What is the right relationship to money?

J Krishnamurti

AW: In this question answer session J. Krishnamurti focuses on right relationship with money. According to him the mind should not be continuously occupied with money or for that matter with anything else. The occupied mind wears itself out.

Regarding money there are two types of conditionings in the field of spirituality. One glorifies poverty terming money to be the source of evil. The other wants to seek abundance in all forms. I think a balance is necessary. 

Poverty per se has very little to recommend it. In absence of resources it is very difficult to focus on a truly religious life. Too much wealth is also a barrier as the mind is focused too much on material resources and has little time for anything else.

If we achieve a balance between the two extremes we may have sufficient resources and ample leisure to focus upon spiritual pursuits.

Transcript:

4th Question: What is the right relationship to money? If you haven’t any you have no relationship! (Laughter) Like the speaker, it is very simple!

But to be serious, (laughs) what is right relationship to money? Why has money become so important? Just let’s enquire into it. We are not the Delphic Oracle, or laying down the law, or telling you what you should think or do, but we are trying together to understand the problems of life, which are very complex, which need deep examination impersonally, objectively, sanely.

So this is one of the problems, money. Why has money become so important? Is it because we have become worldly? ‘Worldly’ I am using in the sense, attached to the things that thought has put together.

That is the first question I am asking. It is a complex question, we will go into it. Is it because money gives us freedom? You can travel if you have lots of money, you become powerful, become Lord this and that. If you have money you have a status, you are respected, you are looked up to. This is happening.

If you have money you can do almost anything – go against all the laws. You see this everyday. Money is not supposed to be transferred from one country to another but if you are wealthy you have a secret account in Switzerland – you know all this – or transfer great wealth to America and so on. And if you have money you can enjoy yourself.

So money has become extraordinarily valuable in all those senses. And without money you can’t do much either. If you want some clothes and so on you must have some money.

But the question is really: why has money in our life, apart from buying necessary things or having something which is pleasant: nice picture, or a nice vase, or some beautiful ornament, apart from all that – or a beautiful garden if you are lucky – apart from that why do we lay such emphasis on money? You answer it please.

I do not know if you realise what religions have become, organised religions: vast wealth, they are really business organizations in the name of god. This vast wealth of the gurus, incredible wealth, which all of us – not all of us, some of us have given to these gentlemen. And so money has become important. And when you go to the temples and so on, there is always money being asked.

Are we so occupied with money? Naturally the poor man who has no money, he is naturally thinking about it. But those of us who have a little money, are we occupied with it? Is our main concern or occupation money?

That awakens another question which is: why are our minds perpetually occupied? – occupied with something or other. If you are occupied with meditation when you are talking about meditation, then you are occupied with it – god – you follow? Everything from the housewife to the highest religious authorities are occupied – why? You understand my question?

This is not an irrelevant question, it is relevant because our occupation with money or with sex, with this or with that, indicates the state of our own minds, our own hearts.

To be occupied with something. Does it mean that this occupation with business, with money, with sex, with god, with the guru, with the politician and so on, so on, keeps our brain full? You understand my question? Is it that we are afraid not to be occupied? Please look at it.

Look at ourselves, which is: am I occupied from morning till night and when I go to sleep the brain is also occupied, with dreams, with all kinds of sensations. So there is never a moment when the brain is not occupied. Is that so? And when the brain is so occupied there is no space – you understand? – and so the brain becomes more and more shallow.

You can see this happening. Is it because we are frightened of not being occupied, therefore having no space, the brain having no rest at all, therefore wearing itself out. Right? The wearing itself out is a part of senility. Right?

So is there a possibility of not being occupied? Merely to look, to observe, not be occupied with observation. Just to look, to observe so that the brain has a rest, not to record because our brain is all the time recording.

I don’t know if you are following all this! If it interests you. Then your brain becomes extraordinarily alive, pliable. If you have ever observed without a single thought, have you? – to observe a tree, to observe the water, a sheet of water, the light on it, to observe a woman or a man without all the consequences of that observation, the sensations, so that your mind is really free from occupation.

How can a brain that is occupied ever observe? You understand my question? How can a mind – a brain rather – that is always occupied with something casual, daydreaming, with the kitchen or with god, they are all the same, all occupations are the same, they are not superior occupations or inferior occupations, we are talking about occupation per se. Such a mind is really the most bourgeois mind in the world, including the Communists.

Is chattering part of this occupation? – talking, talking, talking, endlessly, you follow? Now are we aware of this occupation, and experimenting with ourselves to see if it stops?

Then to find out whether there is fear and pursue that fear – you follow? Go to the very end of it and end it. As we talked about it at previous talks. Then see what happens to this brain which has space, which has quietness, which is not occupied.

If you say, ‘How am I to do it? Tell me the steps, the method how not to be occupied’, then those steps, those methods become your occupation, you are back in the cycle. But if you see the consequences of occupation, and see the fact of it, you move away from it.

So if one is occupied with money, why? Either you are poor, which is natural, then you have to be concerned about it, but even if you are poor to be occupied eternally from morning till night, and the man who is very rich is also terribly occupied, how to keep the money, increase it – you know the whole business.

So the real question is: can the mind be free from all occupation? If I may repeat some incident: we were in the Himalayas once far away from all noise and in a cottage, and a group of monks, sannyasis came rushing into the cottage to tell me something. They knew who I was, the person who was occupying it. So they came to see me and they said, ‘We have just come from a man who is far away in the hills who is full of knowledge. And we have just come and we are filled with that knowledge.’ And we said ‘What is that knowledge?’ And we went into it.

At the end of it we discovered the solitary person living in the Himalayas was really not solitary at all. He has carried all the world’s knowledge up there and so he is never alone, never quiet. He is full of that knowledge and can therefore perhaps can never experience something totally original.

A mind which is occupied can never experience something original. It is only the mind that is free, if I can use the word, empty. We were talking with a scientist some days ago and we were saying that emptiness is very important in life, not vacuum, not being just vague and daydreaming but really a mind that is not occupied has space and is totally empty. And we were saying that such a mind is full of energy. 

And the scientist agreed. He said ‘Where there is emptiness it is not empty, that very emptiness is energy’. I am telling you something. So let us… you think about it, you know, look at it.