You are searching for something that you haven’t acquired but you are searching for it unconsciously, something that which is unknown to you. Therefore, man makes money the goal of life. He thinks that money will bring glory. Money will cut down on poverty.
Man does not come to this world with a bagful of money and does not depart with a bagful of money then why does he become happy on gaining money and why does he become miserable on losing money. What is this sense of losing?
Is life the game of profit and loss or an obsessive-compulsive longing disorder for money that has become the neurosis of mankind? The sense of never having enough creeps in you like a kind of intoxication that has swept over you. This sense of loss turns all your profits into losses because it is bred in an assumption of profit earned in advance.
We live our life like a beggar. We are begging. We are begging for love. We are begging for money. We are begging for grace. We are begging for benevolence. We are begging for wealth. Why do we keep begging all our life? We are being a beggar who is begging. Man has created a neurotic society. Man has invented economy and then money so things can be exchanged. The money helped to bring many things from many continents together to produce something that was not possible earlier. Money brought a great possibility. Money has not made man the beggar. But man has become poverty-struck.
You create poverty. Poverty has not struck you. Things around you are part of the economy. Things have value. What is your value? Economy evaluates your value by values of things you own. A man with bigger value is considered big. But you are not part of the economy. Understand you are not part of the value chain.
We are poor therefore we are running after money. Or we are poor because we are running after money. You have adopted the aptitude of a beggar but you are not a beggar, you are born emperor. In this life whatever that is worth getting, you have been blessed with by grace. But your mind wants to own things. Your mind wants to be the owner of things. The one who is infected with this type of poverty consider others a commodity. But this type of person is always in competition.
It seems the man has comprehended wrong economics. The emperor is masquerading as a beggar. Poverty has gone into our roots. All our systems make man poorer. Whatever that system be let it be our religion or economy or society or education they are intended to make us poorer.
You are poorer as much you are greedy. You are poorer by your greed. Greediness is poverty. If you have greed for something, that makes you poorer by that something. If you wanted food you eat and you satiate your hunger. But if you have greed something else happens. Things are sold in the market your greed is to own the thing. People want to ape others to be poorer by others’ riches or possessions. You cannot understand the poverty of a billionaire to a trillionaire.
The difference is data of a few more zeros. The reality is that neither billionaires nor trillionaires will be able to use their money because they keep collecting it by suspending their life in hope of better net worth.
Man has created poverty. Man has small needs (poverty) to be met to be out of poverty to be emperor. Then man invented the economy—an understanding of things by money. Money has made the world beautiful but also created a rat race that is causing poverty. Apart from causing physical poverty of extreme levels, economic wealth has also caused psychological poverty. The sense of never having enough is bred defined in beautiful words like capitalism and freedom. But in fact, has bred slavery. Man is enslaved by things. Things that he wants to own by which he is poverty-struck.
Money has its usage. You are not part of the economy. Things you may use are part of the economy. But that does not make you poverty-struck but you are poverty-struck because of the neurosis of never having enough. Therefore, the priest exploits your sense of losing. He jolts you to reserve your seat in heaven and to invest in virtuous deeds to ensure big fortunes. He makes you donate to a church temple mosque to build permanent assets in heaven. He reassures you that you are on the right path.
In fact, wealthier ones live in great poverty. Wealthier one wants to be the wealthiest. Whatever they have is not enough. He suspends his life in the hope of getting fortune tomorrow and he suspends tomorrow in the hope of getting a bigger fortune later. His appetite for ‘more’ grows leaps and bound makes his poverty grow leaps and bounds. Such people die in extreme poverty. Not physically but psychologically extreme poverty because their life is driven by assumptions of wealth which are bound to be unfulfilled the assumption of never having enough. That assumption causes extreme poverty.
Wealthier ones think that dying in poverty is a curse therefore he runs after money. But when death comes greed does not go away. Greed is the thought of losing the neurosis of never having enough. Therefore, wealthier ones die in extreme poverty.
Then what is real richness? Richness is not being struck with the neurosis of never having enough. Richness is greatness. Siddartha Gautam was a prince who understood his poverty. He became Gautam the Buddha the emperor. Your senses are extensions of thoughts. They create minds. Therefore you run after them.
Living with the poverty of never having enough is living unintelligently. Don’t be enslaved by things around you. God has created you as an emperor. A born emperor but you have carved beggar out of you.
An emperor is never attained to the sense of poverty he continues to be an emperor. But man continues to be poor and ends up being poor and ends up in poverty. We call God the Deena Bandhu (friend of poor) but believe you me even God cannot rid you of the kind of poverty you are struck with. Sense of never having enough will never let you define ‘enough’, your hope lies in getting what you don’t have and something will always be there that you don’t have. So even if you get the entire earth you will be in trouble because of other planets in the universe.
The ones who beg become beggars; those who don’t beg become emperors and get everything worth getting. Buddha says you are enough. Nothing else is needed.
The author is a spiritual teacher and he can be contacted at arunavalokitta@gmail.com