FOR THE RICH
This essay contains both a personal and a Buddhist
perspective in this topic. As usual, it is based upon my own personal
observations and reflections.
I have rather mixed feelings about wealth generally. I
have ambivalent or confused feelings about it. On the one hand I have
always had a rather laid-back and devil-may-care attitude towards money,
and, as my mothers family were quite well off, I developed a pretty
carefree attitude towards it. Yet in my middle years I do admit to wishing
to be a little bit better off and more financially secure than I am.
Primarily, I would like not to have to earn a living, but be able to spend
most of my time doing paintings, writing and doing historical research. In
another sense I despise the rich and abhor their riches, their snobbery,
their aloofness above us, as if they are somehting special, which they are
not. But the Buddhist view of wealth is clear: it stems from desire and so
should not be indulged.
A good Buddhist must cultivate good thoughts about
others, kind thoughts and be compassionate towards all beings, not just
the poor and destitute. It must include the rich as well. They do need
compassion and understanding, and probably far more than we realise. The
thing I have always really disliked about the rich is that they insist on
spending their money on big, showy expensive things [such as boats, big
cars and fancy holidays] which always seem to flaunt their wealth for all
to see. It is as if they deliberately crave the attention of others and
want to be seen, noticed, admired and envied by the less rich. By their
actions, they appear to be immature show-offs and attention seekers. As if
they really need the attention of others. Maybe that confirms their hallowed
status in their own eyes and makes them feel that they have finally made
it. Which is kind of pathetic really. It is a form of emotional
parasitism – they cannot feel secure inless they feel the attention, gaze
and envy of others.
I think we can make various other robust observations
about rich people. They are often fundamentally ugly, unattractive,
socially incapable, acquisitive, selfish and arrogant. What makes them
like this? Well, why should they even bother to try to be any different?
What could possibly motivate them to question the way they are? They do
not tend to get the signals from social interaction that there is very
much wrong with them. Quite the reverse, in fact. With so much money and
other peoples admiration – not to be confused with affection –
there is very little incentive for them to doubt the validity of their own
behaviour, their self-esteem or their success in life. There is an
i,balance in their prfound self-certainty, as if by right of birth, they
have all the answers and that their opinions are somehow sacred. There is
not much strong motivation coming from their own side for them to bother
to be any more polite, sociable, mature, humble or kind than they are
already. They do not doubt themselves enough; they have no humility and no
affection for the common man. These are forsure unenviable qualities for
any human being. Unenviable and contemptible.
I do not really feel jealous of the rich, as I regard
them as fundamentally sad people, damaged goods. They have an
embarrassment not of riches, but of poverty – a spiritual poverty. Part of
me really dislikes the rich because they are so aloof, arrogant, superior
and cut-off from the rest of us. That part of me despises that side of
wealth and their rich clothes and smart houses and their extreme snobbery.
I do find snobbery to be enormously off-putting and a pretty disgraceful
quality in every possible respect. There is no doubt that rich people do
become cut-off from the rest of us. They tend to mix only with other rich
people and thus in a certain sense they become lonely and isolated, as if
they have lost contact with the great human family we are all part of. Why
would anyone wish to become so socially isolated?
But the other side of me feels sorry for the rich. I
feel sorry for their loneliness and isolation and their being cut-off from
humanity. I feel sorry that others hate them so much and envy their
wealth. I feel sorry that they do not realise that getting money and
material things never stops the craving inside us or any other latent
unhappiness we might carry, and thus never leads to any form of deep and
lasting inner contentment. Sorry also that their sufferings, the true and
real sufferings like we all experience by being human, that these are so
rarely seen in public, and are never seen in a sympathetic light by the
rest of us. Sadly, their real sufferings and pains are never heard or
shared warmly in the arena of common humanity at large. That genuinely
saddens me. No-one comforts them in their real hour of need.
Who cares if a rich man is unhappy? Or if his wife
dies? No-one cares, no-one would sympathise with them or be a shoulder for
them to cry on. They have few genuine friends and no-one they can really
trust or open their hearts to. They have no-one to really confide in. They
seem bereft of true friends and have little contact with the warm humanity
of the rest of us. No-one shares or shoulders their pain, much of the time
they stand all alone. People do not tend to look beyond the riches or see
the frail human being inside.
In all these senses I feel happy to be poor and a
nobody and rather sad for the rich and famous, who do have a much rawer
deal than we generally realise. They are also profoundly insecure about
their wealth and feel threatened with collapse or bankruptcy at every
turn. The rich are very vulnerable to loss and deeply attached to their
wealth. It is all that sets them apart from the rest of us. They are
plagued by worries which derive solely from their wealth and their greedy
relatives, while we wallow in and enjoy our sublime poverty!
I really delight in being a nobody, a poor person, an
ordinary person walking down the street! I can speak to anybody or walk by
or feel the warmth of others lives like a drifting sweet fragrance,
with whom I come into contact only briefly, but as if they were dear
friends of mine. I can do all that, but the rich and famous cannot do
that. I have that freedom as a poor person; they do not have that freedom.
That is the freedom of the poor, which the rich and famous have utterly
lost. They are cut off from the rest of us by their rich friends, by their
gold jewellery, by their all-year sun-tans, by their smart clothes, their
big yachts and expensive cars. And these things are craved insanely by the
less-well-off, who would happily kill to have these things.
I love the social cohesion of being in the crowd, in
the flow, in the swim and being with other human beings. We are intensely
social animals and love company. In so many ways the rich are more like
prisoners of their wealth, prisoners of their status and prisoners of
their fame. I feel sorry for them in that sense as they are fellow human
beings like me; my brothers and sisters. Thus we should be more
compassionate towards the rich and try and understand them better. We
should try to view them more neutrally, more dispassionately, just like
ordinary people, like ourselves, fellow creatures moving in the stream of
our common humanity and suffering many things, just like the rest of us.
They are not really cut-off, but can be brought lovingly back into the
warm circle which we all share, the love and kindness of being human. For
when they are stripped of their jewels, their smart clothes and their
fancy houses, they are just as frail and vulnerable to loss and grief and
unhappiness as the rest of us. For these reasons they deserve just as much
compassion and kindness as we give to the poor.