over time.  He thought to himself,”This woman is a fool.  She does not know the true value of what she has.  I can make so much money by selling this gold in the market”  So he pretended as if the metal pieces were worthless.  He said, “These metal pieces are worthless, but maybe I can sell them as scrap in town and I will bring you back a small packet of food in return.  The woman was grateful for some help.  The salesman started doing this everyday and made good profit.  One day, another traveling salesman selling cloth was passing through the town.  The woman called him and offered the black metal piece in return for a piece of cloth.  This salesman was an honest fellow.  He looked at the metal piece and immediately realized that it was gold.  He told the woman that the black metal was gold and worth a lot of money.  The woman was shocked.  She realized that the other salesman had been cheating her all along.  She stopped doing any business with the first salesman, and offered the metal pieces only to the second trader.  The second trader was able to make a much larger profit over the years.  

So which salesman was a better capitalist?

The key idea of capitalism is that best results are achieved when everyone looks out for their own self interests.  So was the first salesman acting in his self interest?  Surely he earned the profit on his first transaction with the woman.  But since he lost in the long term and much larger profit to the other salesman who was honest with the woman, the first salesman did not think of this own self interest over the long term.

What about an industrialist who decides not to invest in the pollution control equipment to save money.  By not spending on pollution control, he is maximizing his profits.  Well, we are paying the costs in terms of polluted air.  His own health may deteriorate if the air he breathes every day is heavily polluted.  

There is a little “karma” in the story.  When you lie or cheat to maximize your self interest, you also sow the seed for your eventual long term loss.  When you maximize narrowly for yourself without realizing the interconnection between you and others and between you and the environment, you eventually lose somewhere else.  It is like trying to hold a water balloon tightly.  If you press one side hard, it will pop out from the other side. The only way to maximize your self interest over a long term is to follow a “spiritual way” of doing business.  Don’t lie, treat others with respect and honesty.  Think of their interest while thinking about yours.  You can fool some people some of the time but not all the people all the time.  So the long term behavior in your self interest is no different than what the spiritualism will guide you to do.  And in our hindu philosophy we take the long term view almost as an eternity.  With the concept of rebirth the long term view is an eternity.  So if you maximize your self interest over the long term–maybe even the eternity–then you will not cheat, or lie, in short you will be practicing capitalism with a lot spirituality.

Also in our hindu philosophy we believe everything is interconnected.  So if you believe in these two concepts–eternal nature of our souls with karma and a universal consciousness then the only way to conduct business is to be spiritual.

Now let us look at what spiritualism tells us about the world.  Here the advice is to be selfless.  The highest act is to serve others selflessly.  Gita’s central message is to act without selfish desires. So does that mean, that as a capitalist hedge fund manager I can’t follow Gita’s message?  Who can imagine a selfless trader.  Isn’t my goal to make as much profit as I can.  

Time for another story.  Once there was a doctor who was very famous for his skill.  He used to charge Rs 100,000 for every surgery.  But he had a spiritual bent of mind and and used to do a lot of charity. One day the doctor went to an ashram and heard a spiritual discourse.  He thought that this world is all maya and that he wanted to give up his practice.  He started giving all his time to the ashram.  The rich people in the town had to go to another doctor in nearby town.  They still had to pay the Rs 100,000 and all the travel costs.  

By not using his skill was he really helping others.  Maybe he got more peace by being in the ashram, but he did not serve others.  His rich patients who had to go far away.  So in this way, his withdrawal from the world of action was “selfish.”  It only helped his own self image of what he wanted to do.

In Gita, when Arjun drops his bow just before the war of Kurukshetra is to begin and he says,”Is this all for the kingdom?  Why should I kill my cousins, my teachers and my elders.”  Krishna educates him about his dharma.  Teaches him that it is his duty to fight against injustice.  Imagine a soldier on border fighting the terrorists, suddenly developing a feeling that they can not do any violence.  We all have some skills and some capabilities.  And in the roles that we have in our life places certain duties, a certain “dharma” on us.  It is our “dharma” to fulfill our duties with the the skills and capabilities that we have.

The doctor in the story would have done more spiritual service if he had kept doing the work he had the skill to do.  He could even have charged a fair price of Rs 100,000 for his service to the rich people and used the profit to serve the poor.  That would have been more sustainable selfless service.

So spiritualism does not mean withdrawal from action.  It means acting to the best of our ability for the long term welfare of the world.  For you to be able to do the action, you also have to take care of yourself, that is not selfish.  Taking care of your own needs is very spiritual if done with the right understanding. As our spiritual awareness increases, our personal selfish needs automatically reduce to very simple survival needs. When my son was five year old, we bought him an XBox.  He used to love it.  When his cousins would visit, we would encourage him to share the play time with the cousin.  We could not ask him not to play himself as that would have created a lot of jealousy and bitterness in our son.  Now our son is 16 year old, if a young child visits, he is quite happy for the young child to play on the Xbox all day.  He does not need to take turns.  He has developed maturity to realize that he does not need to play xBox to be happy.  Similarly, we are attached to our material possessions, our pride.  As our spiritual awareness increases we start giving up our attachments automatically.  But the other way is not possible.  If you think that just giving up material possessions will help you advance spiritually, it will not. It will lead to a feeling of deprivation and work against your spiritual advancement.  

Spirituality should not deny our needs and desires which are present in your thinking.  Denying needs and desires does not lead to spiritual growth. But the other way is true.  Increasing spiritual growth leads to reduced needs and desires.  A pure standard in which we only work for the welfare for others without ever thinking about our own needs is not achievable by almost anyone.  If a standard can’t be obtained by well meaning, disciplined set of people, then it can’t be a system for the masses.  Any valid system  has to be sustainable, has to be achievable.  For most of us who live with a normal set of family relationships and work in a normal job, our spirituality is not separate from our duty towards our relations and our work.  A truly spiritual man would not be indifferent to their work, their duty, their dharma, while showing compassion to unnamed people far away or doing puja three times a day.

There are some other common points between capitalism and spiritualism.

In spiritualism the self awareness is the highest goal.  This is also one way in which spiritualism is different from organized religion.  In an organized religion, the rituals, the symbols, the shared traditions are the most important, not your personal journey.  In spiritualism your personal growth is important.  If is not about a big puja, but awareness of our interconnection with others that is important.  Similarly, in capitalism self interest is most important.  Not the interest of some external society, bureaucracy or company.  If you work non-stop to increase the profit of your company, but ruin your health and family relations in the process, you are not being a capitalist, you are being a slave of your company.

Capitalism and spiritualism both believe in freedom.  Freedom to pursue your path.  Do what is good for you…do not depend on any external authority.  When there is free enterprise and there is no bureaucrat deciding what is good for businesses and public.  Similarly in true spiritualism there is no pandit, mullah or priest deciding what is good for you.  

When external authorities take control of other people’s welfare, it usually ends up poorly.  See how the socialist bureaucrats handled the economy in Soviet Union or India or Cuba.  Or how the ritualistic priests lead the masses to superstition in India, or how extremists are brainwashing muslims or how the Catholic church misguided the population during inquisition.

So let’s conclude now.  Capitalism says focus on maximizing your self interest. But people don’t understand that their self interest is linked to the interest of others as well as the environment around them.

Spiritualism says be selfless in service to others. But people don’t understand that maximum service can be done if self is sustained and used for what is best suited for–its own dharma.

In the invocation we said–sahna bhunaktu–which means let us prosper together.  That is the essence of both spiritualism and capitalism.  And it is not that you have to sell your ferrari if you are a monk, it is that you will not require a ferrari if you are become a true monk.