Last month, I offered a Buddhist perspective on how money can be a vehicle for doing harm but also holds the potential for doing good, and how we might consider relating to money from a place of practice. In this month’s article I’d like to share my personal story of practicing with money, specifically with a large amount of debt.
By the time I was 35 years old, I had accumulated more than US$35,000 in credit card debt. This happened through a perfect storm of factors: bad financial decisions when I was younger; a large student loan from graduate school in the 1990s; several thousand dollars of medical bills from emergency room visits for asthma during a time when I was uninsured—before the Affordable Care Act; and many years of low-paying jobs in the nonprofit sector.
Initially, I had a complete disconnect between the fact that I had all this debt and my Zen practice. When I started meeting with my teacher, Shosan Victoria Austin, for practice discussions at San Francisco Zen Center around 2001, my debt was not something I shared with her. I can’t even remember how it came up, but I am sure I had a lot of shame about all that debt and tried to avoid disclosing this information.
When it did come out in the open, Shosan encouraged me to embrace the process of paying off my debt as part of my practice. She asked me to study the precepts and look at my karmic debt, both financial and other sorts of ways I was indebted to myself and to others. She very clearly requested that I resolve this situation so that I could be able to access parts of myself that were hidden by the chronic pain of indebtedness. This was a completely new way for me to see it. With that invitation came an amazing journey.
The first gift this brought me was learning how to see things just as they are, cutting through my own delusions and clearly seeing the situation I had gotten myself into. This was not easy at all. I had spent years avoiding looking at the numbers and had no idea how much I owed. I only knew that each month, I was spending almost half of my income on making the minimum payments on my credit card bills.
I had to sit myself down and write out all my credit cards and the amount of debt attached to each one, as well as their astronomical interest rates. When I finally did this, I felt sick to my stomach. I had no idea how I would get out of that much debt—at the time, my monthly income was around US$2000 and I was living in San Francisco, one of the most expensive cities in the US. It seemed impossible. But at least I had taken the first step.
I’m not sure I could have taken that step or the ones that followed if I hadn’t had Shosan placing all of this in the context of Dharma practice and reminding me that being in debt is not only a financial reality, it’s an energetic state.
When we are in debt, we owe our energy to someone or something outside of ourselves. The years that I had credit card debt weighed down on me like a physical sensation, like carrying a heavy burden. More than anything, I cultivated a desire to liberate myself from that burden so I could be more available to myself and others in a truly whole way.
A second gift of this practice was a deeper understanding of the nature of causes and conditions. I reflected quite a bit on how I got into this situation through guidance from an excellent book called The Energy of Money by Maria Nemeth (Wellspring/Ballantine 2000). I took a lot of time to write my money autobiography, as described by Nemeth. This helped me to gain insight into where many of my patterns for relating to money came from, and to have some degree of compassion for myself given family patterns that shaped beliefs and behaviors around money. Once I had clarified that insight, I could take steps toward making more responsible choices around money.
Finally, there was the gift of the persistence and patience I developed in order to pay off that amount of debt. I had to understand that I was relieving myself of a burden and this commitment would require me to delay short-term gratification in the interest of long-term wellbeing. I also learned to become much more mindful of my resources and how to ask for help in healthy ways. I think of this verse from the Dhammapada:
If, by giving up a lesser happiness,
One could experience greater happiness,
A wise person would renounce the lesser
To behold the greater. (Dhammapada 290)
It took me eight years to pay off that US$35,000. While theoretically it might have been possible to declare bankruptcy to discharge that debt—and I had no moral qualms about doing so—I understood intuitively that facing my debt and and learning how to get myself out of it would become a vehicle for waking up to some deeper truths and building strength in areas of my life that I had carefully avoided. That has indeed been the case. Now looking back, I can honestly say I am grateful for the journey of liberating myself from debt. It has made me a stronger practitioner with more capacity to be present to others.
Three money practices
These three practices were helpful to me during those years of focusing intensely on my relationship with money. I believe they can support you to use money as a vehicle for waking up to your life, if that’s something you’re interested in exploring.
Practice 1
Write your money autobiography. This is the story of your life as told through the lens of how money has played a role in different dimensions. Consider how money has impacted your choices around relationships, education, work, pleasure, etc. Journal to explore the source(s) of unconscious beliefs and assumptions you may have about money by taking time to reflect on and write about the following questions:
• What attitude did your mother hold toward money? How about your father?
• Did you worry about money while you were growing up? Did your family?
• As a child, where did your money come from—allowance, chores, etc.?
• What kind of family rules governed how you used that money? How did that feel to you then, and how does it feel to you now?
Practice 2
Keep the mind of the precepts when you handle money and make choices about how you spend or invest it. Consider tracing the path of a food or product you are about to purchase and inquire whether those who labored to bring it to you were treated fairly. I remember when I was a kid in Southern California, one year we had no grapes in the house because my mom was supporting the United Farmworkers’ grape boycott for fairer wages and fewer pesticides. Even at a young age, that was an eye opener for me.
Practice 3
Practice with giving it away. This may seem counterintuitive if you’re continually feeling short of money, but there is something in the act of generosity that begins to help us see how we usually have more than enough.
Gelek Rinpoche once said: “When you are practicing generosity, you should feel a little pinch when you give something away. That pinch is your stinginess protesting.” See what it feels like for you to give money to someone in need, or to a good cause, and to give the amount that makes you feel that little pinch. This should be done responsibly. Make sure you understand what you need to do to take care of your own obligations first, and then look at what you might be able to give to another.
References
Fronsdal, Gil. 2006. The Dhammapada. Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications.
See more
The Energy of Money by Dr. Maria Nemeth
Related features from BDG
The Dharma of Money Part 1
Should Buddhists Invest in the Stock Market? Views from Contemporary Taiwanese Buddhists
Beginner’s Mind: Brutally Frugal to Reluctantly Indulgent: How the US Is Changing My Spending Habits
Vienna in the Silicon Pure Land, Part 4: Making Dharmic Finance Cool
Bodhisattva Work: Bringing One’s Heart to Financial and Life Planning
