The Dharma Of Money

The reflection this week is on money. It almost feels taboo because we never talk about money. Where this inquiry will go is we’ll explore our beliefs around money. And those beliefs are directly related to the often unspoken conditioning that exists in a family system. It’s inherited.

We make decisions around money from this often unseen place in ourselves and then with that comes a pattern of behavior that we may not be aware of. It’s almost like our behavior around money is exempt from the dharma.

Transcript

So,

As some of you know,

I went to college at UC Berkeley in California,

And I was an older student,

And I was taking some classes in public policy,

And I had this amazing instructor.

So for those of you that follow politics,

You might know of him.

He's a small man in stature,

But he has this enormous presence,

And he was the secretary of labor under Bill Clinton,

A man by the name of Robert Reich.

And in my experience as an older student,

Having seen a little bit of the world and the way that it works with a few controlling the majority of the wealth,

I came with a little bit of understanding.

So Professor Reich,

He primarily teaches about the inequality gap,

And apologies and strategies that he attempted to initiate in the Clinton administration to decrease the gap.

And then he brought it to the students at UC Berkeley because it didn't work so well.

But yet,

Here it is.

So what he did is he really held up for us to see this great wealth disparity.

And his teachings still have such a deep,

It has deeply influenced me,

His teachings.

And I think I share this reflection or this memory of working with him and learning from him because this week we're going to talk about money.

And it almost feels taboo,

Doesn't it,

To talk about money?

We never talk about money.

Yet to some extent,

What allows us to sit here and practice the Dharma on a Tuesday morning is the ability,

The financial freedom.

So where this inquiry will go is we'll explore our beliefs around money.

And those beliefs are directly related to an often unspoken conditioning which exists in family systems.

So it's inherited.

We make decisions around money from this often unseen place in ourselves.

And then with that comes patterns of behavior that we're not even aware of.

It's almost like our behavior around money is exempt from the Dharma practice.

So we're going to unpack that a little bit.

Money has caused a lot of suffering for many people and also a lot of confusion.

You know,

It's really abstract.

No matter how solid and concrete we think it is,

It represents something.

It represents something we use to do things with.

And every person has their own ideas about what it represents.

And so there's this inner world around money and there's this outer world around it.

And so the outer world is what we say about money,

How we use it.

And then the inner world is our relationship to it.

And as I've been exploring this,

You know,

It's amazing what people will do for money.

People will work jobs that they hate for money.

People kill themselves when they lose their money.

You know,

Think about those images of the bankers,

The Wall Street bankers,

Jumping out of their windows.

People can be hired to kill for money.

And every single war,

Every single war that has ever been fought has an economic basis to it.

So it has this tremendous power.

And as practitioners of clear seeing,

It behooves us to look at our relationship to money,

How we hold it,

How we relate to it.

In the Dharma world,

Money's not talked about much.

You know,

Except when we talk about dana,

The Pali word being generosity.

You know,

Dana is seen as this very virtuous and holy act.

So to start this investigation,

I actually went to the Buddhist text and found a sutta called the Dingha Janu Sutta.

And in this sutta,

The Duda talks to lay people like us about their conditions for well-being.

Like what creates their conditions for well-being.

So this seemed like a pretty good place to start this investigation.

And he talked about,

He said that there are four conditions for our well-being.

The first is effort,

Which we talk about a lot.

The second is watchfulness.

And he was speaking about or speaking,

You know,

He was speaking to the time.

And in that time,

He was talking about taking care of your property.

So the watchfulness is around making sure that your property doesn't get taken away by floods,

Monsoon season,

Weather patterns,

Or it doesn't get taken away by robbers.

So then you have to sort of use that and try to bring that into what does that mean to us now,

Watchfulness.

The third is our good friends.

Good friends are an important part of our well-being.

And the fourth is a balanced livelihood.

He says,

Knowing there are income and expenses,

The lay person leads a balanced life,

Neither extravagant nor miserly.

And we'll kind of explore those two paradoxes,

Neither extravagant nor miserly.

So this is pretty straightforward,

Right?

But then the sutta goes on to talk about what he says about spiritual progress.

So sort of once we get our economic house in order,

Then we move on to spiritual practice.

And again,

There are four conditions to that.

So the first is faith,

And then virtue,

Meaning the five precepts.

And then charity,

Which I'll speak about a little bit,

And then wisdom,

Which is kind of knowing the teachings,

Knowing the teachings.

So with charity,

He says,

A householder dwells with heart free of greed for wealth or material gain,

Devoted to charity,

Open handed,

Delighting in generosity,

Attending to the needy,

And delighting in the distribution of alms.

So this speaks to Dhana.

The distribution of alms is a source of happiness and well-being.

So in Buddhist circles,

There's a real admiration for and support for monastics,

Supporting the monastics to practice.

And as many of you know that do support monastics,

They don't interact with money.

So there's this unconscious perception in Buddhist circles,

That money is somehow to be shunned,

It's kind of bad,

Or a source of unwholesome desire.

And so this kind of feeds the idea that poverty is a virtue.

And this is in many spiritual traditions,

The virtue of poverty.

So in this Buddhist tradition,

It's sort of been passed down that the people who have support the people who don't have.

And as a spiritual person on this path,

I've unconsciously to some degree,

Until recently looking at this,

Adopted this view of money,

And resolved that if this is the path that I want to spend my life on,

Then I've kind of resolved that I wouldn't have a lot of money.

I would just get my needs met.

And I had this idea,

As I entered the path,

You know,

Just to trust the Dharma,

The Dharma will provide.

And it's a little naive.

And I've struggled at times,

For sure.

But the Dharma has provided.

And when it comes to my financial home,

I have a wonderful relationship,

A marriage,

A partnership with a man that has agreed to carry the majority of our financial livelihood,

So that I can share the Dharma and help people.

So I'm very,

Very grateful for that.

A book came out many,

Many years ago,

Called The Soul of Money.

And it was written by a fundraiser named Lynn Twist.

And Lynn is from the Bay Area.

Kind of as an aside,

I actually sailed on a boat with her husband,

Bill,

For many years.

I was crew on his boat.

And she was writing about,

At some point,

She was writing about how she was going to go to India to meet the philanthropist who funded Gandhi's movement.

And I was like,

When I read this,

I was astonished.

Again,

There's some naivety here,

Because I had no idea that Gandhi's movement was funded.

It was shocking.

And then later,

I read this,

And it kind of shifted something in me,

Like,

Oh.

And then later,

I came across a quote that said,

It took millions of rupees to keep Gandhi in poverty.

Fascinating.

So this book was kind of a turning point in my exploration around money,

Kind of seeing that there isn't an inherently,

There isn't an inherent badness to it.

You know,

There's not an inherent badness to money.

One can be virtuous and have wealth,

And one can be poor and be virtuous.

They're not mutually exclusive.

I really started my own personal exploration around money in 2015,

When I was training in secular mindfulness at UCLA.

And we had spent a whole day exploring our relationship to money,

Both practically and spiritually and psychologically.

And that was a really telling experience,

Because I was really triggered by just even the exploration.

But it began,

It kind of was the beginning of my understanding,

In a way,

To actually go and meet that discomfort around it.

So I'm going to stop here for now,

And we'll continue on this topic on Thursday.

We're going to just kind of dive into it.

But what I would like to offer as homework for next time,

Kind of perhaps consider doing a financial biography.

And you might want to do that in partnership with a friend from practice.

You know,

We did this,

There's a phone list,

An email list that went out last week.

And so you all have that.

So you might want to reach out and maybe do this in partnership,

Or just explore and write down your history,

Your relationship with money.

What was the conversation around money growing up?

What was the message that you took on about money?

And then start there,

And we'll continue to explore it on Thursday.

So thank you for your interest and consideration and for bringing this.

I invite you to share.