Importance of giving

Acts of charity are important, because giving to others takes away our sins. That is why when Yaksa in Mahabharata asks Yudishtra who is the best friend of a person about to die, Yudishtra says that acts of charity

constitute one’s best friend at such a time, explained V.S. Karunakarachariar, in a discourse.

Money is not earned without our making mistakes. And where huge wealth is involved, the sins are bigger. Kshemendra tells a story of a traveller, who visited a rest house in Varanasi. But before eating there, he asked to see the kitchen. When he was taken to the

kitchen, he said he could not eat there, because there was a dead body there! But there was nothing of the sort in the kitchen. A year later, the same man came to the rest house and said there was a skeleton in the
kitchen and so he could not eat there. The visitor came again a year later, and went into the kitchen and said that it was now clean. He then told the owner of the inn that every day a thousand people had eaten in the rest house. So in three years, ten lakh people had eaten
there. The rich owner of the inn, had, in the course of amassing wealth, sinned grievously. His sins had been wiped out only by his providing food to so many people. So until his sins had been atoned for, the visitor had seen a body and a skeleton there. Thus, one way to atone for our sins is to be generous.
When it comes to giving, we should keep in mind our mortality and not postpone acts of charity.