Mar 1, 2002, 12.12am IST
SADHU VISHWAMURTIDAS.
The best of countries and corporations are so because they have the best of budgets. it is natural therefore, that many people are concerned about our national budget. but if they spent as much time worrying about their domestic budget as they did about the national one, the world would be a far better place. people remain glued to their television sets for hours, listening carefully to the budget speech. they spend even more time criticising it afterwards. but very few focus inwards to analyse how exactly they have budgeted their own hard-earned money. many of us continue to spend well beyond our income, inviting debts and sometimes bankruptcy. that’s why bhagwan swaminarayan advises in his shikshapatri, ‘‘one should keep a daily record of one’s expenditure and income and should always live within one’s means. all of us, whether rich or poor, should give something to charity’’. this is practical, grassroots budgeting. still fewer people have worked out a ‘life’ budget for themselves. a life budget includes committing time to self, family, society and god. the lives of those who do this become richer - not just financially, but also socially and spiritually. just as a country’s budget must be well balanced for its economy to be healthy, life’s budget too has to be well balanced for life to be lived fruitfully. many corporate executives invest all their time and effort in pursuing their careers and climbing the professional ladder. when they reach the summit however, most realise it wasn’t really worth all the toil. they discover that their victory is empty and that they won it at an irreparable loss to their health, family and psyche: incurring obesity, heart disease and fatigue on the physiological front; separated spouse, estranged children and uncared for parents on the familial front; frustration, depression and stress on the physio-psychological front. in the us, canada, china and japan, this phenomenon has resulted in a tragic burgeoning of suicides and cardiovascular and cancer-related deaths. the royal bank of canada devoted one of its monthly letters to this problem with the title, ‘let’s slow down’. ‘‘we are victims of mounting tension’’, it enunciated. ‘‘we have difficulty relaxing: we are not living fully’’. for many in india too, life has taken on these contours, and living it is rather like going downhill in a truck without brakes. but it is still not too late. the world health organisation (who) predicts that stress will be the number one killer in the world by 2020. and stress is usually nothing more than an individual’s failure to balance his lifestyle. living life in a healthy manner and living it fully means we have to maintain regular food habits and follow a sensible diet, regular exercise and rest, going out with family, working for charity and spending time in self-reflection, meditation and prayer. there is only one way to survive overwork or burnout: be brave and bail out or you will be a loser. life’s rat race only produces losers. it has no winners. even if it does, the winner is still a rat. and usually a very large one. a great sage asked a prosperous king, ‘‘if you were about to die of thirst and starvation and someone offered you a glass of water and a loaf of bread in exchange for your wealth and kingdom, would you give them to him?’’ ‘‘of course i would’’, replied the king. ‘‘anybody would’’. ‘‘then why’’, asked the sage, ‘‘have you wasted your entire life amassing all this land and wealth when they are worth no more to you than a glass of water and a loaf of bread?’’ consider deeply the value of your life. in the us, compensation for an injured knee is approximately $200,000. then what to say for a damaged brain, injured eye, amputated leg, broken marriage or a mental breakdown? no price can be put on these things. what price, then, can we put on the entire, fully functioning human body? human life is priceless. god has bequeathed this limitless treasure trove to all. and as diversification is one of the secrets to successful investment, so is it the secret to a joyous and blessed life. reach into your soul, and reach out to your family, society and god. budget well.
(the author is resident at shree swaminarayan temple, dadar, mumbai. www.swaminarayan.org)
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