Money Is Nothing

Excerpts from
To you
by Sawaki Kôdô Rôshi

Translated from Japanese by Jesse Haasch and Muhô

“The measure of man: you give him a little money and immediately he starts to move.

Human happiness and unhappiness doesn’t only depend on money. If the balance in your savings account were a measure of your happiness, it would be a simple matter. Yet it really isn’t so.

Without money, you’ve got difficulties. Still, you should know that there are more important things than money.
You constantly think about sex. Still, you should know that there are more important things than sex.

Don’t be so helpless that you start saying you need money to live. In this world you can lead a fine life without savings.

Even university professors are only concerned with earning their daily bread.

Nothing is more pitiful than feeding yourself with your position and salary.

“Work, work! When you work, you get money. When you have money, you can take it easy and still have something to eat.” Compared with such simplistic thinking, Marxism is truly sophisticated.

Some think they’re important because they have money. Others think they’re important because they have “satori”. But no matter much how much you puff up your personal sack of flesh, you won’t make yourself into anything besides a devil.
That which doesn’t belong to you fills the entire universe. Where personal thoughts come to an end is where the buddha-dharma begins.

In the world, it’s always about winning or losing, plus or minus. Yet in Zazen, it’s about nothing. It’s good for nothing. That’s why it is the greatest and most all-inclusive thing there is.

Dōgen says:

The flowers that bejewel the sky of my heart,
I offer them to the buddhas of the three worlds.”