Inner Clarity in Business (Part Two)

by Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters)

from Cities of Light: A Plan for this Age, Copyright Hansa Trust

(continued from Part One) Ananda has bought, or created, many other businesses. All of them are successful, and for the same reasons of spiritual principles applied to situations where, normally, the sole motive would have been profit. What those principles applied to profit revealed was that an enterprise is profitable not only if it earns money, but also if it repays those running it in terms of greater inner happiness, expanded sympathies, and a sense of usefulness and service to a higher cause. In each of the Ananda businesses, the same basic principles are conscientiously followed.

In an Ananda medical clinic, for example, the doctors and nurses begin each day with a prayer for their patients. While treating the patients as they come in, they try to channel God’s healing energy to them, and not only to pass on medical information and advice.

Ananda businesses have included a women’s clothing store and boutique, a restaurant and health food store, a woodworking shop, a home builders guild, a market, a publishing house, a recording studio, a car repair shop, shoemaking, artistic design, promotions, and many others. Some businesses are community owned; others are owned by individuals.

There is no problem with starting one’s own business, provided it doesn’t involve activity or products that are out of harmony with the basic principles of the community.

A number of members work outside the Ananda community structure, in nearby towns and cities. Some of them travel around the country in pursuance of their own professions, perhaps as lecturers, or writers, or in a number of other capacities.

All members and businesses pay a certain amount monthly to the community to help with Ananda’s maintenance and development. Every effort is made by the community to work with those who, for a time, are not able to pay. Helpfulness to them includes assisting them to find work.

Applying spiritual principles to business means exercising clarity in the normal business sense also. In this case, however, clarity assumes a spirit of freshness and creativity, and is not limited to the practical logic of bookkeeping.

The Creator of universes displays infinite creativity. New ways should be sought, similarly, to serve Him in this world with high, joyful, but realistically manifested energy. Graceful but meaningless gestures in the name of spirituality have little or no part to play in a truly spiritual life.

The roots of spirituality, of course, are deep, inner devotion to God, a desire to please Him and to serve Him selflessly, and, at last, to be united with Him in His love. These deeper feelings, however, are not for outward show. Outwardly, they manifest themselves in kindness, friendly concern, compassion, and all the qualities that have made our businesses at Ananda the rendezvous for people from many walks of life—people who feel they are receiving something real, even if they don’t always know exactly what it is.