Money is a powerful force in our lives. On the one hand it’s simply a piece of paper; it’s only a symbol, yet such a powerful one. How can we relate to money from the perspective of the Buddhist teachings and a meditation practice? How can it be a vehicle for doing harm but also for doing good, for empowering people and causes?
Money is a gateway to both greed and generosity. Shunryu Suzuki Roshi once said: “In its wide sense, everything is a teaching for us: the color of the mountain, the sound of the river, or the sound of a motorcar. Each one is a teaching of [the] Buddha.” (ShunryuSuzuki.com) This is also true of money.
The Buddha’s approach to money and possessions was all about practicing the middle way. While the monastics who followed him were required to not have personal property or financial resources, the Buddha recognized economic stability as an essential element of well-being. In contrast to monastics, lay practitioners were not required to discard their financial assets or possessions, but he asked them to find responsible ways to relate to money.
The Buddha offered us a wholesome definition of wealth comprised of four aspects. The first two are positive aspects of the friendliness and nourishment that is possible through this wholesome kind of wealth. The second two are the renunciatory aspects of non-greed:*
Atthisukha. The happiness of ownership, a kind of wholesome sense of “mine-ness.”
Bhogasukha. The happiness of sharing one’s wealth, connected to dana paramita, generosity.
Anavajjasukha. The happiness derived from wealth which is earned by means of right livelihood.
Ananasukha. The happiness derived from not being in debt.
It’s interesting to consider how the Buddha set up his original monastic sangha. His disciples did not have personal property. Instead, early every morning the monks would head out to the village streets and receive alms from the community, which usually took the form of food. This is not viewed as charity but rather as a mutual generosity.
In return for the alms, the monks and nuns would offer teachings and dedicate the merit of their practice to the well-being of the community. This was a true local economy. You can still see this beautiful ritual unfold most mornings in cities and villages throughout Thailand and Laos.
When the monks returned to the temple or monastery after their alms round, they would place all the alms that had been collected into the same common bowl. The term that the Buddha gave to his closest followers was bhikku and bhikkuni in Pali. “Bhik” is derived from the Sanskrit word “bhaj” which means something close to “the wish to share.” Bhaj was the portion of food that a person shared from a common pot. The term for the alms bowl, often translated incorrectly as a begging bowl, literally means “the bowl of sharing.”
The alms bowl is much more than a vessel or utensil. It becomes a statement of our “wish to share.” This is the origin of practices of communal feeding and eating within Buddhist communities, including the Zen practice of oryoki. All of these practices are living manifestations of our profound intention to share with others, to serve others, and to go against the stream of selfish consumption.
Perhaps the Buddha noticed that money could be used as a way to stake out an identity and reinforce the delusion that people are separate and independent beings. These practices of sharing in the monastic community became an everyday way to realize the truth of interdependence.
When we look deeply at money, we can see its subjective nature. Often, it’s not the amount of it that makes us feel secure, but something else. There are billionaires who feel they don’t have enough, and there are people with a very modest amount who feel rich. As Coco Chanel once said: “There are people who have money and people who are rich.”
It might help to think of money more generally as “currency,” as a material that mediates relationships and exchanges. Other forms of currency are time, energy, and love. In fact, all of nature is part of our wealth, in the biggest sense. Wealth is not limited to money. What we do with these precious resources tells us a lot about who we are and what matters to us.
I don’t want to fall into the trap of believing that our practice can overcome anything and that the conditions that we grow up in and have to live with every day don’t have an impact on our mental, emotional, and physical well-being. This is a spiritual bypass.
Yes, our practice helps us to develop the capacity to be more mindful and aware in our responses, including to what money, or a lack of it, brings up for us. At the same time, the world and the conditions around us undeniably shape us. There is a collective level to the Dharma of money as well.
A number of studies have shown a correlation between income level and a reduction in stress and other negative emotions. A 2016 study from a professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University found that negative emotions such as sadness, nervousness, and hopelessness dropped off significantly as family income rose. This was true up to a certain point—once family income reached US$75,000, the positive impact of the money began to drop off, and once it reached US$200,000 it disappeared. (Science Direct)
In another study, a British economist looked at what happened when the UK government implemented minimum-wage legislation in 1999. He discovered that those who received the higher wage had a lower probability of mental health issues compared with control groups who didn’t receive the wage increase. The improvement in their mental health was equivalent to the effect of antidepressants on depressive symptoms. Increasing wages significantly improves mental health by reducing financial strain in low-wage workers. (Wiley Online Library)
Sometimes I think of US psychologist Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and how that might apply to spiritual practices. It seems to me that there is a basic level at which our survival needs must be taken care of—food, water, safe shelter—so that we can then begin or continue a meditation practice knowing that we are supported in stabilizing our minds.
We cannot expect a meditation practice, no matter how diligent or strong, to take the place of safe and affordable housing, healthy food, clean water, and medicine.
These are just some beginning thoughts on money in the context of the Buddhadharma. In my next article, I’ll share on a more personal level about my journey with money as a point of practice. In the meantime, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts and experiences on this topic. Please leave a comment below and join the conversation!
* Anana Sutta: Debtless (Access to Insight)
See more
bodhisattva’s ten powers (ShunryuSuzuki.com)
Negative emotions, income, and welfare: Causal estimates from the PSID (Science Direct)
Introduction of a National Minimum Wage Reduced Depressive Symptoms in Low-Wage Workers: A Quasi-Natural Experiment in the UK (Wiley Online Library)
Related features from BDG
Should Buddhists Invest in the Stock Market? Views from Contemporary Taiwanese Buddhists
Beginner’s Mind: Heterodoxy, Pluralism, or Buddhist Economics?
Book Review: Down to Earth Dharma by Rebecca Bradshaw
Buddhist Economics: Toward a Happier Society
Buddhism and Economics
Money Makes the COVID World Go Round
Buddhist Economics with George Kinder: Creating a Mindful Golden Civilization
Thank you, Maia & BDG.
If I may, three comments.
1) For me, this needful space feels like an oasis of sanity in a desert of silence about money, and how it gets to be how it is. For one thing, it’s offered me an opportunity to reflect as a Buddhist on the roots of my practice lineage in the original Sangha, and to better discern how to recognize, understand, and apply the Dharma of money in my own life.
2) I particularly appreciate re-hearing the insight of the circularity of the alms bowl, rather than any misperception of it as being a one-way transaction. Practicing dana, the monastics and the householders each are engaged in mutual support, reciprocal selfless giving. This first came home to me when I was a guest of BodhiVision, in Malaysia. Compare / contrast the Western word charity, whose greek root caritas is a synonym for love.
3) I am especially concerned for myself and others about ananasukha. I know the happiness derived from not being in debt, at the same time I am sensible of ananasukha at a macro level of scale: the under-acknowledged ramifications of living in a nation of unsustainable debt, its collective karma which I bear, & emergent dialogue about alternatives.
This is a wonderful moment.
Lotus.
So good to see you here, Gary! Thank you so much for commenting on those three aspects of the Dharma of money. Your last point is particularly interesting. While I’ve thought a lot about the karmic implications of my own financial debt (in the past I had a very large amount of credit card debt and a student loan that was only recently dismissed by the Biden administration), it hadn’t occurred to me that the same is true at the macro level. I don’t know enough about the way governments run to fully understand the implications and I don’t think it’s exactly the same as personal debt, but there is definitely collective karma. And the way those monies have been mostly allocated to the military…. that is literally our money.
may you be well,
Maia
Hi Maia,
Thanks so much for this. I appreciated your inclusion of the wealth studies and Maslow’s hierarchy. They show that our quest for ever-more material wealth can have real detrimental effects if we get to a certain point and then continue spending time and energy there rather than moving toward more time with family, friends, religious practice and other forms of self actualization and transcendence.
And yet, some material stability and security is so key to being able to devote time and energy to higher pursuits. And *that* seems to be the tricky part so often. In unstable societies where safety nets are far and few between, it makes sense that religious practice becomes more rare as people feel compelled to collect more material wealth to satisfy those lower-level needs.
For instance, due to inflation, that US$75,000 figure would be around $100,000. There can be a sense of always needing more money just to maintain whatever life one has, even if it is a relatively simple one. It’s difficult. But I do think that discussions like this and bringing money anxieties into our practice regularly helps enormously.
Dear Maia,
Thank you for an initial thoughtful discussion on the role of money in the Buddhadharma. The historical reality, however, includes many examples where the Sangha has become dependent on wealthy patrons (nobility, military leaders, rich capitalists, etc.) This has led, in practice, to not only dependence on these patrons but a virtual inability to subject these leaders to legitimate criticism no matter how unjustly they treat the common folk nor the unjust economic systems they sustain (often through the use of physical violence). Are you willing to criticize Sangha leaders for this failure of conscience and, equally, suggest practical remedies?
Hi Brian,
Thank you for your comment and your question. I certainly acknowledge the reality that the greater Sangha can and has been compromised and corrupted by dependence on those sources of support. I do not know enough about the specifics to write about it and that wasn’t intended to be the focus of this piece. But it’s a topic most definitely worthy of critique.