Spirituality in Business: Trust in Money?

In his book The Garden of Bliss, Shalom Arush continues the topic of trust in the Almighty, versus trust in the "almighty dollar" (a topic of his bestseller The Garden of Emuna). Re-iterating some of his earlier points, Arush writes that it all starts at the beginning of the year, Rosh ha-Shana:

A basic principle of Emuna* is the foundation of all financial dealings, commerce, business and income, namely, that each person’s entire income is predetermined from Rosh Hashanah (New Year Day) for the entire year.

The practical application of this principle is to trust Hashem.** We know that it is the responsibility of the Creator to provide for all of His creations. One can certainly trust The Creator to fulfill His*** responsibility. Therefore, a person will undoubtedly receive all that is predetermined for him, regardless of his efforts, wisdom or even righteousness. In addition, no person can in interfere with what is coming to another, or detract in any way from what was determined in Heaven, as our Rabbis said, "A person cannot touch what is prepared for his friend."

Only when a person understands this principle, believing in it with full and simple belief, can he feel totally secure in all his financial matters, and successfully pass all the Emuna tests, with calmness and happiness, without getting angry or impatient and without committing theft or fraud.

On a practical level, a person who has trust in Hashem does not think about money. He knows Hashem provides, and dwells on it no further. His entire mindset in matters of income can be summarized in two words: Hashem provides.

What is predetermined for you – you will receive.

The entire world is a series of Emuna tests. At every moment, the businessman is undergoing a test – whether to believe that his income is predetermined in Heaven or to believe that it depends on his own efforts. If he chooses the former, he feels calm and happy and conducts all of his dealings in a fair and righteous manner. If on the other hand, he chooses the latter belief, that his income depends on his own efforts, he feels nervous and pressured to continually increase his efforts and ploys in seeking money, even resorting to dishonesty and outright fraud.

Everything depends on the simple faith that all of a person’s income is predetermined with precision in Heaven. He simply must choose the channel though which to receive his blessings. He may choose a golden pipe – a righteous manner, which comes with happiness and calmness, or a sewer pipe, which comes with stress, strife and fraud.

With no emuna, a person in business is easily tempted to violate laws, both Torah and civil. This life is Purgatory leads to complications of shady deals, debts, and a life fraught with worry and difficulty.

Trust in money is a trap that many aspiring business people fall into. Driven by lust to expand their businesses and make more money, they make severe mistakes and miscalculations, often failing to see that their expenditures are more that the profits. Sometimes they increase sales by recklessly undercutting their competition. Ultimately, blinded from their cash turnover when in actuality they’re losing money, they collapse under the weight of tremendous debts.

Obviously, the above scenario is the outcome of faulty emuna, when a person fails to run his business with good judgment, not letting things run the way that Hashem wants, which means, with whatever resources that Hashem provides. A person with emuna understands that if Hashem wants him to invest a lot of money, Hashem would have given him the full sum. He’s not foolish enough to think that Hashem is low on funds or that He needs financing, or maybe a killer-interest loan from a loan shark. If Hashem gave him a smaller amount than he wants to invest, it’s a sign that Hashem wants that he should run his business on a smaller scale. There will a Divine blessing on the small business, and he would be able to continue and do additional business. But without emuna, a person thinks that large investments will yield bigger profits, therefore he puts himself in great danger. He invests other people’s money in a business that won’t necessarily succeed. And even if it will succeed – it is doubtful whether he will be able to repay the loans that he incurred because of this business.

- The Garden of Bliss by Shalom Arush (translated by Lazer Brody)

* "Emuna" - a term denoting belief, conviction (especially in God and divine providence).

** "Hashem" - a Hebrew way of referring to God (lit. "the name").

*** While God is often described with masculine language, this is merely a human convention, as God does not have any gender, of course.

American Wisdom: The American Sense of Fact

We continue our series on Lin Yutang's masterpiece on American culture, "On The Wisdom Of America," with Yutang's presentation of a certain philosophical trend towards ungrounded abstractions, contrasted with a certain trend in American thought towards more solid conclusions found through experience and intuition:

One of the most remarkable and clearest facts about American thought is the strong American sense of fact. It would gladly sell its tons of encased philosophic systems for a strong touch of the fluidity of experience. It feels the ground cautiously as it advances and is not likely to accept or worship an Idea until its fingers can close around it, and test its color, texture, weight, and worth for possible manufacturing purposes. From Emerson to James, Santayana, and Dewey, it is all the same story. Take the famous question whether I exist, perhaps the idlest of all philosophic questions. Descartes proved the thinker by his thinking. How on earth, one may ask, did Descartes, who could not on prima jade evidence accept his existence as real, believe that his thinking was? That was the beginning of the dark ages of European philosophy, for even a European philosopher who denied his body accepted his consciousness without question as the final fact, and proceeded to build a universe entirely out of that consciousness, until with some maternal pride, it recognized the universe as its own child. The natural upshot or conclusion is, of course, that the universe exists in me, and not I in it.

How did some of the American minds respond to such preposterous German idealism? The facts are rather encouraging. In 1820, Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams, "Let me turn to your puzzling letter of May the 12th, on matter, spirit, motion, etc. Its crowd of skepticisms kept me from sleep, I read it, and laid it down; read it, and laid it down, again and again; and to give rest to my mind, I was obliged to recur ultimately to my habitual anodyne, I feel, therefore I exist!" That statement, the emphasis on feeling, is one of the most reassuring things in a nation that was destined for a fructifying and abundant existence. In 1848, Henry Thoreau wrote to Harrison Blake, "I am simply what I am, or I begin to be that. I live in the present. I only remember the past and anticipate the future. I love to live ... I know that I am." In 1854, Walt Whitman wrote ("Song of Myself"), "And I know I am solid and sound ... I exist as I am that is enough. If no other in the world be aware, I sit content. And if each and all be aware, I sit content." Those utterances, I think, are significant of the true American spirit. Probably Justice Holmes in his essay "Ideals and Doubts" sums up the position best. "If the world were my dream, I should be God in the only universe I know. But although I cannot prove that I am awake, I believe that my neighbors exist in the same sense that I do, and if I admit that, it is easy to admit also that I am in the universe, and not it in me. When I say that a thing is true, I mean that I cannot help believing it. But as there are many things that I cannot help doing that the universe can, I do not venture to assume that my inabilities in the way of thought are inabilities of the universe. I therefore define truth as the system of my limitations, and leave absolute truth for those who are better equipped." That is good enough for any American, as it is good enough for me. Elsewhere, in the essay on "Natural Law," Holmes signifies his content with this position. "If we believe that we come out of the universe, not it out of us, we must admit that we do not know what we are talking about when we speak of brute matter. . . . Why should we not be content? Why should we employ the energy that is furnished us by the cosmos to defy it and shake our fist at the sky? It seems to me silly."

The wise, thoughtful American is wistful enough. He shows a certain impatience with theories as such. The most famous case is perhaps that of Emerson. Emerson had no system, was notoriously without it, the critics say. It makes it somewhat hard for Paul Elmer More to trace the influence of Goethe, Kant, Fichte, and Schelling. Conceivably, if Emerson had been able to outline his thought into a speculative system the very thought of it is unthinkable it would help nobody except some postgraduate student to write a doctoral dissertation with greater ease and precision. But what would have happened to Emerson the thinker then? Emerson's thoughts, which were always fluid and in open and intimate touch with reality, would have become all "solid," and his universe with it which would have scared William James. What they gained in sharpness of outline they would have lost in fluidity and the varied contact with the fresh experiences of life. Far better his impatience, his distractions, his refusal to yield final ground and become solidified! The adjectives Santayana applied to William James may well fit Emerson; he was "restless, spasmodic, and self-interrupted," lest the real life escape and we become encased in a dead car cass of a system where rigor mortis has set in. Perpetually dissatisfied, perpetually afraid of not having the whole truth and suspicious that the facets of truth served up by classificatory systems were only slices of reality, Emerson was famous for interrupting himself. He was for ever distracted, though by nothing except real life itself. What troubled him was the sight of a girl passing in the street, and being a Yankee, he felt he had to square his thought with such a reality, such a piece of life. He speaks his mind most clearly on this subject in his essay "Nominalist and Realist," where at the end he makes a confession of his mental processes. "There is nothing we cherish and strive to draw to us but in some hour we turn and rend it. We keep a running fire of sarcasm at ignorance and the life of the senses; then goes by, perchance, a fair girl, a piece of life, gay and happy, and making the commonest offices beautiful by the energy and heart with which she does them; and seeing this we admire and love her and them, and say, Lo! a genuine creature of the fair earth, not dissipated or too early ripened by books, philosophy, religion, society, or care! insinuating a treachery and contempt for all we had so long loved and wrought in ourselves and others." That was why when Emerson came out of the conventicle or the reform meeting, or out of the rapturous atmosphere of the lecture room, he heard nature whispering to him, "Why so hot, little sir?" That little whisper, "Why so hot, little sir?" was the salvation of Emerson, as it was of William James later.

Is Your Path The Way Of Peace?

In a world of negativity where it seems that it becomes easy to fall under the shade of war and hostility, there is always peace to brighten up our paths. When we have peace in ourselves, it spreads through our actions and thoughts onto others and thus fixing this planet one person at a time.

Below is a warm article relating the aspects of peace with our personal lives and the lives of our fellow brothers and sisters. Deepak Chopra gives simple tips on how to get a clear outlook on peace in our world today by saying:

If people could achieve satisfaction without destruction, I believe they would. Millions of us want to live without destruction already. Now we are looking for a way to make our will and desire more powerful than war. Fortunately, that isn’t complicated.

For further reading, see the article at Care2.