Exploring Money, Mind and Meditation with Shambhala

How do we, as meditators, learn to balance a spiritual path with worldly achievement? Sometimes financial success can seem at odds with spirituality. Yet, the tradition of Shambhala teaches that through meditation practice we can have a fulfilling and prosperous life. Shastri Matthew Lyon, a Shambhala teacher and financial advisor, answers questions about his upcoming class, “Money, Mind, & Meditation: the Inner Path of Prosperity”, which brings us together to contemplate the relationship between money and mindfulness. 

Q: Why does the topic of this class feel important to you? 

A: It feels important in several ways. The theme of working with money in relationship to our state of mind and in relationship to our meditation practice ties into a pretty major concern that most of us have in the modern world, which is how to work with money properly. This affects so many areas of our lives because of the prevalence of money in our culture. I’ve also found in many years of working as a financial advisor that money issues bring up a lot of emotional and psychological aspects of life that we need to address as well.

For example, there is a prevalence of poverty mentality in our culture. Poverty mentality can be defined as a sense of not having enough, feeling insufficient, feeling that our lives are lacking something, fundamentally. That the glass is half empty. This particular problem seems to be endemic in our society in many ways. Addressing poverty mentality in regards to money opens space to talk about it as it applies to other things. We can look at our relationship to money as a way of illuminating other aspects of our state of mind.

The practice of meditation can help us to address these issues. A lot of the problems that we experience with poverty mentality are unconscious and unacknowledged. The big problem is that having what we want on an external level does not translate into having what we want internally, which is an inner sense of fulfillment, happiness, and enrichment. Bringing together money matters, self awareness of our state of mind, and how meditation can help with these matters, are stepping stones into that larger aspect of modern life.

How can we address poverty mentality? How can we establish an inner path of enrichment so that we have a way to feel fulfilled regardless of what our material situation is? These are important questions that we ask ourselves in this course.

Q: I’ve heard you talk before about “poverty mentality”. Can you explain what that is and how it affects us? 

A: There are a few different ways in which it comes up. It comes up in the sense of basic fear for survival, because in modern life, unless you live an extremely simple life, we can’t survive unless we have a certain amount of money. This is an unconscious level that underlies a lot of the decisions that we make about money.

It also affects our ability to be generous. We would like to give more but we’re afraid for our own well-being. There’s a kind of fear that comes into our decisions. This shuts down our ability to be generous and gives us underlying anxiety about money issues. We’re afraid of leaving a job because we’re afraid of what our financial situation might be if we left.

Another issue which I have noticed is that within people who have a sufficient amount of money to live decently, there is still very often a fear about not having enough for retirement, or not having enough for this or that. So how should we work with money in our lives? How much do we spend for certain things? What are our priorities? How much should we give reasonably?

I think one of the keys to living a fulfilled life in general is to cultivate generosity. And even though that doesn’t relate just to money, it’s invoked by money. How much money do we give? We naturally have a sense of wanting to give, but there’s a lot of uncertainty and fear around that in our lives, causing us to hold back.

Stinginess if it’s applied to our lives in general, not just money, shuts down on our sense of generosity or sense of fulfillment. On a practical level it limits our happiness from day to day. When we buy the cheapest thing without even considering our budget, what are we supporting? Are we supporting a production of a local farmer that’s producing high quality organic fruit or are we supporting a large corporation? And how is it affecting our health? Are we really being clear about what we actually can afford and what we can’t? Or is it actually just this gut level uncertain impulse just to buy the cheapest one all the time?

There’s no set answer for these questions because everyone’s budget is different obviously. But we need to ask these questions and allow ourselves to look at them.

Q: How does the Buddhist version of having a healthy relationship with money differ from tips and tricks we might learn in the financial world? Are they related? Can these two things work together?

A: There are a few things. One is just to be clear on what our financial situation is. And, you know, this varies a lot from person to person.

And another part is that when we’re clear on what our situation is then we know how much we can give. One of the major themes of this course is generosity, the whole process of generosity, and how it works. And it’s pretty hard to be generous with money if we don’t really know how much we have. Do we know how much we’re giving? What percentage of our income is that? Could we give more? We need to clarify these issues.

Then we can ask ourselves the question, ‘why is it important to actually give money?’ Generosity is described in the Dharmic teachings as the virtue that produces peace. But what I’ve found is that in this culture, the process of giving money is extremely important because there is such neurosis around money in our culture. And so when one gives money, even if it’s a small amount, even if it’s just a dollar or five dollars, that becomes an antidote or an empowering act, which helps us to overcome some of this worry about it. It’s this intuitive sense, or a sense of inner richness, that we have enough as opposed to that we don’t have enough to give.

Q: Can you talk about the teachings and where they come from? How does this connect to a personal meditation practice? 

A: Well there are a few different levels. For example, the course follows the logic of the first three levels of Shambhala Training. The basic standpoint is from the point of view of meditation teachings. When we are mindful, when we learn to be present with ourselves and our own experience, we’re naturally tuning into and learning to experience our basic goodness.

In the context of this course, I am expressing that feeling basic goodness is also feeling basic wealth or a sense of inner richness; that our inner life is worthy and includes great possibility and potential, that just to be a human being gives us an inherent richness. Because of our mindset we often have a sort of insufficiency or anxiety. We’re often out of touch with that sense of inner richness.

And then, looking at it from the standpoint of mindfulness, how meditation helps us: it brings the issues that we’re working on well into the forefront of our consciousness, it brings us self-awareness so that we can be aware of the obstacles that we personally have to experiencing that sense of inner richness.

Finally, since most of us are required or motivated to be in the working world, how does that sense of mindfulness invoke our inner richness? How does that apply to our life in the world? In our jobs, and in working with the money matters in our lives, how does that apply to the process of being a more generous person, being a happier person, being more fulfilled?

Mindfulness practice and meditation connect us to our ability to deal with all of those things; our inner experience, the obstacles that we have in our lives, and the possibility of working more effectively in the world in general. With the concept of “warriorship” in this type of tradition, where in developing a path of mindfulness and learning to be present we’re also learning to express that natural courage of human nature, this is really tied in with generosity.

Q: Is there an aspect of that relating to receiving generosity? 

A: Yes, that’s one of the themes too. The theme that generosity to oneself, it’s really important for us to contemplate, and I think half of mindfulness really helps us to address that issue as well. What is the nature of generosity to oneself? How does a real experience of our own inner worthiness or our own well being relate to these other issues?

And so for example one of the questions to explore is, what is the difference between self indulgence, like unnecessary or unskillful self-indulgence, and treating ourselves well? Treating ourselves well ties in to the question you raised about how we receive things. If we feel inherently worthy then we have no hesitation about receiving a gift because we feel inherently that we are worthy of receiving gifts. It’s not from an ego standpoint but it’s more of a sense of acknowledging a circle of generosity that exists.

People naturally want to give and when we accept a gift graciously we complete some kind of generosity for the other person. When we accept it well that gives them a feeling of fulfillment and peace that it was a worthy thing to do. When we don’t accept it well or we have hesitation about it, then they feel uncertain about it too, and so that circle gets a little bit distorted. But when there is a natural sense of ‘Oh yeah, there’s no problem with receiving a gift’, because I’m naturally a giving person so I can give the grace of acceptance back to that person.

The issues that come from people who maybe have a very low income so they have a very limited budget are really different from those of people who are making good money. But each of those situations have their own problems. One of the themes of the course will be that one can feel a sense of inner wealth, richness, possibility, and potential at any financial level. It’s about helping people to discover that.

Q: Financial stability seems to be a sensitive topic for most people. Are there practices that are helpful to start, tools that people can use to continue their practice with this course? 

A: Yes, I made a list; this is just a draft but I’ll share this list because I’ve come up with some things that are specific practices that people can start to employ. I think they will really help no matter where you are on that spectrum.

1. The first step is just to meditate regularly, because when we do that we’re cultivating the experience of inner wealth, and we don’t need any money to meditate.
2. The second is practicing generosity to oneself. So not being afraid of eating properly, eating well, taking care of oneself well. This means taking time for self-care, dressing well and not being afraid of that or feeling guilty about that.
3. The third is practicing generosity to others. On a very simple level, practice daily acts of giving consciously even if it’s a very simple thing. Bringing someone else a cup of coffee or giving them a nice apple that we saw at the store. Little things like that. That process of giving to others is empowering.
4. The fourth one is establishing mindful rituals around our financial life, so we have a sense of order when we make financial decisions and bringing mindfulness to them.
5. Practice feeling abundant at our current financial level, including cultivating gratitude and appreciation in our lives no matter what it is. We can have a sense of appreciating that.
6. Work patiently with poverty mentality. Notice when we don’t feel like we have enough in our lives, which is the mindfulness practice of just seeing it, because I found that so many people are not conscious; we don’t even realize that it’s happening. Like saying ‘that basically is too nice for me even though I can afford it; I don’t feel worthy’.
7. And on the other side of things, be unafraid of financial success when we are coming from a place of generosity in our lives. If we are allowing ourselves to be financially successful in the service of generosity, then that’s a really great thing for the world. Not only does it help in terms of our ability to give, but it helps in terms of the example we’re providing.
8. Accept our practical limitations with regards to money, but possibly try to find some opportunities within that so that we don’t feel a sense of imprisonment by our financial situation.

So that’s a list of some of the practical things. There could be a much longer list, but that’s just some steps that people can take.

Q: Is there anything else people should know coming into this course? 

A: We will be using these discussions of money as a steppingstone to these more general issues of self-worth. What is generosity to one’s self? What does generosity to others really mean? What comes into play is that the power of generosity is greater and more giving without expecting anything in return.

Generosity is really one of the key themes of this course. We could say that we usually think of generosity as a virtue. But one of the important principles is that generosity is actually power. It’s an empowering principle. Just like lifting weights, our muscles get stronger. When we engage in generosity regularly it actually strengthens and empowers our spirit and leads to more generosity. That’s one of the themes.

This course is giving us an opportunity to just look at and discuss these issues together and in a mindful way. As Warriors in the World, we’re dealing with money all the time. This, too, is part of our path. How do we bring these principles of mindfulness and compassion to every moment? How can this help us achieve inner peace?

“Money, Mind, and Meditation” applies the sanity and gentleness of the Way of the Warrior to our relationship with finances and how we define prosperity. Shastri Matthew Lyon has been a financial advisor for the past 34 years, and has worked extensively with countless people in helping them to find a form of financial well-being, which includes inner peace. This class is open to all and starts on October 24th at the Seattle Shambhala Center.