Sacred Life Sunday

"Wealth", Mixed Media on Panel, 2008 Bronwyn Simons

Many of the blogs I follow have been participating in Sacred Life Sunday for ages. I love the idea, and I love reading the posts, so I decided to jump in for 2009. Lately I have been contemplating the idea of wealth. I have begun to think of wealth in terms of how much we feel we have to give. This in turn is a reflection of how interconnected we feel. There is a beautiful passage in Shantideva in which he is making offerings to the buddhas and their heirs:

I offer every fruit and flower
And every kind of healing medicine
And all the precious things the world affords...

All the sweet and lonely forest groves...
Lakes and meres adorned with lotuses,
All plaintive with the sweet-voiced cries of water-birds
And lovely to the eyes, and all things wild and free
Stretching to the boundless limits of the sky;

I hold them all before my mind, and to the supreme buddhas
And their heirs will make a perfect gift of them....

For I am empty handed, destitute of merit,
I have no other wealth...

Shantideva sees all the beauty of the world as his wealth, and his to give. I love this.