The Art of Enough

 

 The Art of Enough

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history.

Heller responds,“Yes, but I have something he will never have – ENOUGH.”

[https://lifeschool.co.in/but-i-have-something-he-will-never-have-enough/] 

Where is the logic behind demanding that the rich give everything to the poor?  (Sounds like the Monty Python highwayman sketch Dennis Moore)  But Buddha and Lao Tzu both stressed ridding oneself of earthly encumbrances, but not to the point of poverty.

 

Buddha famously spent eight years in extreme asceticism.  Then one day he heard a musician teaching a child to play a stringed instrument.  "If the string is too tight, it will break.  If the string is too loose, it will not make music."  From this Buddha sought the Middle Way and it is another central tenet of Buddhism.  The Middle Way is a point of view leading to a balance.  That may be why the idea of a "radical Buddhist" is so wonderfully weird.

 

^"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich 

man to enter into the kingdom of God."  (Mark 10:25)

 

So where is the balance between rich and poor?  If all the world's wealth was evenly divided amongst all 8 billion + people we might get to a society where no one is truly wealthy, but neither are there any truly poor either.  Perhaps it is possible to make sure that everyone everywhere has enough.  And we need to train society that enough is sufficient.  

 

No, you really can't take it with you, and those who can not release their hold on the earthly matters are likely to end up stalled in the Maze between lives and seen by sensitives as ghosts.