Wealth You Can Keep

Close your eyes and watch your breath. Watch it coming in; watch it going out. Notice where you feel the breathing in the body and try to stay right there. If long breathing doesn’t feel good, you can try shorter breathing. You can experiment for a while to see what kind of breathing feels good for you right now.

We’re trying to create a sense of well-being inside because it’s here inside that you have your own true wealth. The wealth of the world outside can disappear. It can be taken away from you. As the Buddha said, fire can burn it. Floods can wash it away. Thieves and kings can steal it. Hateful heirs can take it. In other words, it’s not really yours. Even though you may have your name on it, it’s not really yours.

What’s really yours is the goodness you develop inside, because nobody can take that away from you. When you’re virtuous, when you hold by the precepts, people can’t take that away from you. They can tempt you. They can try to force you to break the precepts. But as long as you decide you’re going to stick with them no matter what, then they’re yours. If you have to sacrifice a lot of things to observe the precepts, well, that makes the precepts even more yours.

The same with the learning that you’ve learned about the Dhamma: That can’t be taken away. It may get a little bit fuzzy as you get older. But the basic principles that you’ve learned, those are yours. They stay with you.

The discernment you develop, the generosity when you’ve been giving—the goodness that comes from that is really yours. In this world where wealth is very unstable, the economy is unstable, you want to find something stable inside that you can really depend on, that you can use while you’re here and then when you have to go.

So. Work on your virtue. Work on your conviction. Conviction here means that you’re convinced that your actions really do make a difference, so what you choose to do is important. Don’t let anybody take that away from you. Work on your conviction, your virtue.

The Buddha talks about having a sense of shame and compunction. Here he’s talking about skillful sense of shame, where you’d be ashamed to do things that are beneath you. In other words, it’s the flip side of pride—that you have pride in yourself as a good person, as a person with principles, and you want to hold on to that strong sense of your worth as a person. You’d be ashamed to do things that are not worthy of you. This is your wealth. So hold on to it.

And as you try to develop as much inner wealth as you can, it’s not called being greedy. It’s called showing initiative. It’s something that the Buddha praised. So look for your wealth inside. The potentials are there. It’s just a question of your developing them. But it’s something each of us can do. We get a wealth that’s solid, that kings cannot steal, thieves cannot steal, water can’t wash away, fire can’t burn. It’s yours as you stay here, and it’s yours when you go.