Money, valuing things, and getting attached
Jeroen
Luminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlands Veteran
I just wanted to write a little about these three things: the habit of thinking in terms of money, how we value things outside ourselves, and how we get attached to them. They are related, and influence each other.
It seems to be very easy to think of everything in terms of money. When you want to go visit a great-aunt, you immediately think how much the train trip is going to cost you. When you think of going out for an evening to a cafe, you think how much you are going to spend there. When you buy groceries, you consider how much the cheese costs. It is a habit, you start considering the cost of everything.
When we value things outside ourselves, we consider what they can do and how much they are worth. We value the things we use every day, or what we spend a lot of time with. Computers, smartphones, coffee pots, all kinds of things we value. But that too is a habit, that we start attaching high value in our minds to certain things.
Then those things that we value highly, those we get attached to. It becomes a wrench to let them go, you notice you don’t want to give them up when other people ask for them. It’s definitely a form of clinging, and you suffer for example when you lose your smartphone on the bus.
Comments
I see two different qualities being expressed. One I consider negative, attachment. The other I consider positive, conscientiousness, in this case regarding resources.
We all know about attachment. It prevents us from being generous, it is a feeling of suffering in and of itself. Along with other downfalls.
Conscientiousness around resources means being careful or prudent. Understanding that resources are often limited. For example when I was a teenager, my friends would get paid from their jobs and go out and spend it all right away. I would usually hold onto it, maybe spending occasionally on things I really wanted. I would always have money available for things that came up unexpectedly and my friends wouldn't. They would always wonder where I'm getting all my money from, like I was super rich or something.
Maybe another aspect of what you are talking about is summed up in the idea that we value what we measure.
https://etale.org/main/2019/02/12/we-measure-what-we-value-and-we-value-what-we-measure-maybe-not/
So true.
Personally I am very attached to generosity. However because I am humble I never mention my generosity [oops ... slipped up again]
Fortuitously because of deep understanding of my infinite faults, I am able to use them with less and less skilfulness or pre-meditation.
This BuddhaHoody sure is tough ...
I admire generosity a lot, I think it is a very positive quality of not being attached to money itself. It is quite easy to get attached to money, to see when a bill comes in and then feel a sensation almost like physical pain when ‘they’ take a chunk of ‘your’ money.
I try to take a broad picture sort of view. So when unanticipated expenses, taxes, fees come up rather than seeing them as instances that are taking from my pile and thus that bit of attachment pain coming up, I view that as an inevitable part of the resource game. For example, within a span of 4 months I had a bunch of dental all at once, 2 crowns and one root canal, that was like $5,000. But my internal experience of that expense wasn't of a painful loss thinking about all the pleasant things I could have used that money for, it was more like, "these things happen" and I didn't experience much attachment.
Regarding taxes specifically, they are an important part of living in an ordered, civil society. I'm happy to pay them, I appreciate what they do for me and my fellow citizens.
As the famous quotation states:
"He knew the price of everything but the value of nothing. "
The financial cost of something is quite different to its emotional cost.
In Sufism (an Abrahamic dharma/lore/delusion/mountain climbing strategy) being independent of wealth is dependent on internal and eternal poverty.
That means only those divested from the external trappings can handle bling without being buried in a cave like a dragon guarding its gold horde ... It is a high calling/station/situation.
If in doubt, the simple life ...
https://maggasekha.org/
“I must atone for my wealth”
Otto Khan
Posted from my iPad blingerry
Yes, but once you start valuing things you are on the way to attachment. Perhaps knowing the value of nothing is to be preferred?
Perhaps. I think ideally we would be able to find a way towards non attachment from a place of wisdom. Your argument here, I think, is coming from a place of ignorance.
You might be on the way to attachment; I am not.
It is by my knowing the Value of things, and cherishing them unconditionally, that non-attachment is cultivated. I can tell the difference between valuing something which results in risk, and valuing something which results liberation from Grasping.
The secret is to perceive every single thing you posses, own, cherish and value, and realise, completely, that absolutely none of it actually belongs to you, or is yours to keep.
Everything you have, is borrowed. Be it the car, the house, the clothes, the job, the partner, the parent.
None of it is yours.
Not even the body you're standing up in.
Ay caramba. [I would faint but with what?]
... Quick round of the heart sutra for good measure ...
No suffering, no origination, no stopping, no path, no cognition also no attainment with nothing to attain.
no that is too advanced
how about
No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell no taste, no touch, no object of mind, no realm of eyes and so forth until no realm of mind consciousness.
http://webdharma.com/ctzg/heartsutra1.html
I was merely trying to show the process. But you might be right, sometimes I surprise myself with my ignorance. It’s not always such a bad thing.
I appreciate the value of throwing ideas out there to see if they stick or not.
...Conditioning which has become a force of habit an auto response so to speak...
Blame it all on the clinging aggregates
Beginner mind/beginner wealth is a form of continual impoverishment or recognition of real wealth.
For example the priceless jewels 3+
One more breath. Wealth!
https://nrhatch.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/walking-the-streets-like-beggars/