App Store

Google Play

800 000+ bestselling stories and Storytel Originals. From [price]/month. Cancel anytime.

Audiobooks for everyone

image.devices-Singapore 2x

Step into an infinite world of stories

Listen and read

Louis van Loon

Excerpt from Why the Buddha Did Not Preach to a Hungry Man by Louis van Loon

...what makes one man poor and another rich is not only a question of material possessions, how much they consume or the extent to which they are able to satisfy their cravings. This is determined largely by the manner in which they subjectively experience and psychologically evaluate a feeling of well-being in the context of the environment in which they happen to be situated. Indeed, “poverty” and “affluence” are largely relative terms: quantitatively, a well-to-do member of a primitive Bushman society is still desperately poor compared with an urbanised African who may well own a radio, a guitar, a good suit and some cattle at his homeland kraal. He, however, is appallingly destitute when his lifestyle is contrasted with that of a white artisan who, in turn, envies the earning capacity—and everything that goes with it—of a Johannesburg business executive who, however, may well earn— and be able to afford only as much as a New York dockworker.

Judy Swift

Pariyatti

Bodhi Leaves No. 121

Why the Buddha Did Not Preach to a Hungry Man: Buddhist Reflections on Affluence and Poverty

Bodhi Leaves No. 121

Bodhi Leaves No. 121

Books in order

Listen and read