Gambling

The first sinful activity is gambling. By Vedic standards, gambling is taken to mean not only betting with money over games or sporting events, but also speculative, dishonest or illicit business dealings. The primary result of such activities is excessive material attachment due to increased greed and avarice. Other results are loss of mental equilibrium because of anxiety, suffering of the participants because of loss, and an increase of dishonesty and cheating that destroys the elevating quality of truthfulness. People gamble because they are attracted by the excitement of risk and the possibility of material gain, but the resulting excessive attachment eliminates the possibility of liberating the eternal soul from material entanglements, and it also causes dishonesty, enmity and even violence in social relationships.

The gambling propensity extends itself even into the sphere of religion and spiritual life when men want to understand or explain spiritual matters and revealed scriptures on the strength of their speculative abilities although they have no factual experience of spiritual reality. One should try to understand spiritual life only by hearing receptively from tose who appear to be fully self-realized spiritual masters. If one instead chooses to rely on his own cleverness, even though he is fallible in every way, he is gambling away the valuable spiritual opportunity of human life.