Money vs Peace [The Pendulum]

The root of suffering is attachment – The Buddha

The human brain is filled with thousands of questions. In the financial realm, the most frequent and persistent questions that come up are,

Is it really required to earn more money, or Is it okay to just earn to make a living?

Can Peace and Money be together?

Is achieving Money and Wisdom both possible in a lifetime?

Or to put it differently, are we going to spend our lives thinking only about money for the next few decades and die one day or are we going to live life by not bothering much about money?

And the list goes on. The central theme to all of these is “Money”.

Money is one of the factors that alter the equation be it with having peace, gaining wisdom, pursuing a passion, etc. Most of the times the Pendulum of life swings towards money and in the process peace is destroyed. By the time we realize this, it’s already late.

So what is the right approach one should adopt towards money that also includes Peace and Happiness?

Money – The Majoritarian perspective

Given an option to chose between money and peace, the majority of us will choose money. It has created such an influence on all of us that we can’t ignore money. Everybody wants to earn but at what cost? Do we spend our whole life worrying about it and stop living life in the process?

If we examine how and when money gains importance in our life maybe we will get some insights.

In Hinduism, the Ashrama system is a concept of 4 stages in life – Brahmacharya(student), Grihastha(householder), Vanaprastha(retired), and Sannyasi(renunciate).

The question we are trying to peruse i.e., earn more money or just earn a living,  can be understood and answered via this concept. The attachment towards money one has is the differentiating factor between “earning more” and “just earn for living”.

When in the Brahmacharya stage, most of us will be very neutral towards money except few who are into the marketing field (pun intended). Unless people are from economically backward sections of society with dire financial needs, usually we see less aggression about money during this stage. Partly it is also due to the financial support from parents.

When a person reaches the Grihastha stage, holds the responsibility for maintaining a family. The desire to earn more money increases exponentially, and the effort also proportionately. Here “money” starts being the focal point in our lives due to increased attachment towards it. Generally, it is a tradeoff between Money and Peace.

And your emotional attachment towards money that is destroying the peace of mind and not the effort to earn money. The below bell curve shows various stages on the horizontal axis and the Effort/Attachment towards money along the vertical axis.

During the 3^rd stage, the person is still in the “earn more money” phase. The previous stage push towards “earning more” gets carried onto this stage. But slowly agitation in mind rescinds and peace starts settling in. And the last phase wherein a person’s interest in money wanes and is more at peace with the self.

More or less this shows the general pattern of Interest of people towards not just money, but many other human needs like Physiological needs (Food, Clothing, etc) or Psychological needs(Relationships, friendship, etc).

The majority of people will show similar waxing and waning of interest towards these needs while moving from their childhood to being an adult, later towards their retirement.

Money – The Minority perspective

Till now we have seen people showing waxing and waning of interest toward money. But there are people who live at the extremes. At one end, some live like they don’t care about money or they just earn to make a living that’s all. At the other end, some people run behind money throughout their lives.

Few prefer not to worry about the money-driven society and focus on peace and happiness. They usually live in isolation, away from society, and perhaps can be seen as a sanyasi (ascetic).

But ideally how many people would prefer such isolation or will be immune from societal financial interdependency. The majority would prefer having family, maintain relationships, spend on financial security, work towards the betterment of lifestyle though they aren’t fully against the sanyasi style of living.

But there must be some balance in everything, be it financial aspect or life at large. We need to draw a line somewhere to balance both if one has to have a life within the societal norms and bring some peace of mind in whatever pursuit one is into, during their life.

After all, money is just a tool and an enabler that lets us work towards our passion, through which we can derive maximum happiness and make our lives worth living. Maybe we need a hybrid version that accepts our need for money and also a peaceful life.

Money – The Monk in the society [Middle Path]

We cannot live in denial by ignoring the money factor if we want to live within the current societal norms (with respect to money).

A Fusion approach with the co-existence of both Peace and Money can be the right way forward. Keeping the attachment towards money at a distance calms down the agitated mind. Living without sacrificing the societal norms and interdependency of money, is possible by removing attachment towards money but still making enough effort to earn money.

This can be summed up as per the teachings of Bhagavad Gita, ancient text in Hinduism.

Karmanye vadhikaraste Ma Phaleshu Kadachana – Bhagavad Gita

It says that you have right only on your duty, not on the fruits of it ever. In the case of earning money as well, do your duty i.e., put enough effort towards it but without attachment to Money. Give what best you could to earn money keeping the emotional side of you at bay.

This also would drive us towards having a rational approach while taking money-related decisions, which would be far more effective and efficient. And Peace, for sure can co-exist with money.