Thubten Chodron on the Economy

This is from a dharma talk I attended at Matrepa College in SE Portland. Thubten Chodron is a Tibetan Buddhist nun and a highly respected teacher. I’ve read some of her stuff and she has helped me understand some important things, psychology-related things.

The Beatles song “Money Can’t Buy Me Love” ran through my head for a long time after this dharma talk.

Living with less, we feel more humble and more equal with everyone else. We can become more generous, because we relate more to people in poverty and can feel more compassion toward others.

Living in a less wealthy situation = great opportunity for dharma practice.
You can be happy living in a one-room shack with a dirt floor.
Abundance of wellness in heart = sharing with others, don’t feel poor even if we don’t have material wealth.

“I give without a sense of loss.”—saying with mandalas. [I certainly felt that way in India and after I returned from India and took carloads to thrift stores, but I didn’t feel that way when I took my youngest cats to a humane shelter, even though it was a no-kill shelter. That was one renunciation for which I was not ready.] It’s hard to give something away because you’re sure you might use it someday (cardboard boxes, containers, etc). Generosity—“we’re reluctant to give away a dusty, empty box because we might use it someday.” We can feel poor when we have a house full of stuff. Inner mental state—no matter what our living standard is, we can feel rich.

Having less could result in sharing with others, bring yourselves together. For instance, a family that has two TVs and watches them in separate rooms can instead have one TV and gather together in the same room. There is extraordinary potential, even with the economy going downhill; families could get closer together and feel more compassion and generosity. [In my case, getting close to relatives is unfathomably unhealthy. No, thanks. I’ll join a commune instead.]

Miserly, greedy mind = what got us into this mess. Living on credit, spending money we don’t have, buying stuff we don’t need. We can’t blame it all on AIG. We bought into it—the consumers lived on credit cards with high interest without thinking about paying credit cards debt. Obscene greed. [There you have it: no amount of pressure will convince me to get a credit card. So there!] Obscene greed = more broken families and alcohol abuse, etc. Getting more and more stuff didn’t make things better. [At the Nalanda architecture museum there’s a carving of a large face with a wide open mouth and hands in the mouth; it symbolizes greed. At the Portland Art Museum there’s a huge disturbing, dark painting that’s also called Greed; it has soldiers with guns, cigarettes, Coca-cola cans, McDonald’s lunches, and they’re shooting guns and killing a wolf and the canvas has a lot of gushing blood on it.]

We used to have black and white TVs, smaller screens, just one TV and the whole family stayed in the same room. Kids now have their own room with their own TV and iPod, etc—they don’t learn how to be a human. Bad economy could be good for us and get us to reach out toward our neighbors instead of locking doors and cutting off.

How else can I spend my time if I can’t run around meeting all kinds of enjoyment? [I confess that last night I went to the Bagdad Theater and saw Slumdog Millionaire, and the ticket was only $3, no concessions.] “I don’t have time” is our national saying. If we had more time people say, “Get a life.” What do you do? Have time to do a daily practice—what happens when your excuse goes away? Volunteering in the community instead of being too busy all the time. If you lose your job, you can volunteer [I’ve been doing that], instead of getting another job you don’t like just for the paycheck and shopping.

A simpler life is a great opportunity to reach out to others, share with others. 20% of the world’s resources = North America (I’m thinking I read that it’s more like 24%). Contentment and dharma practice. When you sit down to meditate, what distracts you? Everything we want? Content with what we have = less distraction while meditating. [Lately I’m distracted with what I’m willing to get rid of.]

This is a good time for us to think about how to prepare for our future lives. If we’re not so greedy in this life, we have time for it. We think of other people: You should be generous, and I’m glad to be you’re recipient. But do we turn it around and try to be generous ourselves? Do we cultivate a stingy heart or a generous heart? This is an opportunity to look at our own personal greed. It’s easy to blame Wall Street, but aren’t we like these people? If we had the position of power, would we do the same thing? It’s tempting to blame everybody else, but it’s good to look inside.

Because of greed and fear, we make up fearful stories about what may happen, getting all stressed out.

Money doesn’t buy us happiness, and the more we have, the more we have to lose.
A German millionaire lost an investment and committed suicide recently. He felt like a failure. Another guy kept watching his stock and seeing it grow and grow and watching it go up and up… from $18,000, it went poof and he only had $150 of his inheritance. He took that money and donated it to a Buddhist nunnery, saying it’s time he started investing in something more meaningful.

We should prepare for future lives, without practicing escapism. In this lifetime, we have to create the cause of a better world. We shouldn’t just pray, but rather take action. Cause and effect—What we’re experiencing now is because of things we did before. One good future life is good, but it’ll end. How about getting out of the cycle? How do I create the case? That’s why we study the dharma—what to do, to actualize spiritual states that we aspire, study and put in practice, create the causes for something you want (like to become a Buddha) = the process becomes joyful and exciting. Causes will bring results.

Being generous is one of the causes. Fortitude, effort, kindness, compassion, lovingkindness. But we have to do something, not just sit around and say that sounds really good.

For people who think they’re a failure for not having a job or not having a house, tell them they’re not. Everything, including the economy, is impermanent. We can encourage them to get new skills so they can go get a job they’ll enjoy more. If you encourage others to think big, you can think big.

We have so many walls around us—there are so many people who scare me, etc. Maybe you should go there—like do volunteer work in that scary area.

It’s hard not to be judgmental toward people who live lavishly. Could you be experiencing jealousy, or perhaps sadness because you know what they’re doing is not working? But when you’re feeling judgmental—you should reflect that “I have the same thing inside myself.” You cannot control what they do, so you should take care of that potential that’s in yourself. Other people’s behavior can help us to reflect and transform ourselves. That judgmental mind is not a happy mind—it’s implanting negativity in our own mind, and this brings about more suffering and negative karma.

Getting together with a friend and gossiping about how bad others are—this is not helping your karma or self-esteem [mindful speech].

Having things isn’t the problem—it’s the attachment and craving. Have things without being attached to them. How can you tell if you’re attached? If you think of something that you have, and the thought of losing it makes you unhappy, then there’s attachment.

Does this apply to loved ones? We’re very attached to someone, and someday we’ll separate—it’s inevitable. Thinking if you hold on good enough they won’t die—doesn’t work. For their benefit—how can I act in a way that will benefit them the most? Does it benefit them if I’m clinging and trying to make them do things they don’t want to do? Maybe it’s better for them to go do something else, go somewhere else. Do you care about them, or about how they make you feel? If you really are, then you let them do what they need to do. This won’t always be the same person that they are right now. They’re just a karmic bubble. You can’t hold onto them forever.

When you have attachment for someone else, how do you deal with grief at parting? Don't judge your emotions—what we feel we feel. But do we want to continue feeling it? Feeling anger: don’t label yourself a bad person for being angry, but ask if you want to continue feeling that way. Move away from grief—don’t always want to feel that way. We shared so much love, I’m going to take the love I had with this person and share this love with the world. It makes you feel so rich, you want to share. Honor the feeling of connection and recognize it doesn’t have to be with one person.