People often ask me how to get rich. The answer: perform  lots of merit in your past life,   and you’ll be rich in this life.

What?

To be born rich without work, like a Paris Hilton, means that you performed lots of acts of charity and merit in past lives, and the karmic fortune or return for those acts finally appears in this life. That’s why you’re born especially blessed– it’s all cause and effect, and nothing more.  Or those karmic returns  can be spread out over several lives (whatever is necessary to make all karmic debts or imbalances repaid), but it’s all past karma nonetheless. No one can say you don’t deserve it; people can only criticize what you do with it.

So that’s why Paris Hiltonis rich, blond, thin, good looking. A little wiffy in the head, but these are the karmic results of many lives of merit. Mother Theresa, who passed away the same week as Princess Diana, will be reborn quite well off as well. Why? She perfromed great acts of hard work, sacrifice, virtue and merit on behalf of others.

Here’s the problem though. Two problems, that is: 

(1) If you’re rich and dumb, you drop. 

(2) If you squander your chance to perform even more acts of charity during a lifetime of wealth and riches, you basically burn up your merit and squander your wealth.

Guess which case poor dear Paris is in?

As my teacher always says, be careful who you teach merit making to. Don’t teach merit making to the really dumb or stupid or unwise because they’ll blindly/ignorantly sacrifice themselves doing good deeds ("let me become a missionary in Africa for Jesus") and then be reborn rich and powerful, but still without wisdom. Then, with great resources at hand, they’ll create all sorts of trouble in society due to their lack of wisdom. Witness powerful and high up government officials who are as dumb as molasses, but their safe position is the merit of past lives’ work for others.

That’s case 1. It’s easy to be reborn rich, but hard to be reborn with wisdom as it takes many lives of cultivation and study.

Case 2 — Now you’re rich but your life is one of conspicious consumption and enjoyment, and hardly anything goes towards merit making. You’re just burning up your stock of merit, that’s all. Next life won’t be so well. What a stupid fool — you finally have a chance to relieve the suffering sof others, and now you squander that opportunity and use up your accumulated stock of merit in one go. You should be reinvesting it so that next life you have even greater opportunities to do good and sponsor the wise, talented and capable who can help.

Another example: Thousands of actors compete for the same roles in movies and on stage. Why this guy or girl wins the role rather than that one? Because in past lives they performed for free, or as offerings for others, and so forth. They can be great, great actors or singers because of many lives of acting performances and training, but without that voluntary offering they may not be as popular as someone else….or even make money at their craft. 

Skill levels do not necessarily equate with popularity, or income levels. It’s all a function of merit.

As my teacher explained, a Michael Jackson probably made offerings of music and song over countless lives. His skills become great, but those offerings are what produced his popularity. Everything is tied together.

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