To Be an Inner Millionaire
September 10, 1962
The search for inner wealth is much the same as the search for outer wealth. In searching for outer wealth, intelligent people have no problems: They can find it easily. But stupid people have lots of difficulties. Look around and you”ll see that poor people are many, while rich people are few. This shows that stupid people are many, while intelligent people are few, which is why there are more poor people than rich people.
In the search for inner wealth -- virtue and goodness -- the same holds true: It depends more on ingenuity than on any other factor. If we”re stupid, then even if we sit right at the hem of the Buddha”s robe or the robe of one of his Noble Disciples, the only result we”ll get will be our own stupidity. To gain ingenuity or virtue from the Buddha or his Noble Disciples is very difficult for a stupid person, because inner wealth depends on ingenuity and intelligence. If we have no ingenuity, we won”t be able to find any inner wealth to provide happiness and ease for the heart.
External wealth is something we”re all familiar with. Money, material goods, living things, and things without life: All of these things are counted as wealth. They are said to belong to whoever has rights over them. The same holds true with the virtue and goodness we call merit. If unintelligent people search for merit and try to develop virtue and goodness like the people around them, the results will depend on their ingenuity and stupidity. If they have little ingenuity, they”ll gain little merit.
As for those of us who have ordained in the Buddha”s religion, our aim is to develop ourselves so as to gain release from suffering and stress, just like a person who aims single-mindedly at being a millionaire.
People in the world have basically three sorts of attitudes. The first sort: Some people are born in the midst of poverty and deprivation because their parents are ignorant, with no wealth at their disposal. They make their living by begging. When they wake up in the morning, they go begging from house to house, street to street, sometimes getting enough to eat, sometimes not. Their children fall into the same ”kamma current”. That”s the kind of potential they”ve developed, so they have to be born to impoverished parents of that sort. They just don”t have it in them to think of being millionaires like those in the world of the wealthy. The parents to whom they are born act as a mould, so they are lazy and ignorant like their parents. They live in suffering with their parents and go out begging with them, sometimes eating their fill, sometimes not.
But this is still better than other sorts of people. Some parents are not only poor, but also earn their living by thievery and robbery. Whatever they get to feed their children, they tell their children what it is and where it came from. The children get this sort of education from their parents and grow up nourished by impure things -- things gained through dishonesty, thievery, and robbery -- so when they grow up, they don”t have to think of looking for work or for any education at the age when they should be looking for learning, because they”ve already received their education from their parents: education in stealing, cheating, thievery and robbery, laziness and crookedness. This is because their parents have acted as blackboards covered with writing: their actions and the manners of their every movement. Every child born to them receives training in how to act, to speak, and to think. Everything is thus an education from the parents, because the writing and teachings are all there on the blackboard of the parents. Laziness, dishonesty, deceit, thievery: Every branch of evil is there in the writing on the blackboard. The childre…
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