It’s common for those new to Buddhism to ask: “Do Buddhists think wealth and making money are bad?” It’s equally common to answer: “no, wealth itself isn’t bad, it’s just what you do with it.” The Thai scholar-monk Prayudh Payutto (also known as Phra Rajavaramuni and several other names, but this one is the easiest to track him down by) is probably the best-known exponent of this view: in his Buddhist Economics he says “it is not wealth as such that is praised or blamed but the way it is acquired and used.” (61) Others writing on the topic, such as Peter Harvey and Donald Swearer, have said similar things; the topic’s on my mind right now because Justin Whitaker said the same thing in a recent comment here.

There are a number of passages in the suttas that support this interpretation, on which wealth itself is neutral to our well-being (although I suspect that these passages are not always being read in their proper context). But it’s worth pointing out that there’s another view in South Asian Buddhism that takes a significantly more negative view of wealth and its accumulation, one that appears strongly in Śāntideva. Continue reading →