WHEN THE RICH MEDITATES
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Back to the theme of today’s discussion, we would like to talk about
MEDITATION.
We have heard that many people, especially businessmen, are looking for a practical method to balance between their busy lives and their minds. There would be nothing better than meditation, especially in the Buddhist tradition.
There are many ways to help us to balance the mind such us yoga, Tai Chi…, and meditation from various religious traditions. However, from our experience Buddhist meditation has the technique to solve problems from their roots, thus helping us to clear all of our worries, balance our minds, and live a better life. You will be able to experience this on your own as you practice.
Although many intellectuals have a range of ideas about meditation, we still would like to explain it a little so that people understand why we need to meditate.
The experience of humanity on earth is that people often win or lose to each according to money or power. However, Buddhism explains that this is due to our that is more or less blessing. People with greater blessings will be more advantaged in life and become upper class.
What is a blessing? According to Buddhism, it is the result of our many good actions from previous lives. This current life is not the only life. If from our many previous lives, we did good deeds to help other people, we would have many blessings in this life. We will have more advantages, luck and opportunities than some people.
Such advantages often can be seen in the following ways:
First: we have MONEY
Second: we have POWER, where we have a right to influence other people according to our wishes.
Third: we have HEALTH
Fourth: we have BEAUTY
Fifth: we have INTELLIGENCE
Our blessing is often expressed in these 5 categories. There are some people who have all 5 blessings, for example, people in this conference. However, there are some people who can only have one or a few of these qualities, which is enough to stand-out.
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We shall examine how a blessing will be measured.
Now we compare a human being and an animal. For example: seeing a fish swimming underwater or a bird flying in the sky, we think they seem so leisurely. They even seem to be better than us because we can not swim or fly as they are able to. This is incorrect thinking, because both the flying bird and swimming fish are looking for food, for which they spend most of their time searching.
So do people. There are some people who need to spend most of their lifetime to search for food. However, there are some people who never care about how to find food, as they always have enough food. In this case, we measure the blessing based on finding food. How much time in life we spend searching for food tells us how the degree of our blessing. For example, people with fewer blessings need to think how to earn enough money to buy a meal each day. However, there are people who don’t even care about making money to buy food at all; they pay attention to other things. While there are people who can buy food for a whole village with just one day’s pay, there are others who struggle to supply enough food just for themselves. Therefore, a blessing can be measured by how much time is spent finding food.
The whole world is the same. There are countries where many people find it difficult to find daily food, and spend most of their time searching but do not have enough, and still experience malnutrition.
Some families are not able to feed their children, thus the kids have bulging bellies and small behinds, and small legs. Meanwhile in some societies, people have enough food, even abundance, thus lose their blessing by wasting the surplus food they have. Consequently, if we don’t need to spend much of our time to worry about making money to buy each meal, we are blessed.
The idea of BLESSING leads us to think of 2 matters:
The first matter: Blessing is the result of our good deeds which we had done from our previous lives. We had helped many other people, thus we have to be rewarded in this life. As blessing comes to us, we become valuable and are respected by other people. No one with many blessings is despised unless that person is not genuine. Normally, blessing confers respect. This is the first meaning of blessing.
The second meaning of blessing is more complicated. The blessed people impact many other people’s lives. We don’t count selfish people who would keep their wealth just for themselves. Most blessed people are doing something for others and affect many others’ lives in their communities. Therefore, their approach to living, thinking, planning and decision-making will have an effect on many other people’s lives. If so, such blessing is a responsibility and may become a burden or too much pressure to be unable to enjoy anymore
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In the first meaning, blessing offers us a pleasurable life where we are respected, enjoy delicious food, wear beautiful clothes, have freedom to do what we like while unblessed people are unable to. For example, when we see a beautiful shirt, we are able to to buy it right away, while unblessed people are not able to do the same. In the other hand, based on the second meaning, a blessing becomes the burden of blessed people. It becomes our responsibility to our community, to our society.
For that reason, blessed people will be divided into 2 types which are based on what the blessed people often think more, thus we can judge which way they will go. If a blessed person often thinks of pleasurable life, we class him type A. If a blessed person is often worried about his responsibility to the community because he’s aware that his lifestyle or decisions will impact many other peole, we class this person type B.
Once, an international school invited us to teach morals and ethics to its students who are the kids of wealthy parents. The tuition was up to many thousands of dollars each year. The students were always in good care.
When we asked the students their purpose of life, one replied: “I study so that I know how to live and enjoy life.” It was such a wrong way of thinking. His life would be ruined, he would make his parents and his own life suffered because he belonged among type A which a blessed person mostly thinks of enjoying life.
We need type B people who consider their blessings a responsibility to the people around them, not just a pleasurable life. Such noble people make us respect and treasure them. For example, if a rich personexpresses impertinence, or may be imperious, careless, hedonistic, we understand that he belongs to type A, his blessing will become destructive to other people. However, a wealthy person is modest, responsible to other people; we know he belongs to type B.
The world needs type B people. We do hope that the world has many of such people. Please let the world be led by such people who have many blessings, love their communities and live responsibly for their communities. The larger the number they have a positive effect on, the bigger and bigger their souls become.
Although we have passed the 1st decade of the 21st century the world is still experiecing misery, division, and economic crisis. Most human beings think that we had become more civilized and more intelligent but what is the reality? Greece faces a financial crisis, Israel encountered financial crisis, and today there was a report about the Spainish financial crisis.
Meanwhile, some countries which faced the previous world’s economic crisis in
1997 which started in East Asia, have recovered at a fast pace. Some European countries in the European Union (EU) are failing, if the International Monetary Fund doesn’t pour money in to save them, these countries would become very miserable.
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What is the reason? It’s because people don’t understand the matter clearly.
For example, when the French government decided to increase 2- working years to 62, instead 60 as usual, the whole French country took to the streets demonstrating.
They didn’t agree with the new law that required retirement at 62 years of age, and asked for retirement money so that they could travel. The government developing the policy knew that most 60 year-old men were still very healthy and had much to offer. Particularly, European 60 year old men had lots of strength. If they still went to work, they could pay taxes for 2 more years while the government did not have to pay out 2 years of retirement money, thus saving the national budget a great amount of money.
However, the French did not agree, they wanted to enjoy life 2 years early, thus taking to the streets to protest it. Watching this event we understood that the French were not patriots. France would face worse upcoming events when its citizens didn’t love their country. However, its people did not realize this.
Hence, we should think in this civilized age, that people would understand things correctly and act correctly. If so, the world would not have wars, division, or crisis.
We shall figure out the reasons countries are experiecing economic crisis? It’s due to people in the American Congress. Why did these Senators cause their own country’s economic crisis? It’s because they needed the votes. In order to be elected, these senators continued to campaign with policy or laws offering the citizens privileges.
It would be so great and become a good example for others when a government official serves his people well. However, the people serving in this area often have more blessings than they deserve. We need to review through a Buddhist apporach in order to realize the reasons.
For example, the blessings of citizens in a country might be less than what the government have to serve them. The infrastructure, hospital and health care, retirement plan and school system are all better and every public service to its citizens is reaching better. Therefore, the people are spending more blessings than they deserve; they are now in debt of 2 blessings, which they have to pay back. There will be a time that the country runs out of its national budget due to excess spending beyond its income, thus leading to a financial crisis.
What is the truth of the financial crisis? It is a failure of exercising the correct laws and economics of the social system. The fact that not recognising how the extent of blessings their citizens have but serving them more while might give politicians fame and votes. The politicians will campaign to pass certain laws benefitting the people to get elected. They might not think of the cost to the national budget of their
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policies or law if passed. Their spending may be too high and the citizens may receive more blessings than they should have.
Therefore, everything needs to be based on its KARMA and BLESSING according to the law of causation so that the society will grow sustainably. If we want human beings to progress, it doesn’t mean we provide them with materials. Instead, we need to help them develop their morals and ethics so that they are able to create their own blessings. A blessed person will have luck and other people’s help in case we can’t help them.
When meeting wealthy families, we often advisee them not to worry too much about patrimony for their children. They should care how their children create blessings as soon as possible. Even when the parents leave them, the children will be able to stand on their own feet to survive and have good life.
Only the children’s own blessing can help them master their lives, not the money their parents leave behind. Without blessing, all the money can vanish, for example, they can lose all money by one night gambling. However, if the children are blessed, even though the parents did not leave any money, there would be other people helping them succeed.
Believing in this law, we don’t need to worry too much about taking lots of money from other people. When we do business, we still earn a profit by taking other people’s money even in a very honest manner.
Some people play tricks to take other people’s money. Then they save such dirty money for their children. When the children spend such money they will lose their blessing.
In the articles “Buddhism and Society”we taught that dirty money produces bad children.
The parents should remember this, particularly society’s leaders. We need to consider why children turn bad. What kind of money do we use to raise them?
If the money comes from the happiness, joy and smiles of many people, our children will grow up as good people. In contrast, if the money comes from other people’s pain, our children will turn bad. The cause and effect of money is very frightening. Having money is not about joy, but reponsibility. People should know how to use the money to create blessings, not sin.
Therefore, the first meaning of blessing is that a blessed person, who also has intelligence, morals, a sense of right and wrong, would live more responsibily, not just a joyful life. Understanding how much he can impact on other people’s lives will force him to become a moral person and responsible for others.
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The second meaning of a blessed person is how he will utilize his blessing to either enjoy life spend all of his blessings or creatingmore and more blessings to infinity?
Haven’t been asked this question, many people are spending their blessings to enjoy life. However, after being asked and answering such question, people started to save their blessings and create it more and more each day to infinity.
Buddha reminded us of this matter. In our uncountable circle of life and death, we may be reborn in wealth in one lifehowever, will we be reborn into wealth in the next life due to creating more blessings or in poverty because we had spent all of our blessings? Buddha taught us this as well as the warning of the law of causation to help people realize the matter of being blessed, thus enable them to create more blessings to infinity.
It will be easier for us to understand when we discuss limited blessing. For example, the more blessings we have, the wealthier we will be. If we have more blessings, we will have power such us holding an important position in the government. We then will have both power and wealth.
If we have much more blessings, our influence will be across borders at an international level. Yet, this is still limited blessings, not the uncountable blessings.
What is the infinity of blessings? In Buddhism, it is the enlightenment. How is blessing and enlightenment related? We mentioned earlier that blessings offer us money, power, beauty, intelligence, and health. How can infinity of blessings turn to the enlightenment?
Blessing is due to good deeds we have done in our previous lives, and manifests in later lives through the 5 ways of money, power, health, beauty, and intelligence. However, these 5 rewards are temporary, impermanent, thus ending some day. Money can’t be brought with us as we die. Power can’t be carried over when death comes.
Beauty will fade as time passes. Health will be lost as we grow old. Intelligence will be taken as we get old. If we look above these 5 things, we recognize that blessing offers us happiness.
The purpose of our life is also happiness. The ideal of living is to bring happiness to others. Therefore, happiness is greater than these 5 rewards.
Should people live in order to make more and more money? No, it is because money can’t buy happiness. Should people live to hold great power in their hands? No, power can’t buy happiness either. Happiness is above these things. This is also the answer when we come to the Buddha’s principles, to search for enlightenment.
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If a much blessed person always loves other people, being forgivng, living for other people, he’s more blessed. The Buddha taught people how not to be bothered by these 5 rewards, and helped them to look for the higher reward which is true happiness. The true happiness is spiritual enlightenment due to our uncountable merits and virtues.
With limited merits and virtues, we can be successful in this life and fail in the next life if we run out of blessings.
If a blessed person lives a moral life, keeps his heart, his purpose and lives responsibly, his merits and virtues will be builded up more and more.Thus he can live above the 5 rewards to find a greater thing – happiness. The supreme happiness is enlightenment.
The meaning of enlightenment is so outstanding that it is very difficult to attain. It requires a person with much blessing to search for and live with great morals and great understanding and wisdom.
If we meet a wealthy person who is satisfied with everything in life, he may not understand the true happiness from deep down in his soul. It’s because he doesn’t have enough awareness or morals as well as his blessings. Only people who have all blessings, morals and awareness can understand the supreme happiness – enlightenment.
Where will our life be if we can rise above all 5 rewards to find true happiness? Truly, people who have already felt happy but still balance their soul to search for spiritual happiness are pearls of the world. These people who have already achieved a standard and life balance of morality, responsibility, and tranqulity. Therefore, their influence on life is always positive. On the contrary, blessed people who only pursue pleasure in life become threats to others.
Due to all of the reasons mentioned, people acknowledge that their blessing influences many other people; thus they should live very responsibly. To what extent of should people take responsibility in lifey? Should it be moderate or infinite?
Many people assume that infinity is unimaginable. This is not right. Infinity which we think is unimaginable is real and we should pursue it through our many lives. It becomes our duty to search for ourselves and for the world the supreme, liberated and infinite happiness.
We are people who have enough heart and mind as well as meet criteria to look for such happiness. People who struggle to make enough for their living cannot talk about supreme happiness or the enlightenment.
Therefore, enlightenment is only for people who have all blessings, awareness and morals. These people don’t want to enjoy their blessing merely through the 5
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rewards mentioned earlier, but look for happiness which is over and better than these 5 rewards.
This is the message we would like to send to the world which we are fond of and love. All of us must love each other, live responsibly for our planet, help each other to do more good deeds, and search for the supreme happiness to the awaken spirit and mind. Everything in this world is impermanent, born and destroyed.
For all these reasons, right now and right here we will talk about a method to practice – MEDITATION. Meditation is the path to attain supreme happiness, which is not only for oneself, but for all people when our mind attains liberation, egolessness and totalself-forgetfulness.
Egolessness is no-self. Everyone can feel there is a self inside. The modern lifestyle and some people have created a culture of “self” where the self is all important. People tend to become differentiated, have their own personalities,becoming more selfish and isolated.
Looking back to older societies, people were afraid of being different. They tended to behave and act in similarity to each other, even wearing the same styled shirt, having the same hair style, or using the same vocabulary in speaking.
However, in these days, if a person dyed her hair blue, I may dye my hair purple; a person wears a 2 sleeves shirt, I may put on a 1 sleeve shirt. Such actions help to define our differentiation, which is our “self”. When the self is set way too high, people tend to make each other suffer more and more.
We need to understand one thing that supreme happiness doesn’t have a place for self. We become everyone else. We don’t speak, but love everyone. We don’t need to declare our life, but live for everyone. What we call the supreme happiness is the enlightenment.
The ANZ Bank will be a representative for all of us to send this message to the
world:
“People who are blessed or superior please understand that you can influence many other people’s lives. Therefore, the more blessings you have, the more responsibly you should live.”
Everyone agrees that while we seek to live a responsible life for other people, our mind is balanced and inclined to egolessness. We don’t live for ourselves any more, and this helps our blessings to become infinite. If there is a second or an hour we stop to live for ourselves, our blessing will be decreased. If there is a second, a minute, an hour we wish to live for everyone else, our blessings will be increased, from one life to
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another, to the infinite. As a result, the infinite blessings turns to supreme happiness, or enlightenment.
In order to live in such a noble wayand to keep our mind stable, balanced and righteous, besides moments we are stressed and busy with work, we need to meditate because meditation helps our mind be balanced.
Meditation helps us to reduce stress.
The truth is that people with much money will worry more because they are afraid of losing money. Having money helps people not to worry about buying each meal but instead make them worry about losing money. Most people who possess much money will invest into a business or something. Sometimes when a person reaches his own investment capacity, he will deposit his money into ANZ bank so that the money will be continuosly invested. Depositing money into a bank is asking for another person to invest the money because the bank will loan the money to someone else who has an opportunity to invest and make more profit.
Therefore, the bank takes the burden from us because it co-ordinates and invests our money to make more and more profit to pay us interest while keeping our money safe.
When the return of our own investment is good, the bank manages our money well, and lenders invest our money efficiently, the whole society will move forward, having abundant food and clothing. We hope this thinking will become real, so that our country will become more affluent and every citizen will have enough clothing and food. Next, we can share our prosperity to other brother countries. We shall remember there is no border to stop us doing good deeds.
We may be blessed to wear beautiful clothes, drive luxuious cars, and have people beattentive to us as we speak. We feel these things are valuable and they make us feel happy.
The truth is that we have many worries. If these worries add up with selfishness, superficiality and meanness, they will destroy our brain much faster than they will do to a peasant. The reason is because the peasant isn’t tricky. He works hard on the land, then goes home, eats and sleeps peacefully. He grows old but he doesn’t become forgetful. In contrasta blessed person has opportunities to do business, to consider pluses and minuses. If the person is also selfish, tricky, alcuting constantly on winning or losing then such a mind will destroy his brain quickly.
Somehow, if our mind is only filled up by good thoughts then our brain becomes brighter, smarter, and happier. In contrast, if our brain contains bad, mean and selfish thoughts these will destroy our own brain cells. Our brain cells will cause their
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own sickness and gradually be destroyed sooner than the expected time, thus causing us a miserable life.
While we are busy doing business or investing, we also spend much of our time worrying for ourselves, families, relatives as well as pay taxes to the government.
Many matters we need to take care of and be responsible for may cause us stress. Meditation can help us solve this problem. There would be nothing better if we could not only be talented and successful businesspeople, paying attention to small details, but also keeping our minds peaceful and happy. What would be better in life then making lots of money, running a business successfully allwhile keeping our mind peaceful? It would be difficult to attain these 3 things all together.
However, if we meditate, we can attain these 3 matters: money, a successful business and a peaceful mind. There would be nothing more valuable than attaing these 3 things. As a result, there will be a price to pay for attaining these 3 things at the same time: we need to have morals and meditate. Our investment brings benefits to many other people, our personal life also helps many people, and meditation is our fellow-traveller in each day of our life. Therefore, we encourage each of our esteemed guests to spend time to meditate regularly.
First, meditation saves our souls.
Second, meditation brings happiness to our families.
The fact that sometimes we are stressed from our business, we go home and take the stress out on our families. We may yell at the husband and scold our children.
A home which is our most fundamental place for support will be filled with yelling, being strained and scolding due to our stress from outside work. No matter how our job will be, if we can keep our mind peaceful and we are not under high pressure from work, we will not bring home any of our stress. We will not take the stress out on our families thus destroying our last happy place.
In order to protect our happy home, our psychology must be stable. If so, we need to meditate because it helps our mind become brighter to solve problems in our work and life. Meditation helps us to forecast many things which others can’t guess. Theory is only one part of doing business while intuition also plays a very important role.
For example, there will be a time when some people ask us to join them to invest in a real estate plan. They will talk to us as if it’s a good deal, promise to make much money, about how promising the land will become, etc. All of a sudden, we have unhappy or anxious feelings inside. Who makes us feel this way? No one. There is no
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other information; all information is only from the people who are asking us to join them to invest.
However, we feel insecure and decide not to join them. Two years later it turns out that the person who asked us to invest disappears. The investment is unsuccessful. Therefore, our insecure feeling was right. This is our blessing and intuition. Businessmen need such intuition.
We can predict about 70% of personality of a person who we would like to cooperate with or not. Our intuition can help us to foretell if the person will deceive us in the future. Right now the person may be a gentlemen and nice to everyone; however, he can betray us when it comes to benefits. Therefore, due to our intuition, we are able to decide at which level we should cooperate with this person; thus avoiding failure by not joining the business.
Intuition in doing business is very important because it helps us think and calculate less. Listening to a matter, we can guess how it will end right away. Meeting a person, we can tell how the person is. Listening to a plan, we can predict how it will turn out due to our intuition although we do not make any calculation at all. For a businessman to possesses such precise intuition will be more valuable than gold, even diamonds.
Where does the intuition or the insightcome from?
First, it is a result of meditation. Second, it comes from our blessing. Meditation helps us not to become greedy. It is strange that we are doing business, making profits, but we are not greedy. Most of people who are doing business are greedy, especially trying to make high profits. However, meditation provides a strange result. We are still doing business, looking for profits, but we don’t become greedy people. As a result of not being greedy, we can escape many traps.
Buddhism has said that intelligence will be covered by desires so that people can’t realize the underlying truth.
For example, if a person takes us to land where he plans many investing options. At this moment if our greed arises, it will take over. We see nothing else but great profits we will make if we decide to buy the land, build something, and then sell it. We then decide to invest in this plan. This may result in a failed investment.
However, if we are not greedy as we follow Buddhism and meditate, no matter how much profit they promise us, our decision will not be affected by our greed. When our greed doesn’t prevail our mind becomes brighter andwe will realize the plan is incomplete. There will be unexpected risks in the future, which can make the plan fail. Therefore, we withdraw the investment. It would not be surprising that our intuition is
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correct. In this case, our desire which is our greed doesn’t arise, thus our mind become brighter so that we can judge the matter right away to figure out the result.
Meditation also offers us: if we don’t have ill-will, we will not get angry at anyone; we do not become greedy while still fulfilling our responsibility and calculating profits or losses. We can still possess a qualification, and the dignity, talent and high-rank of a businessperson but deep down in our souls, we are not greedy at all. We will become a wonderful businessperson, pearls of the world. A person who makes money but who is not greedy for money.
As the same, when we talk about a governer who holds power in his hands and is not greedy for power. These people are pearls of the world. They are looking for wisdom and knowledge but are not being self-important.
Buddhism offers us such thing, so does meditation. In conclusion, we must meditate. Not only must we meditate but also the whole world needs to meditate.
However, in order for the world to listen and follow, we need to practice first.
Who are we? Why do we need to practice first, and then tell the world to follow? Because we are blessed people and businessmen, who will influence many other people, whose voices will be heard better by our communities. Our ancestors said that whatever wealthy people said would have a certain power on others. Their words would have more weight than others. This becomes a principle as well as the truth.
We do hope this world is peaceful, happy and loving of each other. It can happen be like tbis when the whole world is filled by businessmen who are not greedy for money, people who are not greedy for power, and intellectuals who are not self-important.
How can we have such wonderful people? Only when they know about meditation.
How do they know about meditation? Because someone else askes them to meditate.
Who can ask other people to meditate? They are wealthy and blessed people.
Why do such blessed and wealthy people agree to meditate? Because these people realize clearly that: meditation will free our soul and our world.
Namo Sakya Muni Buddha.
