I asked his wife, “What is the matter?” – because he had always been chitchatting and was always cheerful. The wife laughed and the husband looked at her very seriously, very angrily.

The wife said, “You are asking, so I am saying the whole responsibility is yours. I am not to be looked at as if I am committing a sin.” And laughingly she said to me, “He is sad because he has lost five lakh rupees.”

I said, “But you are laughing and your husband has lost five lakh rupees?”

She said, “I am laughing because in fact he has gained five lakh rupees – but he was expecting ten lakhs, and the trouble is, he cannot understand that he has earned five lakhs out of a business. He’s sad because he was counting on ten lakhs. What about the remaining five lakhs? So although he has profited enough, he is not happy.”

His misery is that he has lost five lakhs – and he has not lost a single paisa. I asked the man, “What is the matter?”

He said, “In a way she is right, but I am really feeling sad. Ten lakhs were absolutely certain in the business. Even more was possible but only five lakhs turned up, and I cannot forget the five lakhs that I have missed.”

Now can you think that a man who is thinking in terms of expectations can be happy, joyous? Your expectations are always more than the reality allows. Hence, there is always a feeling of failure. There is always a sadness lurking somewhere in your being.

Greed is an aggressive attitude towards existence: grab as much as you can and go on grabbing more and more and more. Waste your whole life and your whole intelligence in grabbing more and more and what is the point? Death will not be late, not even for a single minute. It always comes at the right time, and all that you have grabbed and wasted your life for, you will have to leave here.

Bodhidharma has said:

One man was so greedy that when his wife was almost dying, his friends told him, “It is time…you should call a physician.”

But he said, “It costs too much.”

They said, “It is going to be really ugly, inhuman. Your wife is dying and you are thinking about paying some fee to the physician!”

He said, “Wives don’t count much. If she dies I can get married again. And death and life are not in the hands of man, they are decided by fate. If she’s going to die, she will die whether I call the physician or not. Why waste money? If she is going to live, she will live. Either way, a physician is absolutely unnecessary.”

The friends said, “We have never thought that you are so greedy. We have always heard that you are greedy – but so much! Do you think you are going to take all your money with you when you die?”