Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Lord Buddha never equated spirituality with materiality. However there is a lesser known teaching called the Navakovaddha Sutta where the Lord Buddha addresses how one can create material stability and maintain it, that can carry over to future lifetimes, if one strictly abides by them. In order to do so there are four guidelines that He teaches us to adhere to:
1) When one loses something, one must find it immediately.
2) When something is damaged, one must repair it immediately.
3) Eat and drink in moderation.
4) Never promote a bad person to be a leader.
According to a quote from an article, "Women in Early Buddhist Literature" from the Pali Text Society,
the Lord Buddha precisely stated:
“All families that have attained great possessions have done so for one or other of the following reasons:
They search for what is lost,
They repair what is dilapidated,
They eat and drink in moderation,
And they place in authority, *issariya (*Pali - also known as)a virtuous woman or man.” (A ii 249; AN 4.255).
When our feet are firmly planted in the Triple Gem:
The Buddha and His gifts that He has spread since the Time of His Enlightenment,
The Dhamma, which contains the many teachings He imparted to the people of the world and,
The Sangha, our Buddhist communities and temples where we can support the monks and nuns, make offerings to them, and learn and share the Dhamma and practice meditation,
And our steady focus is keeping the 5 Precepts each day:
Do not kill.
Do not steal,
Do not commit sexual misconduct,
Do not lie, curse or gossip,
Do not ingest substances that cause heedlessness of the mind,
Then we can truly step off of the merry-go-round of samsara (the endless cycles of birth, aging, sickness and death) and walk with our brothers and sisters on the path to enlightenment, and never look back.
