Advice to Businessmen
There is a business ethics and
a businessman should practice this ethics. Only then he will not be affected by
sin. Only then he will prosper.
People say that one will have
to tell lies in business if he wants to prosper. This is a serious mistake.
Those who are strictly honest and truthful will flourish in business. More
customers will go to them only, as they are truthful in their dealings.
If you enter a cloth-
merchant’s shop, he says first that one yard costs Rs. 8/-, then bargaining or
haggling goes on for one or two hours. At last he comes down to Rs 1.50 per
yard. This sort of business goes on in most of the business-houses. Cheating
and falsehood are the basic traits of a businessman. His conscience has been
blunted by covetousness and dishonesty. He is miserable in this world despite
his wealth and possessions and will be unhappy in the next world also, because
he is not leading a moral life. He does not know what he is exactly doing, as
his understanding is clouded. He who tells lies and cheats others is leading an
immoral life. He is also an immoral man in the broad sense of the term.
A manufacturer mixes small
stones in the wheat. Another businessman adulterates ghee, flour and other
foodstuffs. The carpenter uses inferior quality of wood and charges the price
of the best wood. A contractor uses third-class bricks and charges for
first-class bricks, etc. These are all instances of cheating.
What is this glittering
prosperity in the business, after all? To eat a little delicious food, to move
in a car, to become a Municipal Councilor cannot give you everlasting
happiness. This is not the goal of life. This is a foolish man’s idea of
happiness. Quite puerile indeed! These are all toys of ignorant children. Wise
people will laugh at these things.
Earn your bread by honest
means. Dishonesty and cheating will bring on you incurable diseases like
cancer, tuberculosis, ulcer in the stomach, fistula, deafness, dumbness,
blindness, burning in the heart and feet, and deformity of limbs in your next birth.
Action and reaction are equal and opposite. You will have to suffer in your
next birth for every wrong deed you commit in this birth. Be careful in your
thought, speech and action. Be good and do good. Understand the law of cause
and effect.
Spend one-tenth of your income
in charity. Charity covers multitude of sins. Do regular charity. Merely giving
a few rupees in charity occasionally when you are in distress, is not
praiseworthy.
Take a moderate and reasonable
profit. Be truthful and honest in your dealings. Do not smother and kill your
conscience. Keep your conscience ever clean and pure. Do abundant charity. You
can prosper in your business. You will not be tainted and corrupted by
business. Goddess Lakshmi will ever dwell with you.
Do Satyanarayana
Katha every full-moon day. Help social and religious institutions. Open
Sanskrit schools and Ayurvedic dispensaries, hospitals, girls’ schools, free
primary schools. Dig wells in the villages. Construct Sankirtan Bhavans. Let
your profit be well utilized in charitable purposes. You will earn great merit.
You will be happy here and in the next world.
If you are ever conscious that
the Lord or the Indweller is witnessing your thoughts and actions, if you
really have understood the law of cause and effect, you will not dare to do any
wrong deed, you will try to avoid evil action and gradually minimize your wrong
deeds.
If you have really understood
the Vedantic truth of oneness you will not try to deceive others. In deceiving
others you deceive yourself. In helping others you help yourself. There is only
one Self in all beings. That is the only Reality.
Excerpts from:
Advice to
Businessmen by Swami Sivananda
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