Of course, it’s not about money, it’s about what people do with or without it that matters to who they are.
Most people are still unconsciously controlled by their beliefs and assumptions about money. Who are they? Anyone who thinks that money has anything whatsoever to do with happiness/enlightenment, or even “security.” The fact that we now live in a money-based system/society is absolutely arbitrary when it comes to the process of awakening and enlightenment.
It’s very simple: if at any time in history a person did not need money—nor the materialistic things that money can buy in this society—in order to attain enlightenment, then money is absolutely irrelevant to enlightenment/happiness. (Unless, that is, we allow for money to be a part of it only in that we must divest ourselves of the illusions we have about it.) In fact, did not the Buddha himself give up, let go of, all but the necessities of life before he was able to clear the way to attain enlightenment? Why didn’t he, when he became enlightened, go and make money to live “the good life,” but just in a, you know, more enlightened way? Well, why didn’t the guy who finally struck real gold go back and gather up all the fool’s gold?
Just think about this for a second: this society is based on the fact that you need money to be happy, that money will buy you the opportunity for happiness, which essentially is saying that you need money to be happy. You can see this for yourself if you think about it deeply enough. This society is based on ideology that is absolutely contrary to enlightenment and happiness. This is not my “opinion.” It is there for anyone to see who wants to see it. But most people will not because they are still buying the bullshit that this ideology is selling, and so refuse to leave the trees to be able to see the forest.
I can and will do what I am doing, regardless of how much “money” I have. It took me a long time, and a lot of work, to free myself from the confining illusions that conditioned me to think otherwise. It happened when I truly saw how the values of this society—on which this system is based, and for which anyone who works in/for the system spends his time and effort, his life—are obstacles, not tickets, to happiness and self-awareness and enlightenment.
Having attained this awareness, I no longer feel a need to either condemn or covet money itself, nor the system itself, for I am free from its illusory clutches. I need not this (“American”/”capitalist”) society, nor its values, to define me, for who I really am is (found in) the absence of the conditioned ego-self that was a product of the conditioning of this society.
In this society, I can certainly live more comfortably with money, and I like living comfortably (i.e., having a bed to sleep in, hot, running water, a roof over my head, etc.) fine enough, it’s quite nice in many ways, but that doesn’t mean that I need money to do what I am doing; I just need money if I want to continue doing it the way I am doing it on the surface level of life. If I don’t think I could adapt to circumstantial change, then I am clinging and craving out of ignorance, and I’m still in bondage to those illusions. But—and this is an important thing to understand in all this—as much as I know I do not need to have money to do this, I also know that I also don’t need to be poor and destitute to do this. To think otherwise is to miss the point and still be controlled by money.
The tie that binds money and material comfort to happiness (in our minds) simply needs to be broken for one to be free of this sort of conditioning, because it’s an illusion, an empty promise. I feel fortunate to be able to do what I do within the modest lifestyle in which I live. But, that doesn’t mean that I would (nor should!) compromise myself in order to retain that lifestyle at the expense of my work. When it comes to this work, it is not my lifestyle that allows my work, but my attitude, my awareness.
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From my personal notes, 11/10/99.
