We were driving and passed the Jaguar dealership. The latest model sports sedan on display was magnificent in form and style. I commented that the price tag to own one in the Philippines must be well over a hundred thousand dollars including the luxury taxes. It’s worth it for such a sleek precision engineered automobile. However the Toyota Camry would handle with the same zip and flourish minus the muscle and the verve for less than half the cost. That kind of extravagance would be more attuned to a sensitive social conscience in the light of the poverty of many people in our own country and other parts of the globe.
Regis Josef Dolor Leveriza, my youngest son and child who newly graduated from college, rightly countered that that the wealthy are entitled to use their abundant resources as they wish. If they can afford to buy a Ferrari it is their every right to do so. A Ferrari would cost nearly a million dollars in the Philippines. I ventured that such profligate spending would be morally off tangent because of the famine and disease scourging the destitute sectors of society. To be opulent is to have a corollary responsibility to be a custodian of the earth’s resources for the benefit of all the planet’s inhabitants through proper usage.
Regis brushed aside the generalities and strove to be specific and clear. He said Dad if I had a hundred million dollars and gave away fifty million to charity and bought a Ferrari from the funds I retained for myself would there be anything wrong with me owning the Ferrari? I said if that were the case, then in your specific example, there would be absolutely nothing objectionable about you owning the Ferrari. In such a case you would be a prime and shining example of responsible ownership of wealth that deserves to be emulated by the rest of the world. Except for one thing that doesn’t seem to fit in the Divine Plan of the Abba Krishna.
“What’s that?” Regis asked. We are not supposed to triumph or be enlightened separately from the rest of humankind. The Ferrari owners who donated half of their fortune to charity have in fact a higher responsibility. “More responsibilities than sharing half of your possessions?” Regis was incredulous. I said there are gifted monkeys who can work the computer but they still belong to the world of chimps. There are animals of the animal kingdom that surpass the limits of their kind but still belong to the animal kingdom. It is the responsibility of all intelligent men to grow wealthy and use that economic power to work for the advancement of all humankind as a whole. It is the duty of all enlightened men like in the case you cited to pass on that enlightenment to the rest of the world.
That is the one world integration in spirit and in love which will propel the advance of the human genus to the technological millennium. The paradigm shift from individualism and selfishness to a selfless unity and harmony in a one world government and structure will key the leap of humankind to explore the vast frontiers of outer space. Under the love and light of the Almighty Father God , the Abba Krishna, the scientific breakthroughs to overcome death, aging, and physical limitation in travel will be revealed to us predicated on our progress to finally solve wars and remedy want that stem from individual greed. We are our brother’s keeper and through love which demolishes selfishness and hate we will assume the God-like nature that the Abba Krishna bestowed in all of us as the final evolvement to comprehend and rightly use the technological and genetic advances that will bring about the conquest of the universe and be reunited with the Abba Krishna Who created us in His image.
Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Abba Krishna
O Most Holy Almighty God the Father in Heaven, the Abba Krishna
I love You
Hare Krishna, Hare Rama, Abba Krishna
