Sacred Texts: Buddhism

Buddhism in Translations - § 94. Contentment Is Riches.

Henry Clarke WarrenPali Canon TranslationsTheravada Buddhism

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This is a translated excerpt from the Visuddhi-Magga (Path of Purification), a canonical Theravāda Buddhist meditation manual, drawn from the chapter on the material requisites that can hinder a monk's practice. The passage uses a parable to illustrate the virtue of contentment and non-attachment to possessions: two monks ordained together, one of whom stays at a monastery near a relic-shrine while the other travels to a distant place. When the traveling monk returns expecting his old friend, now long-settled, to have accumulated resources and connections, he finds instead that the resident monk owns nothing beyond the communal furniture and survives on whatever little alms he receives that day. The visiting monk then notices with embarrassment that he himself, in a single day of travel, has already gathered a walking-stick, oil, sandals, and a bag — minor items, but enough to reveal his own residual attachment. The resident monk's complete poverty is reframed not as deprivation but as spiritual freedom: wherever such a person dwells is like a forest retreat, a holy shrine, and the presence of the Buddha himself. The distinctive claim is that detachment from place and possessions is not a matter of location or circumstance but of inner disposition — making any dwelling simultaneously no dwelling at all.

Buddhism in Translations - § 94. Contentment Is Riches.

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