The Giving of Gifts

From The Mahabharata
Anusasana Parva, Section LVII
Translated by sri Kisari Mohan Ganguli

By making gifts one acquires all kinds of enjoyable articles. By making gifts one simply increases one’s wealth. By making gifts one acquires great fame in consequence of one’s high achievements.
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From The Mahabharata
Anusasana Parva, Section CXXII
Translated by sri Kisari Mohan Ganguli

Those who make gifts obtain happiness hereafter and much prosperity here.
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From The Mahabharata
Anusasana Parva, Section CXLI
Translated by Sri Kisari Mohan Ganguli

Maheswara said(to Uma):

The householder should always make gifts according to the measure of his power. He should also perform sacrifices frequently after the same manner. Indeed, he who wishes to achieve his own good should always achieve meritorious acts. The householder should acquire wealth by righteous means. The wealth thus acquired should be carefully divided into three portions, keeping the requirements of righteousness in view. With one of those portions he should accomplish all acts of righteousness. With another he should seek to gratify his cravings for pleasure. The third portion he should lay out for increasing.
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(The following are extracts from the writings of Catherine Ponder)

The prosperity secret of the ages is that giving can make you rich! The Hebrews, one of the wealthiest groups the world has ever known, credit their wealth over the centuries to their use of this prosperity idea: you will be made rich by giving.

Many of our modern millionaires have used this prosperity secret and have often pointed it out as the formula that brought them riches.

Giving can make you rich for when you systematically give, you open the way to systematically receive. But when you do not give, you stagnate, dam up, and close many channels to your prosperity.

Perhaps you are thinking, “But I do give every cent I can find to pay the bills and to keep going financially.” Yet there is another kind of giving you must know about and practise in order to prosper. When you practise this other type of giving, putting it first in your financial affairs, then divine order will come into your finances. You will find yourself prospered in both expected and unexpected ways. Your money will begin to go further, and other financial surprises will come forth so that it becomes easier and easier for you to pay the bills and ‘get ahead financially’.

The ancients, who knew the wisdom of the ages, understood the nature of universal substance out of which all wealth is created. They knew that by consistently giving, you move on universal substance, forming a vacuum which substance then rushes to fill with new supply. That is the nature of substance: it abhors a vacuum and always rushes to fill it. Giving in order to make room to receive is a scientific method that always works to prosper those who use it consistently. It can work for you too!

(The air we breathe fills the lungs. If we do not give out stale air, if we do not make room to receive fresh air, if we do not create the vacuum by expelling the stale air, then the supply of new fresh air cannot rush in.)

This is a giving universe. You have to constantly give in order to constantly receive, because the universe is constantly giving to you. If you do not balance the act of receiving by giving voluntarily in some good and happy way, the universe will force you to give in some unhappy way. But give you must!

“By making gifts one simply increases one’s wealth.” (Mahabharata, Anusasana Parva, Section LVII);

“Give and it shall be given unto you” (Luke, 6:38);

works whether you want it to or not. Where there is no voluntary giving, something is taken from you. People who think they cannot afford to give constructively and freely have to give anyway, destructively and involuntarily – to doctors and hospitals for their ill health; to lawyers fir their accidents, legal and business problems; to accountants and to the Internal Revenue Service for their income tax problems; and in other undesirable ways. If you do not give voluntarily of your financial resources, you can expect that body ailments, financial entanglements, human relations problems, and general confusion in your affairs will follow.

When you see a person who has constant problems of ill health, financial difficulties, family inharmony, general confusion and dissatisfaction in his life, not only is he not thinking right, but neither is he giving right. Where there is no voluntary giving, something is taken from them!

You cannot cheat the basic law of the universe, which is giving and receiving. It works regardless of your attitude towards it. You can only cheat yourself out of much health, wealth and happiness by trying to foolishly bypass it.

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