How to treat money correctly


        In today's industrial and commercial society, everyone is pursuing wealth. After we have gotten wealth, we always still feel that something is missing. How to treat money? How to fill that gap in our heart? To put it bluntly, money is just a tool to meet people's various needs. We need money to buy food, we need savings to buy or rent a house, we need money to use transportation when we go out, we need money in exchange for everything used at home, like water and electricity, entertainment, and education. But, think about it, when these basic needs are met, do people finally get happy? Not so. What people don't understand is that human desires are never satisfied. Therefore, in order to  pursue more happiness, people want more money, and devote most of their lives to the pursuit of wealth.

        Master Shengyan once mentioned how to treat money correctly, he said that a Buddhist also needs to earn money for living, giving, and doing charity; this is not “greedy action”. But if a person wants to earn more and more money for his desires than his basic needs, then it can be called ‘greed’. And, we should not earn money by cheating or stealing. we should not earn that money if there is dishonesty or misconduct in the deal. It is better if we can make profits for everyone in a deal. https://youtu.be/nPTbIL-B8oE

        We often see that there are people who have suffered from poverty or who envy rich people and they think that being rich would lead to happiness. In fact, being happy and having money are not positively correlated, what matters is our attitude. Contented people can feel satisfied without a lot of money or a lot of material supplies. Greedy people don't have enough wealth even if they already have much and they always can't be happy. Seeing that others have a house and a car, they want to be like others. After they have a house and a car, they will again see that the richer people have what they don’t have, and then they want to be like these people again. Such kind of greed binds themselves, and they often sacrifice health, relatives and friends, life, and the times that could have been good. Actually, it is not money that causes pain, but desire. If you have a desire and your desire is not satisfied, you will desperately want to satisfy it. After the desire is fulfilled, other desires are already waiting there. So we will never be happy. Less desire and contentment can calm the mind and make it easier to feel satisfied.

        Master Shengyan once explained how much desire is needed to be called “less desire”, and how to control the level of contentment. He said that we can distinguish greed and “no greed” by wanting and needing. If we badly want something after we have already owned some or we want something that is too hard to get, then it can be called “greed”. We need to have appropriate desire or wish to make ourselves alive or progress, but when we want more and more and it becomes our annoyance, the desire or craving will belong to bad things. https://youtu.be/Fm3Kydm59Rk

        Maybe some people would think: What do we do if we don't make money in life? But, do we have to make money to pass our life? It would be an option to enhance the value of our life, otherwise we can spend a little time searching for the meaning of life and finding out what true happiness is. Seriously, don't be trapped by money anymore. Of course, if someone is not interested in these things, they can find out for themselves what they can do other than making money, but making money is really not the only option.


2021.Feb

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The basis of being away from suffering and attaining happiness

　　     Although it is said that Buddhist Dharma can help people be away from suffering and attain happiness, but, for those who are less exposed to Dharma, practicing Dharma can sometimes be too esoteric and over their ability. However, there are still some methods that can help Buddhist beginners to temporarily get rid of suffering and attain happiness. As long as they lay a solid foundation, it will be much easier when they want to go deeper into Buddhist Dharma in the future. 　　 1. Make money the right way 　　    In modern society, people advocate material things, and people's values ​​are seriously distorted; they think that as long as you have money, you will be happy. Some people always feel envious when they see rich people showing off their wealth, and hope that they can be like them. So the social atmosphere gradually tends to worship money; if there is a chance to make money, they will do anything for that and it doesn't matter whether or not they violate mo...
Read more

How to practice in daily life

　     As a part of all living beings, we will have annoyances more or less. In addition to the big and small annoyances in life, we also have to experience unavoidable annoyances such as "birth, old age, sickness and death"; because they will trouble us, affect our lives, bring pain and often haunts us, and they cannot be eliminated immediately, so it is called "annoyances". Buddhism believes that if we can be freed from "all" annoyances, we can be called saints; maybe we can not solve problems such as "birth, old age, sickness and death" in a short period of time, but if we can start to solve the annoyances in daily life one by one, then it can be regarded as a kind of practice! 　     Modern life is busy and stressful. It is inevitable that there will be conflicts between people. So, we become impatient and anxious and often lose our temper and when the situation does not allow us to be angry we become annoyed privately. No one likes to get angr...
Read more

Discussing "Sense of Superiority"

　     What is "superiority"? Where does it happen? Superiority is the idea of ​​"comparing oneself with others and thinking that one is higher than others". Similar concepts are: pride, arrogance, conceit, etc. Some people think that they are more capable and smarter than others, so they have a sense of superiority and look down on ordinary people; some people look down on poor people because they are rich; when it happens between races, some people think that their own races are more civilized, so they discriminate against people of other races; some practitioners think that their spiritual state is high, so they look down on other practitioners. These are the senses of superiority, which are called "arrogance" and "self-conceit" in Buddhism. Why is there a sense of superiority? The reason for this is the excessive cherishing of the self, hoping to be superior to others; like greed, hatred, and delusion, it all stems from the attachment of the s...
Read more