Noble Wealth

There are two kinds of wealth in the world. There’s material wealth, and there’s what the Buddha calls noble wealth.

Material wealth isn’t really yours. You gain it, and then it’s very easy to lose it. You get money. You notice it’s not your signature on the money. It’s somebody else’s. Even if you have a credit card, the bank’s name on the card is much more important than your name. And the value of external wealth goes up and down with people’s beliefs. If people trust in the system, the value of money goes up. If they lose their trust in the system, the value goes down.

This is why it’s better to look for noble wealth. This is wealth that comes from within.

It starts with conviction. Formally, it’s conviction in the Buddha’s awakening. What that means for you, though, is that you have to believe in the power of your actions. If you act on your skillful intentions, the results are going to be good. They’re going to bring happiness—maybe slowly, maybe quickly—but you know you’re putting good things into your mind. And you’re putting good things into the world through your good actions. Eventually the goodness is bound to come back to you.

Which is why we’re meditating.

If our actions didn’t make any difference, there’d be no point in sitting here with your eyes closed and your hands empty. You’d be off someplace else. But it’s because the mind is the source of all action—and when the mind is well-trained, then it can trust itself more to act on skillful intentions: That’s why we’re here.

So. Make up your mind you’re going to stay with the breath as an exercise in getting some control over your mind, so that you’re not just blown around by your moods. Then be alert to what you’re doing and the results you’re getting from your actions. If the results are good, keep it up. If they’re not good, you can change.

That’s where ardency comes in, trying to maintain what you have that’s good, trying to get rid of all the things in the mind that are not good. This way, the mind becomes your friend. It becomes an ally in creating happiness.

We all want happiness. Everything we do is for the sake of happiness, yet we end up finding ourselves creating suffering. It’s because the mind is not clear to itself. It doesn’t understand itself. So you want to really know what’s going on in here. And the best way to know the mind is to force it to stay right here and see how it complains, what kind of complaints it may have. Where does it want to go? Ordinarily, it wanders around as it likes because it’s being pushed around by forces it doesn’t understand. It doesn’t really know what it’s doing.

But if you put up some resistance, then you see what in the mind is going to react. You get some knowledge about your mind. In that way, you develop all kinds of good, noble wealth inside. Based on conviction, there’s virtue, a sense of shame. In other words, you’d be ashamed to do things that are harmful. A sense of compunction: You just don’t want to do things that are harmful. This leads to discernment. As you understand the mind more and more, you get more control over the mind. So you actually do create happiness instead of suffering.

So. You’re gathering noble wealth here. Nobody else can see it—and that means it’s safe. The wealth that other people can see is not safe. If you go around showing off your material wealth, they’ll rip it away from you. But if you have this kind of wealth inside, it’s yours. One hundred percent. Fires can’t burn it. Water can’t wash it away. Thieves can’t steal it. It’s one hundred percent yours. That’s the kind of wealth you want.

The wealth of the world has its uses. But you have to realize that your real wealth, the wealth you can actually take with you, is the wealth you build into the mind.