 Money tends to be unfortunately misrepresented in the public at large. The statement that money can buy happiness is lambasted by most "forward thinking" people who tend to favor sentimentality in human relationships over something that can be bought and sold at whim. This is the wrong way of looking at it. The people who decry money and its relation to happiness have missed the point completely. This sentimentality and "human worth" view of the situation has no relevance with regards to what money can actually provide. Money does actually buy happiness. In fact, money is probably one of the best ways to obtain happiness that we know of. The moralists are confusing happiness with "contentment"; the two being quite different modes of being. Contentment is a more evolved feeling than happiness. It is hard to track and describe since it is by definition divorced from many outward emotional and physical responses. To be content is very much to be satisfied where you are; to be satisfied with yourself. This feeling is independent of money since it does not want and desire. Happiness on the other hand is "elation"; an elevation of one's emotional being to higher levels in the literal sense. The chemical pathways that cause mood elevation are quite known. Money, being only a means to get "what you want" will give you the happiness that you want, whatever it may be. Happiness is fleeting, however, but contentment is lifelong.
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 The old sages didn't tell us what "is" but only that it is "not this" and "not that". The true holding on is letting go, not embracing. True form is formless, "being" encompasses so many things that it cannot be differentiated. True courage is diving head on into fear, not keeping your fear at bay. True strength is gained by exposing weakness to discipline, not indulging in weakness. True peace is maintained in discord. True experience is seen and felt, false knowledge is produced by thought... ...yet everything is created by the mind. True waste is always recycled anew, true produce is always bountiful when one knows how to obtain it. True light carved out of darkness. True life given by the spirit, which is the breath. True life is lived, true death is dead. True void is substance, True substance is insubstantial. One's disastrous situation is good fortune for another's life, Nothing is the same for anybody. Existence is measured on scale. There is no reason to get rid of the scale as the end of the scale means the end of you. ...and there is nothing there to end.  It is often said that the body, often the "physical" body, is finite and limited; and to the untrained observer this is "true". The body can be cut and mangled to pieces, it ages and has an ultimate end called death. Well...sure, I mean..."yes"... What's your point? Usually a reference to finite being is in response to a question on the infinite. If a particularly precocious child, who is beginning to see beyond their particular religious upbringing, asks about these issues of "limitations" the adult will certainly convey to the child in a particular Occam's Razor way and cut straight to the heart of the matter and on top of that, will give them a kid friendly, easily digestible, practical scenario: "In our spiritual bodies, there will be 'no limits'; you can do anything you want." "You know how you can't walk through walls now? You will certainly be able to." ...quite. Iconoclasts and heretics have been derided throughout history for obvious reasons since they disrupt the natural order of things, or perhaps more directly, the "control" was disrupted. Heretics not only think differently themselves, but they seem to get an exponentially growing following. A heretic that has no following is a mad man who is no more a threat to anyone else but himself. This was the precarious position that Jesus occupied in 1st century Jerusalem. It obviously wasn't problematic for Jesus since he was perfectly happy with what he was doing, it was just that the leaders weren't fond of the following; stopping a following is like stopping a train, it takes a little straining. So what ended up occuring is that Jesus was safely put in his place and was fully given all that he claimed, the only condition is that the followers wouldn't be given the same. The Gospel, or the "Good News" was that the Kingdom of God is within. There is no searching or desiring, or need for faith. You are the divinity. The "condition" however shifted the divinity from "yourself" to that of the Creator (along with Jesus himself, and the ecstasy [holy spirit]). Now that we can see this, we can obviously break it down as the situation necessitates. That is the iconoclasm. Nothing is sacred. ...so about the "walking through walls" thing... Why would anyone want to do that, physical or otherwise? Are you seriously demoting the gravitas and grandiloquence of the eternal Spirit and its omniscient knowledge on the condition of being able to walk through plaster and timber framing? That is tantamount to using the Keck Telescope at Mauna Kea Observatories to find the keys you locked in your car. I mean...yes; while it technically is possible, why don't you use the fantastic instrument for fantastic things? There are no problems for the spirit. No conditions to put on it. Nothing to be concerned with.  In the garden was the tree whose fruit should not be eaten. It was forbidden. The Lord said in Genesis: “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Death to those who know. And the serpent, the symbol not of curiosity but of hubris, will tempt you to take from it, to know right from wrong just as God knows. Adam and Eve eat and do not physically die. In fact they become human. Cast out of the garden of earthly delights, they are thrust into time and a world of suffering, shame, and sin we all know so well. The knowledge of good and evil. Death to those who know. Are you beginning to get the picture? To know right from wrong is to be dead. To be dead is to be human. It is the very knowledge that kills us. Not physically, of course, but the second we decide we know something about morality, psychologically we are dead. Remember the garden -- ignorance is bliss. When you are young, there is nothing to know. Simply take and eat. Enjoy. Everything is simple. It is knowledge that complicates things. Knowledge that causes us to suffer. You probably have heard the story of Adam and Eve, but did you listen? Did you hear the true message conveyed? Relax and enjoy life and you will be happy. That is all there is to it. You are told you must help charity, you must say please and thank you, you must become a good catholic, you must contribute to society. All these things you must do lest you become a bad person. Who can tell you this? This is nonsense! Let them have their knowledge. Let them judge and persecute to their dying day. Those are the people -- those who know the most -- that feel the least. To know comes in the way of to see. To know is to decide there is nothing more to see. To know is to reject God’s creation (or as we say, reality) and substitute your own. When you are told you do no good works, and should feel guilty, say: “and you, why do you work? Is it to help others or to please yourself? Why do you become a slave to good and evil? Why do you abdicate your capacity to understand and substitute it with the lazy, stagnant state of knowing? You have stopped learning, you have stopped loving, you have stopped understanding the second you have known, for to love is to understand that there is nothing to know but happiness, nothing to be done but enjoy.” The men who know the most feel the least. But they fear the most. Why else do they collect knowledge as if it were gold? Is it not equally selfish as one who works hour after hour simply to acquire great riches and horde them all? The fear of nonbeing, the shame of being a sinner. These things drive us to accumulate knowledge and do good works. Not for others, oh no, do not believe this for one minute, but for ourselves. You believe so strongly in giving charity. You think those who are unhappy deserve happiness. Why do you give none to yourself? Imagine a world full of people, all saintly in their charity, all miserable. It is absurd. Fix yourself, then you may choose to help others. Gain wisdom and you will know what is to be done. To have knowledge is to be ignorant. What an important message in our particular time. Our politicians know, those who start wars know, those who protest know. And do not forget that you who gives to charity, you too know. You are not so different, you simply come down on the other side of the fence. Both of you know, and so you know not of yourself or of what you do. To know is to die. Die for an idea. To become a robot, automated and programmed. He says you are poor, you are upset. He says you have a nice smile, you are happy. Who are you? Who is choosing for you? Not you. The one who puts you in this nice box and you are happy or the one who places you in that bad box and you are sad. That is who chooses how you feel. You are a robot. A slave. Because you know. You know right from wrong, and so you have died. Give it up! Spit out the apple! It is the apple that makes you miserable! There is never a good so good as when the person doing it was not even aware that what he was doing was good. Give up your knowledge and find happiness. Your choice. If you do not like to hear this, too bad. Your loss. As long as you know, you are dead. And dead people are of no use to anybody.  Anything that changes is an illusion, but the illusions are still real things. When a trickling of water flows downhill it is called a stream, but what it is exactly? It is not a thing that you can hold since when you bottle up the water it no longer becomes the stream. The stream is a process, a doing, not a thing in the object sense; "streaming" should be a better definition. It is the same with "living". There is no actual life; only living. The illusion is that life is a concrete object, and who are we to say other wise: we touch ourselves and are touched by others, hear ourselves and hear others. We have a body and a mind, but what happens at death? The body and mind cease to be and with it, the life. The life comes and goes, but "living", the process and action of it, never truly dies. The perception of our world by way of our senses is the only true thing there is. We touch, we see, we smell, we hear; and we use these real things to build an artifice that we call "the body" and "the psyche". The body and psyche are created out of quite literal thin air; the hot breath that left the lungs out of the mouth and vibrated your eardrums to tell you your name, your race, your religion, your relations. The sound waves that convey meaning through language are filtered through the ears and are met by the mind who files and sorts by importance. The import is attached to the feelings; the stronger the feeling attached to the information, the tighter and more vividly the mind holds on to it. But where is the mind? The ancient master Bodhidarma who brought what is now referred to by the Japanese tradition as Zen to China, told a student whose mind was turbulent and troubled to bring his mind out before him in order to pacify it. But when the student looked for his mind to show the teacher, he could not find it. Bodidharma said "that is your answer". Are "you" your body or your "mind"? Are you neither of these? Well, who are you? What are you? Can you define yourself? I am the exact same as you, but still different. How am I different? I know who I am, you just don't know who you are. Do you? |
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