Question:
Dear Luang Phaw whom I respect the most, I have a
question to ask you. When I ask my business associates to come to temples, they
always refuse with the reason that religions teach people to be contented and
equable, and that doesn’t go well with the business life. I’d like to ask for
Luang phaw’s mercy to give us explanation in order to solve this
misunderstanding.
Answer
by Venerable Dhattajeevo Bhikku
Actually, the word contentment means the satisfactory of
what we should have and get. Whatever we shouldn’t have, we shouldn’t be
satisfied to have it. Then if somebody has enough knowledge, efficiency and
virtues to get wealth in the correct and suitable way, the Lord Buddha didn’t
prohibit him to get wealth. But this misunderstanding makes a big obstacle that
obstructs people from coming to temples.
First of all, you have to understand that the main goal of
every businesspeople around the world is the richness. And the second goal of
the people who are already rich is fame. Richness and fame are main goals of
businesspeople.
However, the Lord Buddha didn’t disallow people to be rich.
Most people misunderstand that the Lord Buddha didn’t allow people to get
wealth. Actually, he didn’t say that. Other than that, he even taught about the
ill effects of poverty. If you are poor, you might have to borrow people money,
and then you have to pay for the interest. Paying the interest is such a pain.
Well… if you are not able to pay the interest, you will be asked for its
payment. That’s also a pain. This is an example. Therefore, you should realize
that the Lord Buddha didn’t prohibit anybody in the world from getting rich.
Other than that, he also taught about the essence of being
millionaires, i.e. he taught people how to get wealth, and not only in the
present life, but also in the next lives. The over-life poverty was never
taught by him. We have to adjust our understanding that he blamed only the
people who got wealth in a wrong way. To say easily, he blamed the people who
got wealth from false careers because it’s the path to the hell, and it’s not
going to fulfill their hopes. It means they desire to get rich, but actually
they get poor. Or if they have false careers and get rich as their desire, they
wouldn’t be happy at the end of their lives. Other than that, they will go to
unfortunate realm.
What is a false career? For example, selling weapons,
selling humans; for example, slaves, etc, selling drugs, selling animals for
slaughter, these all are false careers; including, the careers prohibited by
law. Because he could see the ill effect of the immoral richness that could
suffer people over lives, so he prohibited us to do it.
Since we’ve known these principles, it’s good to ask them to
temples, no matter if they are rich or not. If they get rich by the wrong way,
they would get a good chance to be warned by monks, and do good deeds to solve
this mistake—not to prevent mistakes, but to solve it because the mistake was
already made, and they already got rich by a false way.
If they haven’t got rich yet, but they’ve made some mistake,
they will have a chance to start over again for the future richness along the
way the Lord Buddha taught. He did teach the essential principles for
businesspeople, not only to be a millionaire, but a billionaire or even a
trillionaire. These are 4 easy principles starting from the right capability to
earn wealth.
1. The right capability to earn wealth. It means being
clever in earning wealth in a correct way, and being clever in blocking the
path to unfortunate realms.
2. The right capability to keep wealth. No matter how much
we could earn, if we don’t know how to keep it, it would be the same way that
we dip up water with a basket and then we lose all that water.
The third one is very interesting. The Lord Buddha taught us
the capability to set up a team. It might be a businessmen team, a direct-seller
team, or any other business of the present time. He gave this teaching over
2,500 years ago by using the word “Kalayanamitata” which means setting up a
good people team, not a thief or a mafia one. If we set up a good people team,
or a business team, we wouldn’t get only richness, but also clear the road to
heaven and to nirvana. If we set a mafia team up, we will definitely go to hell
and be imprisoned while being alive.
The fourth thing he taught was the right way to spend the
wealth. Well..it doesn’t mean only spending it for living our lives, but it
also means spending it for gaining merits for the next lives.
You should better tell your business associates to come to
temples to be rich of everything, i.e. wealth and moralities. Being rich of
moralities is very valuable because it’s the over-life richness. Instead of
being punished in the hell or being scared of law, they will get rich in the
correct way by precepts and virtue from their own business. That’s worthy to be
born in a Buddhist country. Let persuade them to temples real fast.
