I have lived without
money, I have lived with money, and I have one confession to make:
it is always better
to live with money than without. Money is useful.
One should not be used by it,
that's all. I'm not against money; it should be used.
It is a good, utilitarian invention. It helps.
It is tremendously
useful; but use it, don't be used by it.
Money should not be
your master; you should be the master, that's all. And if you have to choose,
then my suggestion is: always choose to be with money. I am not saying that you
will be more happy; I
am saying only that you will have more choice to choose your misery according
to your heart.
A poor man has not
much choice: he has to be miserable, whatsoever the misery happens to be. A
rich man has much more choice. The poor man has to suffer in a limited way.The rich man suffers
unlimitedly: he can suffer here, he can suffer in New York, he can suffer in
London, he can suffer in Peking. He has the whole world to suffer in.And sooner or later,
he will be suffering on the moon and Mars. he has more freedom, and freedom is
good.
If you are poor you
have to suffer one woman; if you are rich you have to suffer many women. It
opens doors. So if you ask me, I will suggest that if you are trying to choose
to live with money or without, I would say to live with money. it will give you
more
experience, it will
bring you to God sooner -- because you will be tired sooner.
A poor man is never
tired of money, remember. Because he has no money -- how to be
tired of
something you don't have? A poor man always hankers and desires and dreams
about money. Only a rich man is finished with money. In fact, that is the
definition of a rich man: one who is finished with money, he is the rich man.
he has known, he has seen what money can give. And now he would like to have
something more that Money can never give.
I am not saying money
can give you God, or peace, or happiness. But there are foolish people...
One MAHATMA came to
see me a few years ago, and he said, "I have renounced money because
through money you cannot have bliss.
" But I said,
"Who told you, in the first t you will have bliss? Through money you can
have a beautiful house. Who told you that you will have bliss? Who has told you
that you will have happiness? You will
have a big car."
There are foolish
people who expect that through money bliss is going to happen. Then they become
disillusioned one day.
Money is not wrong;
their illusion, their projection, was wrong. Money is not at fault. If you go
and try to squeeze oil out of sand, and oil does not come out of
it, will you say that the sand is at fault?
You were foolish, you
were stupid. In the first
place, who had told you that by squeezing sand you would get oil?
Money cannot give you
bliss, cannot give you peace, cannot give you God, cannot give you paradise.
But to come to know
this, one has to have money. Then you become clearly aware of what money can
give and what money cannot give. When a person has
known what money can give, his efforts start moving beyond the money, beyond
the world.
Money is a beautiful
invention, one of the most important inventions man has ever made, next only to
language -- the first is language, the second is money.
These are the two
most important foundations for civilization, society, culture.
I am not against it;
I am simply saying what money can give and what money cannot give.
If you are thinking
that by hoarding money, one day suddenly you will become meditative, then you
are a fool. Not bye hoarding money are you going to become mediative. And
remember, not by renouncing money are you going to become meditative.These are both
foolish people. First they think that through money they will get God, then one
day they think that by renouncing money they will get God -- but in both cases
they remain money-oriented.
God has nothing to do
with money. You can have God with as much money as you want, and you can have
God without money, without as much money as you want. God has
nothing to do with
money. A rich man can become meditative, a poor man can become meditative.
But my understanding
is this: that if a poor man wants to become
meditative, he will
need TREMENDOUS
intelligence -- because he will have to see the
futility of money
which he does not have. He will need tremendous intelligence.
Kabir must have been
tremendously intelligent -- I think more intelligent than Buddha and Mahavir.
My reason for saying
so is this: Buddha had money, Mahavir had money. If they became fed-up, it is
simple, it is logical. It is as simple as "two plus two are four." If
Buddha had not
renounced the palace, then it would have proved only one thing: that he was
stupid.
If he renounced, that
does not prove that he was very greatly intelligent, that simply proves an
average intelligence.
But Kabir, Christ,
Mohammed -- they are more intelligent people. They didn't have money, they
didn't have anything, and still they became aware that money is useless. They
didn't have a great kingdom, and without having it they renounced it.
They must have been
very sharp people, tremendously alert.
They could see
through things that they didn't have. Their transparency, their clarity, was
tremendous, incredible.
If a poor man wants
to be religious, he will need great intelligence. If a rich man wants to be
religious, he needs only average intelligence.
So, if a poor man
becomes Spiritual, he is a great sage. And if a rich man does not become spiritual, he is a fool, stupid.
OshO
The Path of Love
