The Effects of Buddhists Teaching on Believers' Attitudes to Wealth and Poverty

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Recommended: 5 precepts of Buddhism and 4 noble truths.

The Effects of Buddhists Teaching on Believers' Attitudes to Wealth and Poverty

Buddhist teaching consists of many aspects that will affect their

attitude to wealth and poverty. Buddhists teach that there should be

no extremes; every Buddhist should follow the middle way or magga. The

middle way has many parts to it.

The first part is the basic teaching of Dharma. The Dharma consists of

three separate marks of existence. The first being Annica, Annica

means that everything is constantly changing, nobody can guarantee

wealth or poverty may last. The second Annata, this teaching is that

everyone under the Buddhist faith is interdependent, basically no one

can exist separately, and the wealth or poverty will affect everyone

else. Therefore nobody can live differently than any one else. Lastly

there is Dukkha, the world cannot provide a person with permanent

happiness, consequently wealth could not give a person permanent

happiness because the world is unsatisfactory. These teachings affect

the attitude of Buddhists by implying that you don't need to be

wealthy to gain enlightenment but you don't have to be poor to either,

you just have to follow the middle way. Which involves neither being

wealthy or living in poverty.

The second part to the middle way is the Four Noble Truths. These

being all life involve suffering and the result of suffering greed.

This affecting both the poor and rich. To avoid being affected the

Buddhist follow the Eightfold Path. This path will help Buddhists to

follow the middle way because it shows what to do in order to achieve

Nirvana. The Eightfold Path is divided up into three sections, wisdom,

morality and mental training. These consist of certain guidelines.

Wisdom - right view or intention, morality - right speech, right

action and right living and mental training - right effort, right

mindfulness/awareness and right concentration. All these guidelines

can be linked to problems or coping with wealth or poverty. Right view

is accepting that all life is unsatisfactory; therefore being wealthy

or poor is unsatisfactory. Right action is doing things not just for

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