Why is nothing ours?

In the earlier sections we talked about the theory. Now we will analyse it carefully to see why nothing is ours.

First, why is property not ours? Take a temple, for example. The temple belongs to the abbot: people acknowledge it, and the law acknowledges it too. But if we analyse it and break it down:

- Does this land belong to the abbot?

- No, it belongs to the State, which administers it.

- Does this pillar belong to the abbot?

- No, the Buddhist lay followers contributed the money, and the builders put it up.

- Does the Buddha statue belong to the abbot?

- No, the lay followers offered that too, and the sculptors made it.

Asked this way, nothing belongs to the abbot at all, and a monastic teacher must see this clearly and understand that they are only the person the Buddha has entrusted with the responsibility of looking after the temple.

And what about a house that we paid for ourselves, buying the land and building on it? Is it ours? Looking closely, it still is not ours. Take houses we inherit from our parents: clearly we did not create them. And before our parents' generation, if we trace the origin back, there are many more owners. Someone may say, “I don't know whose house it was, but I paid money to buy it, so it is mine.” But when we analyse where that money came from, we are surprised to discover that our own money is not truly ours either.

For example, the owner of a workshop pays tax, pays for materials and pays the workers' wages, and the profit that remains is regarded as his. But if we calculate carefully, we will see how much of other people's sweat lies within that profit. Why? Because if the wages were paid in full, as they deserve to be, the wages might even exceed the profit he enjoys. So his wealth contains the sweat and tears of many people, not only his own.

Someone may think, “I'm only an employee, not the owner. I worked for so many years to save enough to buy this house. The house is mine, the money is what I earned, the salary is what I enjoyed.” But for us to be able to complete our work, so many other people have to support us. When we join a company, the machine we work on was left by those before us, the chair we sit on was bought by someone else, and the whole work process was designed by somebody... We get our work done because many others have contributed their effort, but sometimes we do not see it, we forget it. And then who cooks our meals, who does our laundry, who takes care of our health? The salary a husband brings home also contains a share belonging to his wife. Many other things in life are the same, because life is a tangled web of mutual dependence. So let no one think that the salary they earn is theirs; in truth it contains the labour of a great many other people. Only when we look at the matter this deeply are we called wise in Buddhism. Anyone who does not acknowledge other people's contributions, who values only their own, and who thinks everything is theirs alone, is truly a person without wisdom.

Besides, clinging to “mine” also makes people truly cruel. For example, a rich man likes to build with timber. He has bought hundreds of cubic metres of wood to build his house and is very proud of “my all-timber house”. But to get hundreds of cubic metres of wood like that, a whole great forest has fallen. The most absurd thing is when he claims that the logs he bought are his, or when the man who sawed the timber and loaded it onto the truck says, “That tree is mine, I felled it.” What a cruel thing to say. Whose was the huge tree, too wide for two or three people to embrace, standing in the forest? It was thousands of years old, or at the very least six or seven hundred years, from a time when even our great-grandfather did not yet exist. Those trees were nourished by heaven and earth: the sun circled around them, the air embraced them, the wind swayed them, the rain fell on them, the rivers bathed them, the streams flowed past them, birds perched on their branches... Six or seven hundred years, even a thousand years passed like that, and today we take a chainsaw, cut straight through, and say “mine”. That is something very cruel and dishonest.

We must understand that each tree growing in the forest belongs to heaven and earth, to the whole world and to all beings: the frog, the bird, the snake, the leopard, the tiger... to this entire earth, not only to humans. So when we take a machine, cut across the trunk, load it onto a truck and say “mine”, that is something extremely cruel, because we have robbed what is common to all and seized it for ourselves, claiming it as our own.

Many other things in this world are the same. Take the house we live in. The house is made of brick, stone, cement, timber... And these bricks, stones, cement and timber were taken from heaven and earth, from limestone and clay, and from the labour of so many people, all of which came together as the conditions for the house to be built. If every material were returned to where it came from, the lime would go back to that mountain, the brick to that bed of clay, the earth was kneaded with water from the stream, the water in the foundations to the river it was drawn from... We carry them home and say “mine”, but examined closely, they are truly not ours; they belong to the vast heaven and earth, to beings, to everyone.

We must realise this through our own investigation. Otherwise, if we stubbornly cling to “mine”, we will become foolish, ignorant people who cannot practise.

Because they understand this, whenever a teaching monk is praised and applauded, he feels grateful, but he always knows that the teaching is not his own. Only someone lacking wisdom thinks, “My mouth spoke it, so the talk is mine.” A person with wisdom knows that the talk in truth belongs to the Buddha: it comes from the source of the teachings the Buddha gave several thousand years ago; from the lessons of one's own master; from fellow monastics who reminded and encouraged one; from the faithful donors who offered food so that one could be well fed enough to speak; from the ordained disciples who helped with the work of the Dharma; from the devas who guard the Dharma and protect one... Only after investigating carefully do we see that it is true: nothing is ours, nothing at all is mine.