“If the snake bites before
it is charmed, then there is no profit for the charmer’s tongue. The words of a
wise man’s mouth are gracious; but a fool is swallowed by his own lips. The
beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness; and the end of his talk is
mischievous madness. A fool also multiplies words. Man doesn’t know what will
be; and that which will be after him, who can tell him? The labor of fools
wearies every one of them; for he doesn’t know how to go to the city.”
(Ecclesiastes 10:11-15)
An undeveloped and uneducated discernment leads
to foolish choices and decisions that can bring destruction. The same goes for
an uncontrolled egotism, similar to an untamed snake that can kill the goodness
that we have to embrace as the ruling principle in consciousness.
We have no profit, benefit or advancement in
beliefs, thoughts, emotions and feelings inspired or fed by negative traits,
but actually having the opposite. Hence we realize that our words and actions
are the expressions of what we believe in, either good or bad. Thus we are
able to know what is coming to us after what we say or do.
Nobody can tell us about the outcome of our
actions but these. Our own ignorance leads us to the effects of our
foolishness, derived from ego’s fantasies and illusions that obstruct our
awareness of goodness as the city where we all belong. In this sense, “the city”
is also Jerusalem as the permanent awareness of our connection with the
Creator.
“Woe to you, land, when your
king is a youth and your princes banquet [lit. eat] in the morning! Happy are
you, land, when your king is the son of nobles and your princes eat in due
season, for strength, and not for drunkenness! By slothfulness the roof sinks
in; and through idleness of the hands the house leaks.”
(10:16-18)
We have learned that the earth and the land
symbolize life, while kings and nobles represent the ruling beliefs and
principles from which we conduct ourselves.
The first verse refers to wasteful
and undermining traits and trends that turn life into something meaningless and
futile as drunkenness, in contrast to the positive qualities that strengthen
goodness as the cause and purpose of life.
Here we are warned to constantly
live in goodness, and not fall in the idleness of vanity and futility that
weaken and destroy the dignity of life.
“A feast is made for
laughter, and wine makes life glad; and money is the answer for all things.”
(10:19)
This verse contains two separate statements, both
meant to complement each other. As we have mentioned, the purpose of life is
goodness as its laughter and enjoyment that are expressions of its plenitude
and wholeness.
What money has to do with this? Money exists as the means to
acquire services, goods and assets which are needed to achieve the plenitude
and fullness of life in this material world under the sun.
We learned from our Sages that in the spiritual
worlds there are no material possessions to be acquired, for the spirit is not
sustained by matter. In this world the human body nurtures from physical
food, for which we are commanded by God to work for. Thus we buy to
acquire or possess what we need, in order to live and survive as human beings.
In this context we assimilate that “money is the
answer of all things”, as the means to acquire the necessary things to make life
as comfortable and pleasurable as God wants us to.
This is not meant to be forever
while we live in the material world, for our Prophets tell us about “the end of
times” when we won’t need money to live in the abundance and plenitude of the
knowledge of the Creator.
No comments:
Post a Comment