Showing posts with label Henry David Thoreau. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Henry David Thoreau. Show all posts
 | Realizing True Wealth  Before he wrote the book The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith the father of capitalism, wrote another, as a framework for it, The Theory of Moral Sentiment |
Let your capital be simplicity and contentment.
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
Realizing True Wealth by Americ Azevedo, Nov 24, 2014 We are born with true wealth, but constantly forget to realize the wealth we already have. Failing to acknowledge our true wealth we keep grasping for more, like hungry ghosts who are never satisfied while constantly eating! Thus, we go about despoiling the earth, corrupting relationships, and twisting societies into grotesque forms that promote needless suffering for ourselves, others, and the earth-at-large. Realizing true wealth leads to personal, interpersonal, and transpersonal fulfillment. Furthermore, the long term survival of life on earth depends upon true wealth realization. We need deep psychological and spiritual healing of individuals, groups, communities, nations and the earth at large. The bedrock of this healing is a return to this present moment, not in a selfish, narrow way, but in a way that includes the totality of what is here-there as well as past-present-future. It is nothing less then the ancient ideal of enlightenment of all sentient beings. |  Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship. Buddha |
 Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth. Ernest Hemingway  In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of. Confucius .jpg) We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. Louis D. Brandeis  | We may have money but little time. We may have time but no money. We may have love but neither time nor money. Coming to a point of balance between these factors is mastery of the art of living which is true wealth. It’s been said, "He who dies with the most toys, wins!" This is both true and not-true. Some say, “money does not matter" -- but quietly and privately we fear poverty. Fear of homelessness, hunger, and a drop in social status drives many to insane focus on money at any cost. If you are poor with a positive state of mind, you may still suffer a sense of emotion degradation just from the social stigma of poverty. Such fears are well founded in societies that fail to attain true wealth, since the members of those societies know they can and do fall into poverty. A world based on fear cannot be wealthy in any real sense. Our possessions can own us. Attach ourselves to our possessions and we immediately lose our sense of true wealth. The very desire for possessions not yet owned breeds greed and lust. We suffer endless rounds of grasping for the goods that will make us “happy and full”. We get “more”, but immediately need to get “more” again. There is no end in sight. “Business as usual” means a life filled with urgency, running to keep up, and without time. “Oh! If only I had more money, I would do the work I love.” Or, “If I had that big new house on the hill, people would respect and love me. My wife would stay with me.” Such conceptions of wealth are very childish. Many of the “richest” people in the world are always “hungry”. Much shopping is for useless trinkets which act as displacements for lack of meaning and love in life. Many a parent, for example, who has no time for talking with their children, will just buy toys. Most people identify with the stuff that they own as an extension of their personal ego. Consider automobiles and houses which function as symbols of wealth, but are also destructive to the natural capital of nature. True wealth goes beyond the concerns of the skin encapsulated ego. True wealth includes the social, political, and transpersonal levels. What about a friend or relative who needs help? What about broader environmental concerns? True wealth goes beyond the individual, and even national, egos. What you spend your money on, changes, impacts society. Buy an SUV because you like personal leg room, but consume the air and warm the environment for everyone else as well as yourself. |
Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
Henry David Thoreau
 Time, Love, and Money An old man asked me, “With what do you buy your money?” I said, “With your life.” He said,“Right! I wish I had known that when I was young. I spent my life working for money instead of living.” Time, love and money are the three legs of truth wealth’s stool. The time allotted to your life is utterly fundamental; a finite constantly depleting resource. Have you loved enough? Have you made money, invested money, and spent money in a way that sustains life on this earth for seven generations to come? Most don’t think we have time for these questions. We can be occupied working for money that we buy cars, drive to places, buy food from thousands of miles away, thus depleting earth’s natural capital without noticing it. Many people will say that they are making good money, but have no sense of free time. They hope that someday in the future they will have time for the things they really enjoy like family and nature. Often that day never comes. I once worked at the headquarters of Standard Oil. My life had become the company. When I went home, my mind was preoccupied with Standard Oil. One day I awoke to realize that I worked in an environment that was loveless. I had money, but love and time where in short supply. What is money? It’s a symbol for value, it is information; it is abstract. Humans are driven by symbols to go to war and fight for abstract causes. Money, being utterly abstract, is often valued more for itself than for what it actually buys – it is the ultimate “field of dreams”. Individuals and societies measure self-worth by financial net-worth, but this devalues the deeper qualities of awareness and soul that are the true source of all value. Walking by a beautiful garden filled with iris flowers, someone might think: “I don’t own it, how unfortunate!” So they miss the simple of joy of the experience. You don’t need to own things in order to enjoy them. To really “have” something we must be present to it. Taking time to appreciate the existence of an object, a friend, or a place is really having that object before us. |  Wealth is transpersonal because it is “beyond the personal”. Everything that we do to accumulate wealth depends on past human efforts; as well as the Earth, the solar system, and the cosmos at large. You are not your own source of supply. Companies create private wealth by extracting resources from nature as if nature is "free" and unlimited. Water, for example, was always free. Industrial pollution turns water into another commodity with price barriers for the poor and helpless. This situation creates transpersonal poverty. There can be a wealth of time. Societies can make time for living, for singing, for family, for just sitting and watching. This wealth is greater than the focus on consuming goods and working to pump up the "gross domestic product". A man can become homeless and starve to death in a big city filled with apartments, hotels, and food. It is not just lack of money that brings us to the homeless state. Depression, lack of faith in life, lack of friends, and lack of family ties can bring one to this place. Call it lack of love. We cannot be truly wealthy in such societies with extremes of poverty and riches. The expansive homes of the few wealthy are beautiful, but the society is really poor and ugly. So many become restless and debased is such a society. I cannot relax in a mansion without security systems and insensitivity to the disparity around me. Just like the Buddhists who say they cannot become enlightened until everyone is enlightened, you and I cannot be truly wealthy until all are “wealthy”. Clearly, a new meaning of wealth needs to emerge for the culture at large.  |
Balanced Wealth Portfolio An investor will diversify her assets into different categories of assets so as to balance out risk with the changing tides of market fortunes. The seeker of true wealth balances the assets of time, love and money across the dimensions of personal, interpersonal and transpersonal – thus optimizing abundant life for themselves, neighbors, future generations, and Earth. A balanced wealth portfolio can be attained by disciplining the ego and personal pride. This spiritual practice has ramifications for self, society, and life on earth. Portfolios are lists of assets by categories. We could begin by playing with lists of “assets”. One simple list of categories for grouping our assets would look like this:  1. Personal-money 2. Personal-time 3. Personal-love 4. Interpersonal-money 5. Interpersonal-time 6. Interpersonal-love 7. Transpersonal-money 8. Transpersonal-time 9. Transpersonal-love |
| True Wealth Realization Practice Wealth is usually defined by external measures: affluence, millionaire money levels, ownership and control of companies, and influence over people. Look deeper; and, there is the feeling of being wealthy or poor more or less independent of external wealth measures. Work with that feeling so as to become more independent of the strictly personal illusions of money-wealth and poverty. |  |
 | Remember who you really are. This means giving yourself the time to contact your own ultimate wealth: the soul. Your own soul is your own ultimate wealth. As you begin to be wealthy in yourself, you will be able to extend your sense of wealth to include others and reality at large. Every soul is the same soul – only covered by different personality, history and circumstances. I could have been any one of the other people that I see everyday. To awaken to this very moment is truth wealth. This moment is in truth all we really have and own. Everything else is just on loan; we must give it all back in the end. |
This article, written by Americ Azevedo,
was originally published in What is True Wealth & How Do We Create it?
Edited by Verna Allee & Dinesh Chandra. Indigo Press, New Delhi, India. 2004. Pages 124-130.
| One day a father and his rich family took his young son on a trip to the country with the firm purpose of showing him how poor people can be. They spent a day and a night in the farm of a very poor family. When they returned from their trip, the father asked his son, "How was the trip?" "Very good, Dad!" "Did you see how poor some people are? the father asked. "Yeah!" "And what did you learn?" The son answered: "I saw that we have a dog at home, and they have four. We have a pool that reaches to the middle of the garden, while they have a creek that has no end. We have imported lamps in the garden, and they have the stars. Our patio reaches to the front yard, they have a whole horizon." When the little boy finished, his father was speechless. His son added, "Thanks, Dad, for showing me how poor we are!" |  The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination. Alan Watts |
Money Pink Floyd |
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© 2014 wonder404
or Universal Responsibility
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Business Lessons From A Quiet Gardener This post is an excerpt from the speech by William Rosenzweig On the occasion of his receiving the Oslo Business For Peace Award in 2010 A gardener sees the world as a system of interdependent parts - where healthy, sustaining relationships are essential to the vitality of the whole. "A real gardener is not a person who cultivates flowers, but a person who cultivates the soil." In business this has translated for me into the importance of developing agreements and partnerships where vision and values, purpose and intent are explicitly articulated, considered and aligned among all stakeholders of an enterprise - customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders, and the broader community and natural environment. |
 | The garden has taught me about patience and persistence and the ethical principles of generosity and reciprocity. It has illuminated the importance of appreciating the cycles of life and decay. For the gardener, composting is a transformative act - whereby last season's clippings (or failures) can become next year's source of vigor. |
I've learned that it's not just what you plant, but how you plant it that brings long - term rewards in life, work and the garden. Gardeners know that once strong roots are established, growth is often exponential rather than linear. |  |
 | Also gardening, like business, is inherently a local activity, set within an ever - changing and unpredictable global climate. Showing up in person, shovel - and humility in hand is essential. |
Gardeners, like entrepreneurs are obsessed with latent potential - and can be known to be pathologically optimistic. We can vividly imagine the bloom and the scent of the rose even in deepest of winter. As the American naturalist Henry David Thoreau once wrote: "I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders." |  |
 | In essence, the gardener's work is a life of care. We cultivate abundance from scarce resources. We nurture, encourage, fertilize - and prune when necessary - while being respectful of the true and wild nature of all things. We know that creating enduring value requires vision, passion, hard work and the spirit of others. |
I am just coming to understand this work of business gardening - and investing in keeping people healthy - as an act of universal responsibility. His Holiness Dalai Lama reminds me: "Each of us must learn to work not just for one self, one's own family or one's nation, but for the benefit of all humankind. Universal responsibility is the key to human survival. It is the best foundation for world peace. |  |
The Man Who Planted Trees Story by Jean Giono, Film by Frederick Back |
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© 2012 wonder404
You may also like to see: My Hut in Spring / Evolutionary Economics / One Starfish / The Jar of Life
You may also like to see: My Hut in Spring / Evolutionary Economics / One Starfish / The Jar of Life
 | It's A Living  Work, Work, Work |
Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.
Gautama Siddharta
What If Money Were No Object - Alan Watts |
Work= Force X Distance Another way of putting it is: Exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something. |  |
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. Khalil Gibran  |  When you do things from your soul you feel a river moving in you, a joy. Rumi |
The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real. Marge PiercyMotivation - RSA Animate by theRSA.org It is not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about? Henry David Thoreau | We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor. It is something to be able to paint a particular picture, or to carve a statue, and so to make a few objects beautiful; but it is far more glorious to carve and paint the very atmosphere and medium through which we look, which morally we can do. To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Every man is tasked to make his life, even in its details, worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour. Henry David Thoreau |
Money - Pink Floyd |
Enjoy
© 2014 wonder404
