“If you have more than what you need then it means that you are greedy.”

“If you have more than what you need then it means that you are greedy.”

Question ex:  How do we know as a human being, the difference between performing in life in moderation (working towards financial goal, promotion) and greed?

Than Ajahn:  The Buddha taught us that there is a better kind of comfort other than the physical comfort. You think that the more you have, the more comfortable you are, but in reality, the more you have the more uncomfortable you will be, mentally. There is stress involved when you have to seek for more and more. Once you have them, you will cling to them and this will create stress in the mind. So you might have the physical comfort but you are creating a lot of suffering in the mind.

The Buddha said that you should revert the process, instead of seeking physical comfort, you should seek for mental comfort. Mental comfort means that you just have the minimum physical comfort to maintain the body, to provide it only with the necessary requisites like food, shelter, clothing and medicine. You don’t have to have a lot of them, just have enough to keep the body going, then you don’t have the stress to seek for other things to make the body happy, you will have time to create the mental comfort. 

To create the mental comfort is to develop mindfulness through meditation and to develop wisdom by seeing that the mental comfort is in the mind not in the body. The physical comfort is temporary. No matter how much you have, one day you are going to lose them all, because one day, the body will die. At the same time when you seek for a lot of physical comfort you are creating a lot of mental stress, mental discomfort. Besides minimising the physical comfort you also need to enhance your mental comfort by practising meditation, by developing mindfulness and by developing wisdom. You can only do this if you have time and you can only have time if you reduce spending time in creating things to satisfy your physical comfort.

So try to provide your body comfort only at the minimum requirements then you will have more time to develop your mental comfort which is more important and more lasting, it is forever. The physical comfort is only good while you are living, when the body lives, whilst the mind lives forever. Once you have created comfort for the mind, it will stay with you forever.

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Question:  How do we know we are still in the right path and not go towards greediness that cannot be satisfied?

Than Ajahn:  If you have more than what you need then it means that you are greedy. You should only have enough for what you need, like clothing, if you have more than four or five sets of clothes you are having too many of them.

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By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

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