In a world often dominated by excess or austerity, Buddhism offers a vision of wealth rooted in balance. For the lay follower, income is not merely a tool for pleasure or power — it is a means for ethical living, personal well-being, and spiritual progress. In the Buddhist tradition, the value of money lies not in what it buys, but in how it is used.
The Buddha warned against both extremes — the miser, who hoards wealth without joy, and the spendthrift, who wastes it thoughtlessly. Neither finds contentment. The miser clings to coins like a ghost clinging to its regrets, while the squanderer burns through resources without care. True freedom lies in a middle path, where income serves life, not the other way around.
The Sigālovāda Sutta and other early texts lay out the core guidelines for how income should be managed:
Bring happiness and ease to oneself and one’s loved ones — family, friends, employees, and those under one’s care.
Protect wealth against foreseeable loss, preserving it for both current needs and future security.
Make offerings to ancestors, guests, the gods, and those who have passed — honoring relationships and the web of interdependence.
Give generously to the virtuous — monks, spiritual teachers, and the needy — planting karmic seeds for future happiness.
Nagarjuna, the great Mahāyāna philosopher, summarized it poetically:
“Through using wealth there is happiness here and now,
Through giving there is happiness in the future,
From wasting it without using it or giving it away,
There is only misery. How could there be happiness?”
Buddhism teaches that wealth only truly belongs to you when you give it away. What is saved in vaults will be lost to time. What is shared with kindness becomes part of the path — a bridge between the material and the spiritual, between self and others.
Appropriate use of income is thus not about how much you spend, but about how clearly you see. Do you use your resources with gratitude? Do you protect, provide, and uplift? If so, your wealth becomes a form of wisdom. If not, it becomes another tether to suffering.
Money is a tool, but in Buddhism, it is also a test — of values, of awareness, and of heart.