One of the Dharma teachers told me that Channel Four television will start in the autumn a kind of Thought for the Day. Every morning for five minutes on BBC Radio 4 news, there is Thought for the Day offered by a person from one of the religions. Channel Four will invite people involved in religion to speak to the camera for two minutes on different issues. One issue will be money.
If you were to write up to 250 words on our relationship to money and how much money do we need, what would you write? I wrote this piece for the blog.
The desire for money, the pursuit of greater income, the priority on acquisition of goods and pleasure robs the heart of love. Thoughts about how much do I need to be earn to be happy function as a virus, a naive speculation that denies finding an abundant life. Love of wealth, the neurotic idea that more money, makes us happy stems from an unexamined life, the plaything of false dreams, the pettiness of secular culture, and the imprisonment of the self to the forlorn idea that prosperity determines a successful life.
A 60 year businessman came on a Buddhist weekend retreat with me here in the UK. With head in hands, he started to cry. “I’ve wasted my life. I have had one priority to make as much money as possible.” I agreed with him. A wasted life. His realisation conveyed the opportunity for a fresh vision of life.
The potential for an inner revolution arises when we want little, earn enough for basic needs, free from indulgence and superficiality. We have made the rich and shameless the gods of our culture rather than treating them as ensnared human beings who base their existence on the formations of the material world, power, and ownership for self and family, as the priority of existence.
Those seduced by money, with all of its attendant finite enclosures, sacrifice their potential for liberating discoveries about the power of love, selfless creativity and depth of limitless realisations. Love matters. Money is a trivial pursuit.