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Value of Wealth and Value of Life The main speaker of this session is Khenpo Sodargye Imperfection is life: the chipped bowl teaching and the I Ching principle of fortune and misfortune
Wealth and the Value of Life Khenpo Sodargye at Nanjing Agricultural University
In this lecture delivered to MBA students and faculty at Nanjing Agricultural University's School of Economics and Management, Khenpo Sodargye offers a systematic Buddhist and traditional cultural framework for rethinking wealth and life values. He opens by redefining wealth itself: Buddhism recognizes not only material wealth but also ordinary spiritual wealth and the Seven Noble Riches of noble beings — faith, discipline, learning, generosity, conscience, shame, and wisdom. These inner riches carry only gain and no risk, unlike financial instruments where higher return always means higher risk. He establishes that Buddhism takes a middle position toward money: neither should one treat wealth as poisonous, nor accumulate it with boundless greed and without moral restraint. The Buddha's Last Bequeathed Teachings is cited: "One who is content, though lying on the ground, still dwells in peace; one who is not content, though dwelling in heaven, is still not satisfied." On life values, Khenpo draws on Feng Zikai's three-floor model — material, spiritual, and soul — to argue that most people today are stuck entirely on the first floor, with all their aspirations centered on money. The greed spiral is illustrated through the Hermès bag analogy and the fable of the snake that devours its own tail. On wealth with wisdom, he tells a story from Asvaghosha's Sutra of the Great Adornment contrasting a Brahmin practicing austerities to obtain royal glory versus King Bimbisara who possessed great wealth without attachment. On Buddhist financial management, he cites the Sigalovada Sutra's four-portion method: one portion for living expenses, one for savings, and two available for investment — specifically warning against leveraged speculation that wipes out family savings. On imperfection, he shares his guru's teaching that a chipped bowl is not inauspicious — life's slight incompleteness is protective, because fullness invites loss. This is supported by the I Ching principle that fortune and misfortune are interdependent. On Confucius's life stages, Khenpo expresses the hope that university students understand karma and cause-effect at twenty rather than waiting until fifty. The lecture closes with Jigme Phuntsok Rinpoche's seven qualities of virtuous character from Drops of Nectarlike Advice: a kind heart, freedom from deceit, good temperament, foresight, steadiness, tolerance, and wisdom — both worldly and transcendent.