GREED IS NO MORE THAN A FEELING OF EMPTINESS
The Times of India
11th February 2006
THE SPEAKING TREE

Just to understand the nature of greed is enough. You need not do anything else to get rid of it; the very understanding will clarify the whole mess.

Man is full if he is in tune with the universe; if not, he is empty, utterly empty. And out of that emptiness comes greed. Greed is to fill it: by money, houses, furniture, friends, lovers — by anything, because one cannot live as emptiness. It is horrifying, it is a ghost life. If you are empty and there is nothing inside you, it is impossible to live.

To have the feeling that you have much inside you, there are only two ways: either you get in tune with the universe... Then you are filled with the whole, with all the flowers and with all the stars. They are within you just as they are without you. That is real fulfilment. But if you don’t do that, and millions of people are not doing that, then the easiest way is to fill it with any junk.

Greed simply means you are feeling a deep emptiness and you want to fill it with anything possible — it doesn’t matter what it is. And once you understand it, then you have nothing to do with greed. You have something to do with your coming into communion with the whole, so the inner emptiness disappears. And with it, all greed disappears. That does not mean that you start living naked; that simply means you do not live just to collect things. Whenever you need something you can have it.

Somebody is collecting money although he never uses it. A thing has to be a utility; if it is not a utility then there is no need for it. But this thing can take any direction: people are eating; they are not feeling hungry and still they go on swallowing. They know that they will be sick, but they cannot prevent themselves. This eating is also a fillingup process.

 So there can be many directions and many ways to fill emptiness, although it is never full — it remains empty, and you remain miserable because it is never enough. I don’t take greed as a desire — it is some existential sickness. You are not in tune with the whole, and only that tuning with the whole can make you healthy. That tuning with the whole can make you holy.

Religions have misunderstood greed as a desire, so they try to repress it: “Don’t be greedy”. Then one moves to the other extreme, to renounce. The person who wants to get rid of greed starts renouncing.

To me, greed is not a desire at all. So you need not do anything about greed. You have to understand the emptiness that you are trying to fill, and ask the question, “Why am I empty? The whole existence is so full, why am I empty? Perhaps I have lost track, I am no longer existential. That is the cause of my emptiness”.

So be existential. Let go, and move closer to existence in silence and peace, in meditation. And one day you will see you are so full of joy, of blissfulness, of benediction. You have so much of it that you can give it to the whole world and yet it will not be exhausted. That day, for the first time you will not feel any greed — for money, for food, for things, for anything. You will live naturally, and whatever is needed you will find it. And you will live, not with a constant greed that cannot be fulfilled, a wound that cannot be healed.

Excerpted from Beyond Psychology.