Dollars and dharma

Do you know Steve Irwin?

“What good is a fast car, a flashy house, and a gold-plated dunny to me? Absolutely no good at all. I've been put on this planet to protect wildlife and wilderness areas, which in essence is gonna help humanity. I wanna have the purest oceans. I wanna be able to drink water straight out of that creek. I wanna stop the ozone layer. I wanna save the world. And you know money? Money is great. I can't get enough money. And you know what I'm gonna do with it? I'm gonna buy wilderness areas with it. Every single cent I get goes straight into conservation. And guess what Charles, I don't give a rip whose money it is mate. I'll use it, and I'll spend it on buying land.” —Stephen Robert Irwin, 1962 – 2006.

In Your Money or Your Life, my friend Vicki Robin writes that, “Most people’s money problems are actually connected to a lack of fundamental direction in their life.”

Steve Irwin did not lack direction in life.

“[In the Yoga Sutras] there are dire warnings about becoming goal-oriented since that type of motivation is inherently part of the personal ego.” - Judith Sugg

I’ve been thinking about instrumental and autotelic activities since my last post about our fruitless search for fulfillment through pleasure, success, and self-improvement.

Instrumental activities are things we do to get something else. And that’s what capitalism teaches us: [work out/eat this/wear this/get this degree/take this job/work hard] so you can [look good/win a good mate/find friends/live longer/be more esteemed]. Ultimately, so many of our activities are centered around proving that we’re worthy of love. And it never ends. How exhausting.

On the other hand, there’s the autotelic experience. “Autotelic” means intrinsically rewarding activity, one that is done not with the expectation of some future benefit, but simply to experience it.1 For Steve Irwin, protecting wildlife and wilderness areas is an autotelic experience. He is not doing it to be loved, he’s doing it to protect wildlife and wilderness areas.

And autotelic experiences are what life are ultimately about. As Alan Watts famously put it, “[W]e missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.”

Money, desire of recognition, and pursuit of success destroy the autotelic nature of life. That’s why work and spending are still the outer rim of samsara for so many of us. The ego is still running the program and we’re not singing and dancing. Steve Irwin’s ego is not running the program and because of that, he doesn’t have money problems. He knows exactly what money is for: the pursuit of his dharma.

“When you come to the end of yourself is where all the interesting stuff starts.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

Money only solves money problems — Jordan Grumet

When we get to Module 3 in FF1, the fundamental question is: Do you know what you’re about? Because most people’s money problems are actually connected to a lack of fundamental direction in their life.

Steve Irwin didn’t need a fast car, a flashy house, or a gold-plated dunn (Australian for outhouse2). He knew what his dharma was.

The times in my life when I was most in tune with what I was about,3 I didn’t need nice clothes, to travel to new places, or to have upgrade things in my house. I was fully engaged with my dharma. Lynne Twist calls it “living a committed life:

“A life where I make... and I still do make huge commitments that take me over and then I become shaped by my commitments rather than my desires. For what I said I’d do rather than what I think my needs are. It’s like a surrendering of a life for something larger and for me that’s been a godsend.”

The Franciscans believe in the haecceitas, the “thisness,” of every individual thing. All of us, a unique, unrepeatable expression of God’s love. The Himba of Namibia in southern Africa believe in the song of the child, a song that they will carry for their entire lives.

As Sister Mary Jo puts it, we are drenched in grace. We couldn’t avoid it if we tried.

If you know dharma, do it.

Lately, I’ve been struggling to feel fully engaged with my life. For so long I’ve had a very clear sense of what my life was about, so it’s been disorienting to feel this way.4

And I’ve noticed something in this period: it’s incredibly easy to online browse (and shop) when I don’t have energy for anything else. It’s funny, shopping used to take energy (drive to the mall, walk around, try things on, all yuck to me), now anything I could ever imagine wanting is on the tip of my fingers. Whenever I lack motivation to do anything else, I can shop. But by its nature, shopping is only instrumental, it can never be autotelic. Once I have enough energy for the things that are actually satisfy me, I suspect the useless online browsing will stop.

I suspect the same for you.

The autotelic life.

What if the bad habits we have, money or otherwise, weren’t the problem, only the symptom of doing things in order to get something else? Something you never had to get, that you always already had?

Grace everywhere, all around.

Do you know your dharma? Do it. Do you know your song? Sing it.

For you FF1 alumni: FF2 has just started if you want to join.

For those of you who haven’t taken FF1, the next cohort is September-October.