Bhaja Govindam, Chapter 2

॥ mūḍha jahīhi dhanāgamatṛṣṇāṃ kuru sadbuddhiṃ manasi vitṛṣṇām | yallabhase nijakarmopāttaṃ vittaṃ tena vinodaya cittam || 2||

Translation: O deluded one! Give up your craving for accumulating wealth. Free your mind of craving and fill it instead with thoughts of the truth. Whatever wealth you earn through honest effort, let that be enough to keep your mind content.

The Hundred-Rupee Problem

Give someone with nothing a hundred rupees, and they'll want a thousand. Give them a thousand, and they'll want a hundred thousand. Give them that, and suddenly they want to be a minister, or a king, or the ruler of the whole earth. It doesn't stop there either. Kings have wanted to be gods, and gods have wanted to be greater gods.

This isn't a flaw in a few greedy people. It's just how craving works. So the question is never really “how much is enough,” because there is no amount that satisfies a craving. The craving is the thing that needs addressing, not the number attached to it.

It's Not the Money. It's the Wanting

Here's an important distinction: no one is against money itself. Wealth pays for food, shelter, clothing, and the responsibilities you carry for the people who depend on you. Without it, ordinary life doesn't function. Nobody's being asked to renounce their paycheck.

What's being pointed at instead is craving, that restless itch that keeps reaching past what you actually need, driven less by necessity and more by a kind of quiet insecurity. It's the difference between earning what supports your life and chasing more because some part of you believes more will finally make you feel safe. Money can't do that job. It was never built for it.

The Millionaire Who Had Nothing

There's a story about a poor man who visits a saint and asks to be shown the path to becoming rich. The saint offers him a million dollars for his eyes. The man refuses. A million for his arms? He refuses again. A million for his legs? Now he's offended by the question. In a few minutes, the saint makes his point: the man is already sitting on a fortune. He just never counts it as one, because his attention is fixed entirely on what he doesn't have.

That's most of us. We can list everything missing from our lives without effort, but ask us to list what we already have, and it takes a minute to even get started. The list turns out to be long too. It's just been sitting there, uncounted, because our focus has been pointed the wrong direction the whole time.

Why the Mind Can't Face Two Ways at Once

There's a simple, almost mechanical reason craving gets in the way of anything deeper: the mind can only really focus in one direction at a time, either outward, toward acquiring things, or inward, toward stillness and clarity. Not both simultaneously.

People often say they can sit down to pray or meditate and simply can't concentrate. But the missing ingredient usually isn't discipline, it's that the mind is still busy running its outward errands: replaying what it wants, doesn't have, or is afraid of losing. You can't circle inward and outward at the same time, the same way you can't walk two directions on the same road. As long as craving is steering, stillness stays out of reach, not because you're failing at it, but because the mind is occupied elsewhere.

So What's the Actual Instruction Here?

Not “stop earning” and not “stop wanting things ever again.” The instruction is narrower and more workable: earn honestly, and then let that be enough to make your mind happy. Not because ambition is wrong, but because contentment with what your own effort has produced is what frees your attention to turn inward at all.

This isn't the same as passivity either. You still work, still act, still pursue what you need. The shift is in what happens after the effort is made. Do you keep chasing the next number, or do you actually let yourself land on what you've got? Contentment, in this sense, isn't the opposite of effort. It's the opposite of craving. You can work hard and still be at peace with the result. Those two things are never in conflict; craving is what makes it feel like they are.

Doesn't Contentment Kill Ambition?

This is the objection that comes up almost every time: if I'm content, won't I stop trying? Isn't dissatisfaction what pushes people to grow?

There's some truth in that, for material progress. Discontent can absolutely fuel more effort, more acquisition, more striving. But that's a different kind of progress than the one being pointed to here. Inner growth, the kind that actually settles something in you, doesn't come from restlessness. It comes from a mind that's finally quiet enough to look inward, instead of endlessly patrolling its own list of wants.

You don't have to choose between working hard and being at peace. You just have to stop needing the outcome to be bigger than it is before you'll let yourself be okay with it.

The Bottom Line

Earn what you need to, through honest effort, and don't feel guilty about having money. The problem is never wealth. It's the craving that keeps reaching past what you have, convinced the next amount will finally be enough. It won't, because craving doesn't run out on its own; it just changes shape. Let what your own effort brings you be sufficient to keep your mind at ease, and you'll find the attention you've been spending on wanting more is suddenly free to turn toward something steadier.

Based on the teachings of Swami Viditatmananda