~~~~You need clothes, You need a shelter, You need food~~~~
"Man cannot live by bread alone." You should not become just a bread-producer, a bread-earner. Bread is needed, but bread is needed only so that you can sing a song.
The bread is needed for the song, the song is not needed for the bread -- the bread is a means, it is not an end.
Once your perspective changes, life will have a totally different significance. It will not have utility but it will have significance, which is far more important. You will earn -- needs are not many, needs are very few. Any intelligent person can fulfill his needs very easily. But when needs become the whole life and you are nothing but a means, then needs cannot be fulfilled -- they become neurotic.
Neurotic needs are called desires. That's what Buddha calls them -- neurotic needs. Bread is needed, but you don't need a great treasure. Clothes are needed, but one need not be mad about clothes. One is not here just to go on collecting clothes. Yes, it is beautiful sometimes to put flowers in your hair, to have a garland of flowers or just a rose in your buttonhole. But you are mad if you are running after diamonds and wasting time. Any stone, any beautiful stone from the beach will do. A seashell will do.
There is no need to put your whole energy and life into things which are really unimportant, insignificant. But that's how people are living. They live for the bank balance. Once they have started living for the bank balance they completely forget what the use of the bank balance is; they go on increasing it.
Andrew Carnegie, one of the richest men of the world, was once asked: "You could have stopped earning any time, because you always had more than you needed."
He said, "Yes, that's right -- but I could not stop. I had forgotten HOW to stop."
Once you get into things it becomes almost impossible to stop. Now he knew that he had more than he needed and there was no need to go on earning. But he worked from the morning till late in the night. Even the day he died he was working -- late, up to twelve in the night he worked, and by twelve-thirty he died. And he was ill, and the doctors were saying, "You need rest."
But how can you rest? The whole life becomes money-oriented -- money means utility.
An intelligent person knows that money is not the goal. And remember, I am not against money, but money is not the goal. There are two kinds of people: those who are for money, and those who are against money. Both are unintelligent. An intelligent person is neither for nor against. He knows that money has some utility, it fulfills certain needs -- you need clothes, you need a shelter, you need food, so it is perfectly all right. But you need not make money your god.
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