It's no secret that we all need money to live. This is true even for religious and spiritual leaders as well as their students. That's why, in this episode of The Missing Conversation, Robert explores Buddhism within the lens of money and monetary attachment. Buddhist teachers rarely deal with the importance, and excessive emphasis on money or how attached their students and society are to it. One of the ways they often miss an opportunity is by detaching themselves from communication and by not carefully addressing what it means from the original Buddhist teachings to be balanced.

Buddha himself did not outright denounce money and material possessions. He simply cautioned against letting such worldly things control, change, and possess us. When greed and hungry desire become us, we lose sight of how we could use these material riches to help the world and humanity at large. That's when resources like money become evil and destructive.

Buddhist monks, teachers, and followers are encouraged to reduce or, indeed, remove their connections to materialistic things in our world. This is especially true for money. Buddhist teachers often act as if they want to appear as being detached from money and similar worldly, material needs. They implicitly depict themselves as being one step more 'removed' from and mostly in control of these human needs. But there's a question to be asked — how much of this detachment is voluntary and internal? How much of it is to avoid facing rejection or ostracization from your community?

Like other humans, including you and me, Buddhist teachers also depend on money to survive and share their teachings with their disciples. So there's an opportunity here for Buddhist leaders to share their understanding and values about detaching from money and simply reframing their thinking of money as an essential tool for life. Something that is necessary for survival in balance and moderation.

As followers and students, we need to ask our teachers to explore the topic of money and our collective attachment through the lens of their teachings. Similarly, if teachers took some time to share how they manage their own relationships with money, it might help us all model it in our lives. This would help us focus on a balanced relationship to money itself and help us reduce our attachment to it over time, allowing us to see money as a tool for balance and generosity.

Read the transcription and listen to this episode on The Global Bridge Foundation website.