“…charity is actually a means for you to let go. You should not have too many possessions because they cannot get rid of your bad feelings. The fewer things you have, the fewer bad feelings you will have. The more you have, the more bad feelings are generated. So the Buddha’s teaching is living in a frugal and austere manner—just having enough to maintain life and no more.
Anything more than that will be the cause of bad feelings and not good feelings because when you have things, you want them to be with you all the time and don’t want to lose them. But like the nature of everything in this world, they are also not permanent. They are subject to change and dissolution. One day, sooner or later, you will lose everything that you have today.
But if you are not attached to what you have, when you lose them, you won’t have any bad feelings. But if you are attached, when you lose them you will have strong negative feelings. So this is the first step to get rid of your bad feelings—letting go of possessions, people, and things that you have.
You have to remind yourself constantly that all the things that you have are your temporary possessions. It is so for anything that you have, even your body. One day you will lose your body. We all will lose our bodies. No one can stop it, because that is the truth. So if you can constantly remind yourself of this fact, it will help lessen the grip on your possessions, and lessen your desire for possessing more and more.
But if you don’t reflect on the cessation of the body, you will forget and be driven by your delusion, thinking that to have more will make you happier because you can do more. But whatever you do, it might give you some pleasure, give you some joy, but it is all temporary. It can never completely get rid of the bad feelings.
If you have bad feelings, your possessions cannot stop your bad feelings from arising. So you must try to let go of your attachment to possessions, people, and things by being charitable. Keep only what you really need, and you will be a lot happier. You won’t have to work so hard to get all these possessions. Once you have them, instead of them making you happy, they are making you unhappy because you worry whether you will be able to maintain and keep them forever.
So this is what you should teach yourself every day. The Buddha teaches us to contemplate the impermanent nature of things all the time. This will stop your desire to acquire more and more. Some people acquire a great deal of money, even though they could never spend it all, but they forget that they will lose it one day.
They don’t know that this money cannot cure or get rid of the bad feelings. The thing that will help you get rid of the bad feelings is to get rid of your possessions. Get rid of the attachment to people and things that you love. This process happens naturally when it is seen that bad feeling arises from attachment.
Once you give away your possessions and your wealth and you share them with other people, it will generate loving kindness and compassion in you. You will have love, kindness and compassion towards other people and things. When you have this, you don’t want to hurt other people. You want to make people happy.
You want to help people when they are in need. Doing this brings you happiness and a sense of joy and fulfilment, knowing that you have helped other people and made them happy by your sacrifice. You will have another kind of happiness, a kind of happiness that you won’t get from acquiring things. It is a different kind of happiness, the kind that will keep your mind peaceful and prevent your mind from being greedy, possessive, and wanting even more.
You will become content. You won’t want to be rich, because being rich doesn’t help you get rid of your bad feelings. So when you give to charity, you have compassion and love for other people. Then you will be able to keep the precepts…”
By Ajaan Suchart Abhijāto
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