sustainability dharma

“Money distracts us from what’s important.” Heidemarie Schwermer

According to this article she has been living without money for 15 years, living purely on bartering or by trading work for the things she needs. I have also said this – that money causes many of our problems – for sometime now, that a society driven by money doesn’t work.

So is it possible to live with money and still remember what is important?

I think it is but very difficult. It takes training, much like Tiger Woods and how he was trained by his father to concentrate with a lot of background noise (crowd noise) during golf. Speaking of Tiger Woods I feel sorry for him because not only are his distractions external but they are now internal as well. I wish him luck to find peace within himself and with-out with those whom he had hurt. People make mistakes. So forgiveness is important. And on his part sincerity of repentence is his work.

In some ways he was distracted by money and the trappings that came with it. He had forgetten the things which are important. Most of us are more fortunate to have less money and fame. At least I feel it is fortuitous to be neither too rich nor too poor. Call it the Middle Way. Call it the Goldilocks Zone. Whatever the name this idea is not new, it has only been ignored or belittled.