The Opportunity Game

I have been thinking a lot about greed these days. In a culture that prizes things over people, it is not surprising that greed is running rampant. However, like Buddhism’s Hungry Ghosts who are filled with unquenchable hunger and whose tiny necks are too small to let any nourishment into their huge stomachs, our greed precludes satiation. Like the junk food we mindlessly eat all day, the food that arrives in our bellies leaves us malnourished and craving more.

Greed is seductive, beckoning you into “the safe”, it then locks the door leaving you with no strategy or nor way to exit without help from someone else. The person whom greed hurts the most is you (or me when I am in its thrall). It separates us from others and diverts us from our own desire for true happiness.

One powerful antidote to greed is curiosity. What am I hungry for? What is it that I most crave in the moment? How much money do I really need to be happy right now? Will a million dollars open my heart or I am just chasing after a seductive illusion? How satisfying is it to cuddle with my money or material things rather than another human being?

This post is not a diatribe against wealth or materialism. It’s a plea for consciousness and for being aware of our own impact. We are all greedy at times. Greedy people are not mean (although we can be) or stupid (although some are). Mostly we are stuporous. We are unaware of the cause of our starvation and insensitive to the needs of others. Material wealth is neither inherently good or evil. It’s what we do with it and whether we equitably distribute it. When a select few hoard the majority of resources for themselves, I believe that we all have to rethink our priorities. Each one of us needs to wake up and see how far we’ve crawled into the safe. Otherwise, what looks like safety will be a one way ticket to our own black hole with no one else to rescue us.

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