Dalai Lama

Even if money brings us happiness, it tends to be the kind which money can buy: material things and sensory experiences. And these, we discover, become a source of suffering themselves. So far as actual possessions are concerned, for example, we must admit that often they cause us more, not less, difficulties in life. The car breaks down, we lose our money, our most precious belongings are stolen, our house is damaged by fire. Either that or we suffer because we worry about these things happening. If this were not the case--if in fact such actions and circumstances did not contain within them the seed of suffering--the more we indulged in them, the greater our happiness would be, just as pain increases the more we endure the causes of pain. But such is not the case. In fact, while occasionally we may feel we have found perfect happiness of this sort, this seeming perfection turns out to be as ephemeral as a drop of dew on a leaf, shining brilliantly one moment, gone the next.