In the old city of Patan there lived a merchant named Jagatchandra. He was wealthy. His warehouses overflowed with bales of silk and sacks of grain. His clerks ran from one ledger to another, balancing accounts long into the night. One day a wandering muni rested under the neem tree at the corner of his market. The merchant invited him for the midday meal and, as the muni took his single bowl of dal-roti, asked him: "Maharaj-saheb, I work from sunrise to sunset. I keep an account of every paisa. I have made myself the richest man in three districts. Tell me — is there any account I have failed to keep?" The muni did not answer at once. He finished his meal. He washed his hands. Then he said, "Sheth, you keep a careful account of your money. But have you ever kept an account of your breaths?" The merchant laughed. "My breaths? Maharaj, no one counts breaths." "Yet," said the muni gently, "money you can earn again. A house you can build again. A breath, once gone, cannot be brought back. And the day will come when you have a thousand rupees in your pocket and not a single breath left in your chest." The merchant grew quiet. That night he sat for the first time in his own pooja-room. He did not count his ledgers. He counted his breaths — slow, in and out — and remembered the Navkar Mantra. From that day he began to make sure that each breath was spent on something the next world would also accept.