Mindfulness and Money:
     The Buddhist Path of Abundance
          by Kulananda & Dominic Houlder

Mindfulness and Money: The Buddhist Path of Abundance
by Kulananda & Dominic Houlder (Broadway Books © 2002)

MONEY is the biggest relationship that we have taking into account the time and energy to earn it and then spend it surpasses any other activity in our lives. This book’s focus is to help readers avoid splitting their lives between the material and spiritual world and instead develop healthy and balanced attitudes about money, earning, and spending.

Have you felt a conflict between your spiritual path and your quest for monetary abundance? If so, this issue’s book may be perfect for you. Mindfulness and Money: The Buddhist Path of Abundance addresses this conflict from the Buddhist perspective. While the stereotypical image of a Buddhist monk is head shaven with long robes living as a beggar, not all Buddhist disciples were living a monastic lifestyle. Hence begins the Buddhist perspective on living abundantly in today’s world.

We all need money to live. There’s no getting around it. As a society – and world – we’ve chosen to use the green (or whatever color it is these days) bits of paper and metal coins to represent value usable to trade. Because we have money, we correspondingly have an extended civilization that honors it. And with the civilization that honors money for exchange, we don’t need to provide for ourselves everything we need to survive – we can buy it.

This purchase power is the beauty of money, as it frees us to explore other things – such as a spiritual path and even enlightenment. If we were struggling every day to make food, shelter, clothing, etc., we’d hardly have time to also be really concerned about enlightenment. So with our money and our civilization firmly rooted in place, this book provides insights into how to re-perceive money so it doesn’t rule our thinking, so we no longer think it can provide things it cannot (such as self-worth), and so that we can begin to create a better world for us and for others.

Take a moment to think about the fact that MONEY is the biggest relationship that we have. The time and energy to earn it and then spend it surpasses any other activity in our lives. Therefore, this book’s focus is to help readers avoid splitting their lives between the material and spiritual world and instead develop healthy and balanced attitudes about money, earning, and spending.

Next Month: Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain © 1978