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Sikhing Wisdom
September 24th, 2008Mohan caught me by surprise.
Mohan is my taxi driver. He works the early mornings, taking hard travelers like myself to the airport. Every cab I’ve called for an o-dark-thirty departure resulted in Mohan arriving at my door.
Mohan is a Sikh, a member of a religious minority that had the bad sense of blending Hinduism and Islam and thus making enemies of both. Sikhs are common target practice in India, which helps to explain why they make up only 2% of that country’s population. It also explains why they always wear a smile in the United States — very few people are trying to kill them here. Well, there were a few dim witted folk who saw the Sikh’s customary turbans and in the post 9/11 paranoia beat a few Sikhs senseless.
I wanted Mohan’s opinion on the current financial crisis, fearing that the economic downturn might reduce air travel and thus his fares. Mohan said something that will likely stick in my mind until death (mine, not his).
“Everyone needs health, roof, food. After that money buys wants, not needs.”
That sentiment is dangerously close to Buddhist philosophy, which makes me wonder if the Sikh’s blended three religious disciplines and not just two.
“Health, roof, food.” Profound in simplicity and reminded me of a Jewish friend of mine named Andy. Andy had invested in home town real estate back in the 1980s, and then the local market bottomed out. He could not keep tenants, keep up on his mortgage payments, had properties repossessed and auctioned off, and ran into trouble with the IRS.
Yet he was always upbeat.
I asked him how in the hell he could be chipper given all that had and was happening to him. Andy shrugged and said “Nobody died. Nobody went hungry. Nobody is homeless. Can’t be too bad.”
Health, food, roof. I think I’ll introduce Andy to Mohan. They’d get along very well.
It’s as if money gives us only a false, unauthentic sense of security, and perhaps because of this false sense of security we loose sight of, or get out of the habit of using and enjoying our own basic animal survival instincts which are a natural part of our being, (and connect us more to the earth).
It’s funny to think that most of the money in the world seems to be made out of thin air, it does seem cheap and I think in a way this money can cheapen life.