Non-Attachment Will Cut Your Costs

The irony of everyone running around trying to make more money is that people live unnecessarily expensive lives. Buddhism talks about how attachment causes suffering, but think about what people do for their attachments. The human race spends trillions of dollars annually on things that don’t make anyone any fundamentally happier.

The more money you spend, the more you need to make. If you are a commodity fetishist and convince yourself that you need the latest version of every ephemeral technology that comes around to feel satisfied, you’ll need to work a demanding job that makes you enough money to afford these luxuries. This is less time you have to spend doing the things you would do if money were no object.

Here’s the secret: once you begin meditating and cultivating mindfulness, money becomes no object by default. Money loses its God status. Money is what you use to buy the stuff you need to live and a few luxuries, not the axis on which the world turns. The world turns by itself. People think money rules humans because money rules egos.

Non-attachment will cut your costs. It will allow you to work mindfully and spend mindfully; you will subsequently work less and spend less. When you cut non-essentials out of your life, you end up with more time to do things that provide you with real fulfillment. You also can enjoy your life rather than craving constantly. A large-scale lack of greed could save humanity.