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General Buddhism => General Buddhism => Topic started by: yontenjamyang on January 17, 2012, 03:26:33 PM
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Most people live their lifes focusing on making money and how to spend it. Many also say "we only live one life". There are still others who says "we cannot bring our money to the grave".
All this are reasons for them to make and spend spend spend. Mostly on themselves.
Of course some do charity but I suspect the percentage of the money spent on themselves is far greater.
In buddhism we believe we have future lifes. The question is can we bring our money to our future lifes? If can; how? If not; why?
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I wish I could bring my money to my future lives even though I have very little, but of course,we cannot.
That is one concept that many people understand but find it hard to incorporate into their lives. As a result, many people including myself will easily fall into the trap of wanting to make more money(for security) and in the process of doing so, create more negative karma that cause us more sufferings in future.
After death, only karma will follow, like a shadow that never leave you..........
The only thing that help us at death, is neither the amount of money you have accumulated, nor your family members and relatives, but the merits that we have collected during this life time as that can propell us for a good human rebirth due to all our virtuous actions.
So while we are in samsara busy making "more" money, dont forget to balance our life out, help out or volunteer in any dharma center frequently, making "merits" for our future lives is the best investment!!!
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Dear Yontenjamyang,
I assume that you are asking for great wealth to be brought to our future lives. I don't know how but I know that what's more important is to be reborn in the human realm and be exposed to the dharma again at a young age.
Being reborn in the human realm is very rare according to Buddha Shakyamuni and it requires an ocean of merits. I'd be more concern about this than worrying about money. With enough good merits, everything will be provided for so that we can ultimately continue our spiritual path.
Happiness is a state of mind and not determined by external factors such as money. Having the opportunity to study and practise the dharma would translate to learning and realising happiness and inner peace. I'd rather learn to bring this to my future lives.
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Whatever physical money that we own or have earned in this life cannot be taken with us into the next life or future lives. However, if we practise generosity by giving our money to others with the intention to benefit others, then we “can” take our merit of having this money again into the future lives! This is in accordance with the law of cause and effect. The more we give the more we get. If we give our money with the bodhichitta motivation, we will accumulate vast amount of merit. In the future lives, we will have abundant monetary wealth.
We don’t have to look too far ahead into the future life. Just take Bill Gates for example, the richest man in the World today, he is so generous to donate great amount of his monetary wealth away to charities to benefit others. He does not seem to deplete his wealth as he gave away so much to others. But instead, his wealth is increasing more and more!
It is not how much money that we can amass in this life that matters. It is what we do with the money that we get that matters. If we can use our money wisely for a good cause to benefit others, then there is nothing wrong to work hard to earn more and more money. Of course we have to prioritize our spiritual goals which include accumulating wealth for future happiness.
Life is short and impermanent, if we are blessed with the good fortune to practise Dharma in this life, we should ensure we have prepared well for our future lives. In the context of your question, we should ensure we have sufficient money to help us in our spiritual practice in the next life or future lives. Money is not everything. But without any money we can’t accomplish much in samsara to help ourselves let alone benefiting others!
There are other much more important spiritual goals for us to focus on than just monetary wealth. Hence, we should have a clear plan on what we should do with our spiritual practice to maximise our existence in this life. In the nutshell, we should strive in the fastest time possible and within our ability, to purify our negative karma, accumulate merit and transform our mind.
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No disrespect to the culture.... but I have heard that in certain cultures they burn effigies of cars, mobile phones, houses, kitchen appliances, sometimes even mates AND money in order for the deceased to "receive" all these offerings in the next life. This is something out of the ordinary for me and makes me wonder why do the family of the deceased believe that such things would materialize wherever the dearly departed has gone... and on another level, why do they even think such "things" would be even usable in their next lives.
I know this is probably somewhat cultural and of a certain taoist belief and I stress once again, I mean no disrespect but I personally do not understand the perception and where this stems from. I am sure they mean well but to continue the vicious samsaric cycle to a point where even at death rituals the very things that make us unhappy is perpetuated... sad no?
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Thank you Dondrup, I love what you shared. As karma will always be with you in any form of existence whether past or future, within our current existence we should practise to live this precious life within the path of Dharma so that we collect enough merits to come back with more of our good "things" and less of our negative "things".
Knowledge is powerful, knowing that we can actually bet on good and swift rebirth, by doing things to benefit others and come back in better form should propel all precious human beings to be generous to other sentient beings and result in a better world for now.
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No disrespect to the culture.... but I have heard that in certain cultures they burn effigies of cars, mobile phones, houses, kitchen appliances, sometimes even mates AND money in order for the deceased to "receive" all these offerings in the next life. This is something out of the ordinary for me and makes me wonder why do the family of the deceased believe that such things would materialize wherever the dearly departed has gone... and on another level, why do they even think such "things" would be even usable in their next lives.
I have actually seen this myself, the burning of paper made houses, mobile phones, cars, other goods and dummy money.
The question that came to mind to me was this:
If one truly believes that these material objects would be made available to the deceased in his new environment, why not burn a real car and real money? What is the deceased going to do with monopoly money and paper cars? That was my stupid, naive and maybe arrogant thought then.... :P
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In buddhism we believe we have future lifes.
The question is can we bring our money to our future lifes?
The answer is no.
But as explained above, we bring our karma.
And when we bring our karma with us, we also bring our debts!
So we may not bring our bank account figures with us, but what we have not paid back to people we take as a karma and most likely find ourselves back into debts (I personally know someone who found himself a million dollars into debts at 18 years old because of business mis-managment from his parents).
Thus, the best way to experience financial secrurity in future lives is to pay our debts, pay our bills, and support (not spoil) others (in needs) financially with a concern for their wellfare.
Actualy, the secret trick of being wealthy in ALL senses of the term is to sponsor the consruction of Dharma centers or monasteries, or sponsor specifically to make them beautiful looking, attractive, etc...
These days it could mean sponsoring the heating of the monasteries for example...
But as a practitionner moves on, wealth should mean something else than money and materialistic confort.
In fact, being born in wealth can be hell. Truly, it can. The person we become is more valuable than the wealth in which we are born.
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We can’t bring our money to our future life but we can bring wealth.
Spiritual wealth to be specific!
As most of you all had mentioned, only karma will follow us.
Back to spiritual wealth, this is what I think which is important too as I see it as also an imprint for our next life.
Most of the Tulku pick up what they have learned in their previous life very fast and able to teach at very young age. This is important as they can benefit people as early as possible.
For me, I wish my imprint to be trigger as young as possible so I would be able to learn Dharma as early as possible and don’t have to waste my time to look or work for money where I can’t bring it over to my next life.
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Most people live their lifes focusing on making money and how to spend it. Many also say "we only live one life". There are still others who says "we cannot bring our money to the grave".
All this are reasons for them to make and spend spend spend. Mostly on themselves.
Of course some do charity but I suspect the percentage of the money spent on themselves is far greater.
In buddhism we believe we have future lifes. The question is can we bring our money to our future lifes? If can; how? If not; why?
Thinking about it more... in a way, one actually can. Well not most of us but certainly highly attained beings. How so? Well for instance, a Tulku reincarnating would inevitably "inherit" his or her wealth back as students would offer it back to the High Lama. Of course there are exceptions to the rule. But as a thought, in such conditions and blessings one actually can bring one's wealth to future lives hence it is not entirely impossible.
But as a general rule when we "kick the bucket", we leave all our physical attachments behind. Or should it actually read, we leave all our attachments physically? Because if we leave this life "attached" we will inevitably still have the "attachments" imprinted in our mind streams but not necessarily the physical aspect of it and hence it is this very "attachment" that will determine out next rebirth.... hhmmm
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There are many great comments herein about wealth, what to do with it in this life, spiritual wealth, karma etc.
But to directly answer your question, yontenjamyang whether "In buddhism we believe we have future lifes. The question is can we bring our money to our future lifes? If can; how? If not; why?"
To my knowledge, no, we cannot bring our money into our future lives, because it is a physical item. We can't even bring our bodies into the future lives, how are we to bring money into our future lives. At the point of death, there is nothing that can control us but our karma. Which brings us to the topic of impermanence, that we lose everything that we have in our lives, EXCEPT what we have imprinted within our mindstream. With or without money, I feel that money is what we perceive it to be. Yes, of course we cannot surivive without money, but it is not a guiding factor in our lives. With or without material wealth, people still survive - just compare the poor and the rich. Live goes on, but ultimately, we choose the happiness that our mind allows us to.
I guess it is not so much about bringing wealth to future lives, butmore so the methods and qualities needed to bring you to that state of wellbeing again in your future lives. Once you have those qualities imprinted within your consciousness, it will be triggered again in your future lives. Whether you are born poor or rich, it is these qualities imprinted within your consciousness that will guide you to lead a life of richness or a life of being poor (and poor can be subjective, even if you have alot of money).
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In my opinion, If i donate a lot to benefit others, i will create the merits to become wealthy in my future lives. So if we have 1mill, do we donate 800k to benefit others and keep 200k to fulfill our dharma path? Or would trying to multiply this 1mill to 100mill and donate 80mill and keep 20mill to fulfill our dharma path be better? If i fail to multiply the 1mill but instead lose it all, does the motivation to make 100mill still give me wealth in the future lives?
Mr Bill Gates donates a lot to charity, but this is all happening when he is already rich. Would he have gained more merits if he donated everything before he had the chance to form Microsoft or is he gaining more merits now although his donations doesn't even form a dent in his bank account? Given that the amounts he is donating now benefits more people. Of course the best would he donates everything he owns now. But i think that ain't happening. haha. :D
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Oh this is a very good question I think.
There are many, many methods to achieve wealth in Buddhism. There's nothing wrong with creating lots of causes to be rich in your next life. But what's the motivation in achieving wealth? There are many people who achieve wealth degenerate as a person and many lose their wealth because they don't have the right mindset to maintain the wealth. People achieve wealth in that manner had created ordinary positive karma from donating or giving for self-gain or for ulterior motives.
Hence, it very important to establish the motivation and in Buddhism, the direct cause of wealth is to counter miserliness, which causes poverty in this and future lives. When we do this, we develop generosity of the spirit and of our material possessions. A popular meditational deity is Dzambala and he is an excellent method to develop the mind of giving.
It is not really a matter of donating our possessions but developing the mind to give without expectation of return and to truly benefit the person. Giving here doesn't necessarily mean giving of possessions either. It could mean sharing of ideas, care etc. Another method is also to offer a lot of water offerings to the Buddha. That is a method of achieving abundance.
But the most powerful method I know is to propitiate Wangze or Ratna Shugden. He is the increase form of Dorje Shugden and a powerful method to achieve material success. However, he is Manjushri and if our motivation is not right, don't expect the 'abundance' he bestows is in the manner of financial or material success.
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Most people live their lifes focusing on making money and how to spend it. Many also say "we only live one life". There are still others who says "we cannot bring our money to the grave".
All this are reasons for them to make and spend spend spend. Mostly on themselves.
Of course some do charity but I suspect the percentage of the money spent on themselves is far greater.
In buddhism we believe we have future lifes. The question is can we bring our money to our future lifes? If can; how? If not; why?
I believe we can bring our wealth to the future life... at least inner wealth. Obviously, whatever we have in this life physically cannot be brought to our next life. But by creating the right causes, we will be able to achieve great wealth in future lives as well.
Like what Big Uncle pointed out... the motivation of achieving wealth is very important. If any point in time that the wealth we are going to achieve will do more harm than good to us, i believe such wealth will not come... at least not until we change our mindset and create a good motivation for achieving wealth.
Of course, ultimately inner wealth is the most important for all of us. Material wealth, although in this era is part of the necessity in life but chasing after it endlessly (like what most of us do) is not entirely the purpose of life. People are being brought up thinking that with wealth, happiness is near... however, money is never enough, especially to those who are so attached to it.
Some people often say, if they have the wealth, they can contribute more to dharma centres etc... it is a great motivation, but lets not forget that material offering is the lowest offering we can give to our Guru, the highest being transformation... therefore, instead of spending all our time on getting material wealth, it is wiser to cultivate inner wealth.
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We cannot bring material wealth to future lives but we can bring spiritual wealth in the form of merits to future lives. Everything that we chased after in this life, even the body that we treasure so much and take good care of will be left behind when we die and there is nothing we can do about it. Therefore it is much more beneficial to cultivate inner wealth in this life time for our future lives.
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Nice answers. I like HP and BU's answers.
My next question is: Where do you think the wealth (however much or little) that you have came from? I want to narrow it down to MONEY!
Lets discuss! Cheers!
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There are 2 answers to what I know. In this life, we can create good karma to support us in future live by giving/helping whomever that needs it. Donating to temples and people are some of the reasons to generate merits and good karma. We definitely can't bring our money to the grave but our karma can follow us in every lifetime. To me, wealth is not necessarily defined as material but spiritual is more important as they too follow us in every life.
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i think both spiritual and material wealth are equally important. material wealth can build dharma centers and spiritual wealth can run and grow the dharma centers.
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Interesting thread indeed.
First of all, whether one feels wealthy or not is subjective. A person may have 2 dollars under his name but he feels rich enough to give away half his wealth away. While another person may have millions and yet still think he has not possessed enough to give even a dollar. So, the true sign of one is wealthy or otherwise is how generous that person is.
The practice of giving will be the source of wealth to future lives because -
(correct me if I'm wrong) if one is so used to giving in this life, the imprint or habituation will be carried forward to the next life and how wealth/generosity is brought to future lives.
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You can contribute to needies, disaster rebuilding.
to this forum and other buddhism forum to improve the technical aspect.
to contribute to free medical clinic in buddhism and other free clinic.
to contribute to life liberation of liberating animals.
to contribute to monastery so that the ordained can concentrate on dharma and meditation.
contribute to your family, parents etc.
volunteer yourself in the routine chore in the monastery.
meditational practice
being vegetarianism
it is ok to spend for yourself as buddhism is liberation and bliss.
most importantly is learning dharma and meditational practice to develop and fruition one innate wisdom bliss.
;D
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Just would like to point out that many Tibetan will donate their wealth to the monasteries after the pass away. Why?
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There's a paragraph in Tara's prayer The Infallible saying "Common world riches, the meaning is like the name, arouse defilement, binding one in Samsara, what jewels, except the Arya, though wishes they grant, can let me take even a sesame seed when I die?"
We even can't bring a sesame seed when we die, how can we bring wealth to next life?
However, although physical wealth cannot bring to next life, we can bring the karma of wealth to next life by creating causes for more resources to come in our future life, by giving in any form.
I think wealth might not come in physical form like money, it could be in the form of resources that we need to live a good life.
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Interesting thread indeed.
First of all, whether one feels wealthy or not is subjective. A person may have 2 dollars under his name but he feels rich enough to give away half his wealth away. While another person may have millions and yet still think he has not possessed enough to give even a dollar. So, the true sign of one is wealthy or otherwise is how generous that person is.
The practice of giving will be the source of wealth to future lives because -
(correct me if I'm wrong) if one is so used to giving in this life, the imprint or habituation will be carried forward to the next life and how wealth/generosity is brought to future lives.
I like what you said here very much Kurava. Giving is precisely reflective of the motivation and not defined to the actual sum and hence on that very basis one can deduce that wealth in itself is also rather subjective as each person's perception based on their own experiential journey is very different.
And wealth again in its definition, as explained before could also reflect spiritual wealth too. Hence not everything is cut and dry.
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Then what to do with the wealth one generated in this life? Some choices are:
1) Give it all up and become a monk.
2) Manage it well and spread the Dharma. Support the Guru, the Dharma and the Sangha.
3) Do charity regardless of religion and alleviate sufferings somewhat.
4) Don't forget one's family and friend. Do not let wealth be the reason family and friends be adverse to the Dharma. Have a balance.
5) Give all of the balance from the above at death to the Dharma. Not because one wants to bring the wealth into the future life. Karma cannot be predicted. But do that because it give the most benefit to all sentient beings.
We cannot bring even a sesame seed to the next life. And it should not matter. Know that and practice practice practice transformation, Guru Devotion and Dharma work. Then in future lives, you will have the 8 ripened qualities which by the way includes wealth.
LISTEN ALL YOU RICH FOLKS!
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Then what to do with the wealth one generated in this life? Some choices are:
1) Give it all up and become a monk.
2) Manage it well and spread the Dharma. Support the Guru, the Dharma and the Sangha.
3) Do charity regardless of religion and alleviate sufferings somewhat.
4) Don't forget one's family and friend. Do not let wealth be the reason family and friends be adverse to the Dharma. Have a balance.
5) Give all of the balance from the above at death to the Dharma. Not because one wants to bring the wealth into the future life. Karma cannot be predicted. But do that because it give the most benefit to all sentient beings.
We cannot bring even a sesame seed to the next life. And it should not matter. Know that and practice practice practice transformation, Guru Devotion and Dharma work. Then in future lives, you will have the 8 ripened qualities which by the way includes wealth.
LISTEN ALL YOU RICH FOLKS!
Hahaha... its funny how you directed it to rich folks! I do not think the rich are the main focus here. They are rich for a karmic reason. They must have done something right (or wrong). Why I say this is because depending on how the money "influences" us, depends on whether it is the fruition of good or bad karma.
Some wealthy people "use" their wealth to benefit others (result of good karma) and some wealthy people horde their money and the money itself is a huge attachment and dead weight (result of bad karma).
It is clear that in samsara two similar situation may not always be the result of the same karma.
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Most people think that having wealth is having "MONEY". Having money can be good or bad, depending on motivation.
If a rich folk gives away his/her wealth for a bigger purpose like donating to dharma institutions, supporting Gurus and monks and doing all the virtuous actions to help the dharma to spread then he/she is collecting wealth in the form of "MERITS' which he/she can bring to future lives. Likewise, if he/she is doing the opposite than it is not possible to collect merits to bring to future lives.
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People who really understands the fleeting nature of the world,practices detachment from worldly things. It's a well known fact that material wealth cannot be transfered to our future lives but people generally never give much thought towards past or future lives,hence much is focused on this present life.
People with Dharma knowledge have better awareness compared to those who don't.We should not concentrate solely on outer wealth but also to cultivate inner wealth which is important because it can be brought to our future lives to create conditions for us to receive Dharma again.
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"After death my good and bad karma follows me like my shadow."
On the subject of purely attaining monetary wealth in our next lives, it definitely depend solely on karma. Having wealth doesn't necessary mean it's a positive karma. In fact, it can be the result of negative karma if having wealth means taking life for granted, indulge in samsaric pleasure which takes time away from learning the dharma.
The best thing to do to "secure" money (material wealth) in the next life is to always have the motivation to have money to benefit others. Hoping to have money for ourselves does not guarantee it.
By giving and being generous with money, one can create the causes to receive back. What you give, you get. Sponsoring a spiritual teacher or a centre is the best thing you can do if you have wealth because of its nature which is to benefit many many people. So what if you don't have wealth this lifetime? I guess you can make aspiration that you will come back again and again to be a sponsor to help spread the holy dharma.
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We definitely cannot bring money to our next life. What we bring to our next life is our karma. The results of next life depends on what we have done this life be it positive or negative. Karma follow us like our shadow.
If our motivation in this life is to benefits others sincerely, practice the dharma, spread the dharma, we collect merits for the future (future lifes). Creating causes for good rebirth, eg: well to do, born in a good family, meet the dharma and etc.
If we have bad motivation, self cherishing make a lot of money by harming others, further indulging in samsara, hurting, cheating we collect negative karma. Creating the causes for bad rebirth. However bad rebirth does not mean poor, a person can be very rich but suffers tremendously due to negative karma. Eg: They get robbed all the time, get cheated and etc.
Bring money to next life? Not directly. But we can create the causes to have a good rebirth.
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After death, we not even can bring our own body which we attached, then how we can bring material wealth with us..
but we still can have wealth again if we made a lot of wealth to temple, charity in previous life according to the law of cause and effect.. Hence if we want material wealth in our future life then we should make a lot of donation to sangha, temple, charity places..
we give then we get...
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What kind of wealth...Material or spiritual wealth? Material wealth be it properties or cars one could could not bring them to future lives. How? Even our own present fully endowed body cannot be carried forward to our future lives no matter how much we love it. We come nothing and we go nothing except spiritual wealth which will move on to future lives and continue to collect more spiritual imprints and knowledge. Likewise our "wealth bank" being the merits will sustain our existing mind to meet dharma and to continue with our spiritual practice in our future lives.
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Since spiritual wealth is so important as it will help us in our future lives, we should generate all thoughts now in this present live to learn the dharma, put into practice, spread the dharma, transformed our minds and collect as much merits by doing dharma work to create the cause for our "wealth bank" to increase so that we can continue our spiritual journey in our next and future lives.
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Most people live their lifes focusing on making money and how to spend it. Many also say "we only live one life". There are still others who says "we cannot bring our money to the grave".
All this are reasons for them to make and spend spend spend. Mostly on themselves.
Of course some do charity but I suspect the percentage of the money spent on themselves is far greater.
In buddhism we believe we have future lifes. The question is can we bring our money to our future lifes? If can; how? If not; why?
yes, we can take our money with us ( with compound interest ) if we practice generosity in this life!! So the scripture says - Now it all depends on how deeply you believe in law of cause & effect ( karma ) and of course life here after.