You cannot buy happiness with money

“You cannot buy happiness with money. You can only find happiness by giving money away.”

“…We must not be greedy. We must not want to have a lot of money because once you start wanting to have a lot of money, it can never stop. From one million dollars you want to have ten million, from ten million you want to have one hundred million, from one hundred million you want to have one thousand million, and so on and so forth. But so what? Does it make you any happier?

And what will you do with one thousand million dollars? You cannot buy happiness with money. You can only find happiness by giving money away. When you do charity, you feel good, like today you come, bring some money to give to the temple, and you feel happy.

So, the first step is that you have to curb your greed for more money. Just have enough to take care of your body and life. If you have more than you need, you do not have to keep it unless you want to save it for future use. But if you have enough already, don’t keep the excess; give it away.

Because if you keep it, you want to get more, and when you have the desire to get more, you will not be happy. So, this is the reason why the Buddha taught us to do dāna. Dāna is a Pāli word that means giving or charity. Once you can practise dāna, the next step for you is sīla. Sīla means keeping the precepts.

If you can keep the precepts, you can curtail or eliminate your desire, especially the desire to do bad things, like the desire to kill, steal, commit adultery, lie, or to drink alcohol. Doing these things doesn’t make you happy; it makes you more miserable and unhappy. So, you have to maintain the five precepts. This will lessen your desire, especially the desire to do evil things, like killing, stealing, committing adultery, lying, or drinking alcohol.

Once you can keep the precepts, your mind will be happier. Since you haven’t done anything bad to other people, you know that nobody will come after you for revenge, or to punish you for the bad things you could have done. Your mind will be at ease and peaceful, not having to worry about the bad deeds you might have done.

Once you have a mind that is peaceful, you can then do the third step. This is to stop your desire completely by practising meditation…”

By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto