write essay on contentment is the only real wealth
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satisfied." Mahatma Gandhi, another wise elder I follow said that: "Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed." This was the essence of his prescription for his ashram's eleven vows of simple living, harmony, purity, truth-telling and fearlessness. Why try to squeeze the most out of every single thing, every moment, always striving to optimize and thus becoming the workaholic and desire-aholic striver and grasper? Don't we all know someone like this (maybe us)? The ancient Greeks thought there is no such thing as enough. American-born Duchess of Windsor famously stated, "You can never be too rich or too thin." Isn't this the very core of insatiability? This overweening, craving and grasping is a prescription for dissatisfaction and is not what it means to live fully. In fact, it's a kind of garden variety addiction. I've heard that God alone is perfect and humans are infinitely perfectable. Addiction is the insatiable striving for a specific thing with complete disregard for its impact on one's life in general. Pursuing the specific with disregard for the universal is the trap of how we find ourselves unfulfilled!
What is enough? When is enough, enough? And -- is enough ever enough? I mean, really enough for us, for me? Who sets the standard? Are these not queries we might ask ourselves, now and then, and check to see whether we're functioning more from greed than from need? We all have needs, and they are valid; and a little more is also fine, but what about greed? What's the cost to us personally and individually, societally and globally.
"Contentment is the greatest form of wealth", opined the preeminent Buddhist philosopher saint of ancient India, Pandit Nagarjuna. But, who is actually content? When I posed that question to a wise and witty psychiatrist friend (while we were watching the Red Sox on TV), he said, emphatically, "No one!" Then he turned back to his beer and nuts. Thus, I wonder and ask you: Is anyone content? And if so, for how long? And what is contentment, anyway: pleasure, satisfaction, fulfillment, endless bliss, heavenly beatitude, or simple peace? Have we ever really sorted through these different levels and stages of happiness development and the cultivation of authentic well being and lasting fulfillment?