Understanding and Overcoming Greed | Greed essay

Understanding and Overcoming Greed | Greed essay

Earning Money 💸 is not wrong!

The body requires food 🍲, clothes, house, etc & we also have many other needs like health, education, gadgets, transport, etc. Hence, we definitely need to earn wealth to fulfill these needs, and also to meet contingencies (like health, inflation, retirement, etc)

Hence, earning is not wrong, it’s infact very necessary.

Greed = Desire for Excess Wealth

It’s only when we desire to earn much excess wealth than necessary, it’s greed.

Greed is harmful, because:

This may:

Lead us to create stress, anger, etc in the pursuit of more money. Hence, affecting our emotional & physical health and not allowing us to give our best in work & relations
Compel us to pursue unethical activities like corruption, pulling others down, etc

Focusing too much on wealth may lead us to ignore other equally important aspects of life, like:

Relations; we may give less time to family hence not benefit from the attainments from relations
Health; we may neglect physical health i.e.., skip meals, miss exercise, sleep less, eat packaged instead of fresh, etc and in general overwork the heart & body
Mind; we may not give time for empowering our mind, hence be frequent experiencers of negative emotions like stress, anger, worry, etc thereby remain far away from the experience of our original virtues of peace, love & happiness

Further, Greed is:

Never-ending, there’s no limit to the amount of wealth, cars 🚗, houses 🏘️, etc we can accumulate
Addictive, it creates a habit / addiction of continuing to go after higher & higher monetary figures
Dependency, I feel good ONLY when I earn increasing money

Overcoming Greed

1. Objects don’t give happiness

The biggest realization that helps in overcoming greed is the fact that ‘Objects don’t give me happiness, happiness is my internal creation’.

Let’s understand this by a simple example.

Suppose a friend gifts 🎁 you a gadget (phone 📱, tablet, iPad, etc). All of us will agree that the level of happiness is much higher when a friend gifts it to us, as compared to we buying it ourselves. Hence, happiness is higher although object is the same.

The next day, if you come to know that your friend actually gave an outdated used piece saying it’s new. Happiness will immediately vanish, although the object is the same.

Hence, we saw in both the above cases that while our happiness went up & down, the object was the same. This proves that the object doesn’t give happiness. So, the question arises that what is it that gives me happiness?

In the former case, we created very good thoughts like “Wow, such a wonderful gadget”, “I finally got what I wanted“, “He’s such a good caring considerate friend”, “How thoughtful of him to gift to me“, etc…. It’s these good thoughts which create the feeling of happiness

And in the latter case, we created thoughts like “How could he do this to me?”, “I’ve always given good, look at him”, “There’s no point being good in this world”, “Can’t I purchase myself?”, “He should atleast have told”, etc… Hence, it’s these not-so-good thoughts which made happiness vanish…

Hence, happiness doesn’t depend on the object but happiness depends on the thoughts we create in response to getting the object.

And indeed, an object always gives what it’s designed to give e.g., a tablet is designed to give communication, comfort, convenience, features and it always gives these till the end of it’s lifetime. But since it’s physical, it can only give me physical comfort, while it’s my (subtle) thoughts that lead to the (subtle) feeling of happiness.

2. Wealth💰 doesn’t give happiness

Similarly, if wealth gave happiness, then:

The richest people would have been the happiest
Even our happiness should have increased in direct proportion to increasing wealth
Then, for example, our happiness should have doubled when moving from Rs. 5 lakh car to Rs. 10 lakh car

Since neither of the above is true, it clearly shows that wealth doesn’t give happiness

Hence again, physical wealth can only give me physical comfort while it’s the subtle wealth of right thinking, blessings from others, etc which gives subtle happiness

3. Keeping ourselves filled with true happiness

We’ve understood above how physical things can’t give happiness, but happiness is our internal creation.

However, since the soul’s original quality (& hence requirement) is happiness, if we don’t fill ourselves with true happiness, we’ll still keep subtly looking for it outside. Hence, the key to overcome greed (or indeed any dependency) is to keep ourselves filled with true happiness.

Some easy techniques for this are:

Putting in pure information

Easiest Method of Transformation - Putting in Pure Positive Information picture

As is the information put in, so are the thoughts. Hence, listening to pure spiritual knowledge for atleast 15-20 minutes daily, automatically creates pure elevated thoughts leading to the elevated feeling of happiness.

Meditation

Meditation is, in itself, the process of creating elevated thoughts.

Here’s how it works:

When we create an elevated thought e.g., I am a Peaceful Soul, it creates a little feeling of peace. Continuing to create a series of such elevated thoughts, creates a series of elevated feelings eventually accumulating to create a powerful stage of happiness.

Further, Rajyoga involves using this methodology to:

Connect to our (i.e., the soul’s) original virtues of peace, love & happiness… And,
To establish a direct personal connection with the Supreme, who’s the Ocean of these qualities!

Hence, meditation is a very rich & powerful technique of remaining full & content always!

And it’s not difficult, since there’re numerous simple ways to meditate:

Keep elevated self-respect points, God’s companionship, other elevated memories, etc at the back of the mind while working
Remain in the awareness “I’m the energy using this body” while working
When meditating, experience different relations with God, different titles of God, experience different qualities from Him, etc hence giving varied & fulfilling experiences

Sharing with all!

And indeed, once we start remaining full of true happiness, we automatically keep sharing it with all rather than asking for it. And the more we share happiness with others, the more it increases within us, hence we remain full of it always, far from greed!

Time? ⌚

Time is not a constraint, since we could plug in our headphones 🎧, listen to a spiritual session, etc even alongside routine physical activities like brushing, taking a walk, exercising, cooking & eating meals, travelling, etc… Indeed, even the busiest people in the world need to do these routine activities, hence none of us can give the excuse of time in our spiritual progress.

Other Benefits of Overcoming Greed

1. Although Greed means a desire of earning excess wealth than necessary, it sometimes becomes difficult to determine how much is necessary. However, when we fill ourselves with true happiness, it becomes very easy to decide & determine how much is enough & necessary.

2. We’re able to save a lot of money, by purchasing objects on merit & utility rather than for superficial purposes.

3. We are able to use our wealth:

For the benefit of us & family, rather than just hoarding wealth
For benevolent purposes, hence building our stock of good karma for the future

Om Shanti!

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