Money is your god, isn't it?

When is money just money and when is it a god?


On social media recently a man's post went viral because he had expended a few bucks, a few litres of petrol and a little time in buying two live turtles from a food market where they were on sale for soup-making, and had driven them to the sea, releasing them back to the wild.  So everyone's a winner, right?  The fisherman who caught the turtles was paid by the market stall, who then got paid by the buyer, who felt fulfilled because he had saved the turtles from certain death.  The turtles won out too.

The reality of the turtle story is that not everyone is a winner.  Only two turtles were saved out of the thousands caught each year, to say nothing of all the illegal by-catch in fishing worldwide, the illegal trawling, dragnets and other harm to marine life.  And why does this animal life - on the land, in the sea or in the air - have to suffer?  To feed mankind is only a small part of the answer.  But the real answer is to make money for big businesses and corporations.  This is where money is god!  Where nothing on this planet, no life form from humans down to the tiniest plankton or seed, is safe from the money-grabbing tentacles of those who do not see beyond the need to become rich.

Love of money leads to climate change

 
Why is a love of money connected to climate change?  Because of greed.  Yes, the world population needs houses and jobs and food and heating.  But the desecration going on throughout the world, especially in the areas of sacred wilderness, has nothing to do with feeding the starving millions, the dispossessed, the poverty-stricken, but has everything to do with feeding the greed and consumerism of rich countries and their rich inhabitants, nearly all of them in the western world.

For those of us who aren’t short of a pound or two it is easy to throw last year’s carpet or sofa on the scrapheap, to throw out three-quarters of the Christmas turkey because we’re bored with it, to leave the lights and heating on day and night.  “We can afford it, so why not?” The why not is because someone somewhere across the earth is paying for such profligacy.  Do you ever ask yourself why are things so cheap? Why a new tee shirt is only £1 or why a chicken for roasting is only £2, or kilo of shrimps is only £2.50?  It is not – emphatically not – because the retailer has foregone his profit. It is because someone at the very bottom of the supply chain has had to pay the price.  It may be the chickens reared in soul-searingly atrocious conditions; it may be the child slaves forced to peel shrimp, or the wage-slaves forced to make clothes under barbaric conditions.  Whoever it is has suffered because of the  avarice amongst suppliers whose only god is money.  We strengthen that every time we opt for the cheapest we can buy.

Of course there are millions of people who can’t afford anything better than the very cheapest, whether it’s food or clothes, and this plea is not aimed at them.  It is aimed at those who can afford to pay the premium that ensures people, animals and the environment do not suffer because money is their god. It is the comfortably off who have caused climate change, not the poor.

The interconnection of all life

Dr Jane Goodall – as have many scientists and philosophers before her – has emphasised the interconnectedness of all life, and that is what we fail to appreciate when we are wasteful and extravagant.  The unused food you discard, the new dress you chucked without ever wearing, the mobile phone you just put in the trash, does not cost you – your wallet soon tops up again – but it costs the environment, the natural world, whether it’s the seals killed to protect the salmon farms, the oceanic inhabitants polluted by chemicals or plastic debris, or the forests razed to grow palm oil.  And it is so easy to agree with the cry of, “But the economy must grow! We must provide more jobs.”  Mammon speaking here!

No-one wants to sacrifice one iota of their comfortable lifestyles, their ability to have (a euphemism for ‘waste) everything they set their minds on.  Climate change is the result.  Climate change is here to stay.  We’re not here to stay unless we stop worshipping money and all it brings us; and start considering a more frugal, conservative lifestyle that extends some hope of life and quality of existence to the rest of the planet’s occupants.


Everything you demand helps to degrade the planetary existence

Do you want an airport close by or one with an extra runway to make travelling simpler? That is your god.  Do you want more roads across the countryside to make your journey easier. That is your god.  Do you want everything plastic-based, including toilet wipes, to be  one-use only so that, on discard, it can sit in landfill or in the oceans for hundreds of years? That is your god.  Your god is money.  Think about it.


Remember the film, The Devil wears Prada?  That wasn’t the story of a she-devil boss in her couture clothes.  It was the story of how greed (for promotion, for money, for the good life) leading to unethical behaviour, is the devil’s ploy.  It is not money that is the root of all evil, it is ‘the love of money that is the root of all evil’.  Thousands of people have woken up to this, and governments are just beginning to wake up to the need for a change in mind-set.  Now we need to convince the rest of the world.

 

Let out your inner Buddha!

I read this quotation recently and it made me stop and think:

"You don't have to become something, you are already a Buddha.  The yoga practices chip away unnecessary things hiding the Buddha within." ~ Swami Satchidananda

So much of our lives we are aiming for something, directing our actions at some target.  And when we stop aiming for material things such as security, a good job, a loving family, a nice home etc, often we start to dissect ourselves and look at ways to promote our mental or spiritual growth.  Perhaps the last thing we think to examine or improve is our emotional life, the way we react to life's problems, vexations and stressors.

When we do pause to explore how we can improve our thoughts and feelings, our aims tend to be inward:  'I should be less angry, more patient, more tolerant, more forgiving.  I shouldn't have said what I said...'  We start to focus on those elements of our personality that we think most need changing or discarding.  Unfortunately, since energy follows thought, (or for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction), the more we focus on our weaknesses and flaws, the more active they become until perhaps they take over our emotional life.  The harder we try to control our feelings, the more it seems that aggravating situations arise to disturb us and corrupt our good intentions.

This is the time to remember what the Swami said above.  We are already perfect in our deepest core, at our highest level.  In our innermost being we are already resonating in tune with the Divine.  Now we have to find ways to let that manifest.

We have to chip away at those accretions we have built up over a life time. Just as limpets cling to a rock or the hull of a boat, changing its shape, its dynamic, the way it reacts to the tides and currents, so do we have to dismantle all that's in us that hides the light.

We do this, as Dr Edward Bach - among others - has said, not by focusing on the fault or accretion but by developing the opposite emotion.  Much of the Dalai Lama's teaching is about the development and evolving of our sense of compassion: something else that we've always had deep within us but which has been smothered by the accretions of the years.

By 'accretions', I mean all those emotional millstones, neuroses, defences and reactions we've built into our psyche since childhood.  Not neccessarily the big abuses, but little things that we allow to build up - fear of being hurt, feeling rejected, unsuccessful, feeling a need to dominate, etc.  How often have we thought of someone, 'S/he'd be such a nice person if only s/he didn't have this hang-up; or this antagonism; or this aggression.'  We can see that accretion distorting and  mal-colouring their whole lives, although the person can't see it for themselves.  Is the same therefore true of ourselves as well?

We can't alter other people; we can only alter ourselves.  We each have to find our own way to do it, the way that makes sense to us.  The purpose - and beauty - of quotes is that one of them, somewhere and at some time,will strike such a chord in our heart that our soul leaps up to greet it.  And the resulting resonance raises our vibration enough for us to recognize that yes! now! at long last, we must work to reveal our inner Buddha.

"Think of yourself as a precious, breathtaking pearl - and 

this is your irritation phase."  ~ Astro Twins

And see the Twitter account @S_Satchidananda