Tag: contentment

Third Noble Truth

We have been discussing the four noble truths for the last couple of weeks. The four noble truths are:

  • You should know suffering
  • You should abandon origins
  • You should attain cessation
  • You should practice the path

So today, let’s get into the third noble truth; we should attain cessation. What does that mean? Well, last week, during our Q&A session, a question came up about the meaning of our life. And I mentioned that the meaning of the life is to attain liberation, be free from this endless cycle of birth, life, and death. When Buddha says we should attain cessation, that is exactly what he means. We should attain cessation from the cycle of samsara.

The only way to attain permanent cessation from suffering is to attain the cessation from samsara. The cessation also refers to elimination of emotions that lead to suffering. If you think about it, elimination of craving is what we need to eliminate our day to day suffering.

We see something and we find is attractive. A person or money or something. We start thinking about it. Start paying inappropriate attention towards it’s good or bad qualities. And boom, we have to have it. That’s the craving. We will do whatever it takes to get that object. We will make a plan. Buy her flowers, woo her, steal money, whatever. Let’s take an example. We are taking a stroll on a beautiful afternoon, and we see someone eating a donut. And we go, ahhh donut!! It appears very attractive. And that’s like an object of attachment. The jelly donut. And it’s a yeah, it seems desirable. But if we don’t pay any attention. Then it’s not an object of delusion. If, on the other hand, we hone in on it. And just fantasize about it. It quickly becomes an object of attachment such that I have to have that donut right now. Or I won’t be happy. I need it. So donuts. And every other object of attachment requires honing in on what seems to be good about it and agreeable on thinking just about them. So the delusion does not occur until we really develop this wish to have it. You know, like a need or a grasping like I got to have this in order to be happy. It’s because we’ve honed in on it with an appropriate attention. So we’ve got the seed of the delusion. The object is the nice looking donut. But the inappropriate attention is when we actually develop the delusion.

Antidote to craving is contentment. It comes down to How Much Is Enough doesn’t it? Most of us are doing better than we thought we would. And yet, we want a bit more. More money, more fame, more travel, more pizza, and whatnot. We must realize, it is a moving target. I have talked about this before, about my experience in grad school. I came from India for grad school and I was paying the tuition from my pocket (well, my Dad’s pocket)! As a foreign student, the fees are very high so every foreign grad student wants to get a research assistantship so that the University will waive your tuition and give you a small stipend. After a couple of months, I got the position. They waived my tuition and gave me a $900 per month stipend. I was on top of my world! I was driving a new car, living the life if you will—all in $900. Today, I cannot live in $900 a month. What happened? As my income grew, my needs kept growing with it. This is what we need to realize: there is never enough unless you are content with yourself. The way to get to this realization is to acknowledge, “I have everything that I need at this moment.”

Let me tell you another story. There was this wall street hot shot. He went on a vacation to a small Mexican fishing village. He notices that fishermen go out every morning and return with fish by early afternoon. They cook the fish and then have beer and dance the night away. This is their daily routine. The Wall Street executive sits down with the chief fisherman and says, “You know I can make you big.”

“How so?”

“We can get you a loan to get a couple of boats. Then you can catch more fish and sell it to the town next door.”

“What next?”

“Well then we buy some more boats and sell the fish to the city.”

“Then what?”

“Then we buy a fleet of 100+ boats and make you the biggest fishing operation in Mexico.”

“Then what?”

“Then we do an IPO and you cash out and retire. You will easily be a multi-millionaire.”

“What’s next?”

“Then you can retire in a small town and wake up when you want, go to sea, catch some fish, have a beer, and party the night away.”

“I am already doing it!”

You see, sometimes what we are chasing is right in front of us. With just a little bit of contentment for what we already have, we can get what we want without chasing it.

Going With The Flow

Let’s talk about going with the flow today. As we all know, life is a flow. Life keeps changing all the time. It’s like a mountain stream running all the time. Its nature is to flow. Sometimes it feels as if we barely get out footing and all of a sudden the ground is shifting beneath us.

We try so hard to keep things the same. I think human beings like familiarity. We resist change. Our brain is wired for familiarity bias. We would rather accept known pain than unknown pleasure! The reason for this is that the pain of loss is usually a lot greater than the pleasure of gain. Give an example of people staying in toxic job.

Even then, life keeps changing. It changes from moment to moment.

Look outside. Look at the flowers, the trees. A hailstorm comes and all of that is gone in an instant. Example of a 100 year old tree uprooted on University Blvd.

Has anyone heard of the phrase Managed Growth? It’s a term that was in fashion 15 years ago. In reality, there is no such thing. Either you grow or you shrink. There is no other option.

Examples of IBM, Blockbuster

We always try to fix things because we don’t like the flow of life. As soon as we fix something to our liking, something else breaks though or so it seems. That is what Buddha calls impermanence.

One moment gives rise to the next moment and the moment after that and so forth. So if you think about it, there are no things per se. Because things would imply a sort of permeance and everything keeps changing moment by moment. By that thought process, everything is an event.

Someone would say, well our body is a thing. Is it really though? It keeps changing. Your body is not what it was 10 years ago for sure. Sometimes changes are so subtle that it looks like it is not changing. Well, not in my case! My weight scale tells me it is going up every day!

In Buddhism, it is called a functioning thing. As opposed to a thing that may be static.

For example, take a seedling. Its function is to create a sprout. And then it goes out of existence. There is no seed anymore.

And the sprout becomes a sapling and goes out of existence and so on.

This means everything is an event. Everything is always in the nature of change.

We have to learn to accept and go with it, adapt to it.

Why is this important? The Sooner we accept the fact that Change Is the Only Constant, the more adept we will become.

If we accept that change is part of nature, we will not try to force things, we will try and accept things as they come, this, in turn, will reduce our anxieties, and stress because we are no longer fighting against the flow.

If we fight against change in our minds and in our hearts, we are going to lose because impermanence is the reality.

Not one of us wants to be unhappy. If we all want a happy life then our only option is to go with the flow. We can call it patience, resilience, grace under fire, and whatnot.  It is a way to stay peaceful, calm, and accepting no matter what life throws at us.

If good things happen, we are happy; if bad things happen, we accept them happily.

The only way to be happy is to stop being unhappy. Does that make sense?

We are unhappy because we don’t accept what is going on in our lives. We are fighting. We are trying to fix things. We are trying to build these dams in the flow of the river called life.

This is where the practice of patient acceptance is so important. It is the ability to accept wholeheartedly. We accept it as it appears without wishing it to be otherwise.

Let’s look at an example. Say you want to go for a hike. You prepare for your hike, load up the car and start driving. You drive for two hours and all of a sudden there are thunderstorms. If we get unhappy that it is raining, it would ruin our day. Instead, you accept that it is raining. We can pull out an umbrella to protect us from the rain.

And you can use this example for anything else that may be going on in our world. If we don’t like injustice in our society, bring out the umbrella, meaning act to help people and solve problems, but don’t let it disturb your inner peace.

Is Money A Drug?

I was on a long flight recently. On the flight, I decided to watch a documentary about how sugar is addictive and how it is a drug stronger than hard drugs such as cocaine. They were showing how when they gave more sugar to rats in the experiments, the rats got used to the sugar and they needed more and more doses for their brains to show signs of excitement. That got me thinking—does money have the same effect on people?

I mean think about it. When one does not have money, one would get excited about $100. Look at your college days. I remember I used to get excited about a free T-Shirt for filling out credit card forms! As you accumulate more wealth, that excitement does not last anymore. One needs more money to get excited as one makes more money. I am sure at your first job, you were thrilled with a $ 2-an-hour wage increase. If someone offered you that at the peak of your career you will consider that an insult right? What changed? $2 per hour is still $2 per hour. The value of $2 for you changed when you started making more money.

So I started to research this topic for this episode. It turns out there is some interesting research on the topic. One I found most interesting was from the University of Minnesota study in China. They gave a group of students money count and other students just paper to count. After the counting was over, they asked them to put their fingers into a bowl with 122-degree hot water. The group that counted the money before did not find any discomfort in the hot water! This was a similar result to when people had their loved ones next to them when dipping their fingers into hot water. So our brain equates money to love. Go figure…

So if money is a drug, can it be addictive? It sure can. An interesting thing is that there are some obvious signs such as gambling or indulgence in luxury items that you may not be able to afford. But here is something I learned that was unexpected. It turns out that excessive saving habits can be a form of money addiction. It turns out that people who save excessively tend to believe that more money will bring more happiness and they don’t think it is ever enough no matter the size of their savings account.

According to Kabir Sehgal, author of the book Coined, the effect of money on your brain is similar to that of cocaine.

Neuroeconomists—I didn’t know there was such a thing—have performed several brain scans on individuals who were about to make money, and the results were staggering, says Sehgal. The studies show that these people had the same neurological response to making money in their “pleasure centers” as someone high on cocaine.

Money is a powerful addiction and creates good feelings when you get it and bad feelings when you lose it. Here is the difference between money and hard drugs. Cocaine, heroin, and crack will kill you if you do too much, but not money. Money won’t harm physically you. But it will destroy your mental peace just as any other addiction would.  

So how do you make sure you get your mental peace back if you think you may be on money drugs? Of course, the first thing to do is realize that it may be a problem. And that it is unhealthy if you are thinking about money all the time.

After that, it is important to realize that it is our attachment to money that drives our addiction to money. So the easiest thing in my opinion is to try and reduce our attachment. One good way to remove attachment is to start giving away money. Make a habit of giving away 10% of what you make to a good cause. When you begin to give away money, usually you will do it to causes that you feel strongly about and you think are worthy. That creates a state of compassion in our minds. That coupled with the generosity you demonstrate by giving money away reduces the attachment towards money.

Please realize, I am not saying money is bad. I am just saying excessive concern about money is not healthy. And when I look around, it seems that more and more people are giving more and more attention to money than ever before. We need to change that for the mental health of our society.

How much is enough?

I was a guest on the Mindful Fire podcast released today. So I thought it would be appropriate to talk about one question that kept coming back again and again on this podcast. Before we dig in a little about the podcast. Host of Mindful Fire Adam Coelho is a 10 year Google veteran and is passionate about financial independence and mindfulness. During our interview, he asked several times, how did I know I had enough when I decided to retire. So let’s dig into this age-old question How much is enough?

In our previous contentment discussion, we talked about how if you have food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare, you are luckier than 99.9% of the rest of the world. At times, it may not seem like that but think about it, how many people are struggling to put food on the table daily? What does that mean to be financially independent? If you are making more money than you did five or ten years ago, when do you believe you have reached a point where you have enough money without any worries for the future?

Wall Street has a formula for how much is enough. I am sure a lot of you know the classic 4% rule they have been preaching for the better part of four decades. It says that you should have 25 times your annual expenses tucked away in order to retire. Meaning, if you take a 4% annual withdrawal from your savings, based on average market returns will make sure that you outlast your money. Now, I have reservations about this formula because no two people are alike. If you own some rental real estate that is producing enough to cover your expenses, you may not need the 25 times your expenses. My point however is not about any formula. What I am here to argue is that it is a moving target. If you think about it, your expenses are much higher today than they were when you were just starting in the real world! As your income kept increasing, so did your lifestyle and expenses.

So let’s discuss how much is enough in the context of our expenses. We live in this consumption culture where everyone wants the next best thing that is being bombarded by advertisements and marketing experts. I remember, we used to use our mobile phones for three to four years on average. Now, these devices are being replaced annually or every two years at most. Does everyone need that iPhone 12? And it is just not about mobile phones. We used to live in a house for all our lives—that is where the 30-year mortgage was originated. Now people keep moving “up” every three to five years. our consumption culture is creating a lifestyle that has become so expensive that the majority of our households need two incomes to run a household. That has reduced family time and relaxation time for the entire society. We are the most tired nation on earth. Here is an interesting tidbit—people are so afraid to lose their jobs that they are checking emails on their vacation! So the first thing we need to do is reduce our consumption. That is good for us individually as well as the society as a whole—think about the resources we will save. Once we curtail our consumption, obviously it will reduce our “number” for financial independence no matter what formula we use.

Another point I would like to make is that most people think that financial independence is that destination. They will reach that someday and their life will change! It is never like that. One thing I have often advocated is to “leg in” to your financial independence. If you think you are halfway there, for example, try making some changes in your life and begin to do what you would want to do during retirement. You never know what you may and may not enjoy. So don’t wait till that someday, begin living your life today!

The last thing I would say is that figure out your purpose. Because there is only so much golf one can play. If you are fortunate enough to reach that financial independence, you may get bored or even depressed if you don’t have a plan for it. The best way to avoid that is to make sure that you have a purpose for which you are passionate. Whatever that may be for you but it is important to figure that out before you call it quits. I may have said this before but start volunteering for your favorite cause. Just a couple of hours per week. You would be amazed what giving back does to our mental health.

How much is enough?

Let’s talk about contentment today. Have you ever thought about how much is enough? If you think about every one of us doing better than where we thought we would be. Even then we are on this race for more. We want just a little bit more. More money, more prestige, more pizza, more travel, more TV, more computer game, and whatnot. Have we ever contemplated how much is enough? We must realize that it is a moving target. I remember when I was in college, they used to pay me a $900 per month stipend and tuition waiver. I thought I was on top of my world! Not only I was driving a brand new car but had some money left over at the end of the month. Fast forward 30 years and $900 may not cover a day on occasion. So what happened? We kept wanting more and as we received more, our needs kept increasing. This is what we need to realize. There is never enough unless you are content within yourself. I have everything that I need at this moment. You may have heard the story of a Mexican fisherman. A wall street executive takes a vacation in a small town in Mexico. He notices that fishermen go out every morning and return with fish by early afternoon. They cook the fish and then have beer and dance the night out. This was their daily routine. Wall Street guy sits down the fisherman and says you know I can make you big. He says how so? Wall Street guy says we can get you a loan to get a couple of boats where you can catch more fish and sell it to the town next door. Fisherman asks what next? He replies well then we buy some more boats and sell the fish to the City. Fisherman asks then what? He says then we buy a fleet of 100+ boats and make you the biggest fishing operation in Mexico. Fisherman asks then what? He says then we do an IPO and you cash out and retire. The fisherman asks what was next? Wall Street guy says then you can retire in a small town and wake when you want, go to sea catch some fish, have a beer, and party the night out. The fisherman says I am already doing it! So you see sometimes what we are chasing is right in front of us. Just with a little bit of contentment, we can get what we want without chasing for it.

So in meditation today, we will settle down in our hearts. Then we will contemplate do we really need more? After contemplation, we will make a determination I am where I am supposed to be. I have what I need for this moment. We will than hold that determination.