The modern mantra of “more, more, more” often clashes with an inner yearning for a fulfilling existence. Sadhguru explores this tension: the pull between material accumulation and the deeper desire for meaning. He argues that money, when pursued merely as an end, risks a profound impoverishment within.
Questioner: I just want to know, how much is enough? I have enough money to live on for the rest of my life. Should I keep grinding for more cash if it means sacrificing my time, happiness, hobbies, and health? Should I continue making more money, or is that enough?
Sadhguru: Even though this is a common idea these days, money is not the goal of business. Money is not a commodity; it is a currency. You should never aspire to acquire money. You need money to facilitate many things. Without money, there is no empowerment. Whether you are doing business, or we are running a Yoga Center, we cannot run it without money.
If we did not charge money, we would have to make you sit under a tree, throw dog food at you, and teach the same lessons. Would that work for you? You want to sit in a nice place and eat well – all this costs money. In everything we do, money is a facilitator. It is not a goal by itself.
To live well, you need a certain amount of money. Decide what kind of lifestyle will be good for you and facilitate what you want to do. Poverty will encumber you. If you are worried about where the next meal is coming from, of course, you cannot do many things in life. You will only be focused on survival.
If you make too much money, that also can become a burden. You need money to realize your ideas. My blessing is: May you have all the money you need to create something. Do not be like people who have cash stacked floor to ceiling in their house.
Just thinking of money as a goal is a crime because it essentially means you are robbing the world somehow, through legal or illegal means. Do not think of your life in such a way and make it ugly. Just see what it is that you want to create.
To create that, you need a certain level of personal comfort and ease. You need a home, comfort, food – whatever those things are for you. Calculate how much money you need for that.
Once that amount of money is set, do not even think about it because, fundamentally, there are only two aspects to your life. When you sit here, how profound is your experience of life? When you act, how impactful is your activity?
This is all life is about: profoundness of experience and impactfulness of activity. For profoundness of experience, you do not need money. For impactfulness of activity, we need money.
If money is an empowering force for you to do many things in the world, may you have everything you wish. But if you think of money as a goal and spend your life making yourself sick just to gather a certain amount of money, that is a waste of life. Above all, it is a crime.
This is what a criminal also thinks: “Somehow, I want to get this much money.” How? You think you must go by the rules because you know the consequences of breaking them. A criminal has the courage to go outside of the rules, that is all. But either way, money is a goal. Do not make your life like this.
What is it that you want to create? To create that, if you put your life, your energies, and your consciousness into it, then what is needed will come. Or you have to gather what you need, so you are empowered to create what you want. To build a house, you need bricks, and similarly, if you want to do things in the world, you need money.
Never make money the goal of your life; it is just a currency. Money must flow, not be stacked up. While ensuring your security is fine, the important thing is that money is a currency that empowers you to do something you wish to do, not a goal in itself.
