Intelligent Businessman

Once there was a businessman who had a flourishing business. He was a rich man with all the amenities of life. He had a beautiful family with lovely children. He was living a happy life when suddenly due to bad luck he had a big loss in business. Loss was such that he had to mortgage everything & ultimately lost his home also. All the members of the family, especially his wife started weeping at the loss of business & home but the businessman was not perplexed & was as calm as usual.

Seeing her husband so unconcerned about everything, said to him: "There is so big a problem that has come upon all of us but you are not worried at all; your heart seems to be that of a stone!! You don’t care that we have lost even our beautiful home also." At this the man said, "O.K. now I shall tell you why I am not worried? Last night, I dreamt that I had become an exalted king, I was having a palace of gold & was having everything of life, enjoying life to the fullest when you woke me up. Now I am really wondering whether I should weep for that Kingly status & a palace of gold or to the loss in life that has occurred to us.”

The businessman was really an intelligent man & knew philosophical truth that the waking state is as unreal as the dream state. Loss & gain in wakeful state are as real & as unreal as it is in dream state. Both does not remain forever. Only real thing is the one eternal substance, and that is the Self or Atman which never changes. In fact what we call life is nothing but a prolonged state of dream only which dissolves at the end of life.

This dream body of ours is not true as it dissolves when we wake up & dream state is over. Similarly this gross physical body of ours is also not permanent & true as it dissolves at the time of death. But our Self, our Soul which is beyond any type of body, is real & true as it remains even when dream or gross physical body is dissolved. Below verses of Bhagwat Gita says about this truth only.

"na-asato vidyate bhavo
nabhavo vidyate satah
ubhayor api drsto ’ntas
tv anayos tattva-darshibhih" (Bhagwat Gita: Chapter Two verse 16)

"Sri Krishna said: The unreal has no existence, and the real (Soul) never ceases to be; the reality of both has thus been perceived by the seers of the truth."

As per Bhagwat Gita we should not get disturbed in life due to success or failure in it. We should remain calm at mind in all circumstances. Below are few verse which explain that.

"yoga-sthah kuru karmani
sangam tyaktva dhananjaya
siddhy-asiddhyoh samo bhutva
samatvam yoga ucyate" (Bhagwat Gita: Chapter Two verse 48)

"Sri Krishna said: Perform your duty equi-poised, O Arjuna, abandoning all attachment to success or failure. Such an equanimity is called yoga."

"samah satrau cha mitre cha
tatha manapamanayoh
sitosna-sukha-duhkhesu
samah sanga-vivarjitah"

"tulya-ninda-stutir mauni
santusto yena kenacit
aniketah sthira-matir
bhaktiman me priyo narah" (Bhagwat Gita: Chapter Twelve verse 18-19)

"Sri Krishna said: O Arjuna, One who is equal to friends and enemies, who is equipoised in honor and dishonor, heat and cold, happiness and distress, fame and infamy, who is always free from contaminating association, always silent and satisfied with anything, who doesn’t care for any residence, who is fixed in knowledge and who is engaged in devotional service—such a person is very dear to Me."

So we should have such an attitude in life that we do not get perturbed in all the conditions, whether it is success or failure, loss or gain. We should be equipoised in life. As per Bhagwat Gita such an equipoise person in life can only know the real truth of life.

Jai Sri Krishna