Want to get rich? It's easy. Simply purposefully collect the necessary karmic seeds to see yourself that way, and you will be. And so, paradoxically it seems, the only way to get a lot of money is to give a lot away, very purposefully and carefully.

But when the seeds ripen and it all comes back to you, will you be happy? You see, the seeds for being happy and the seeds for being rich are different seeds—and that explains why wealthy people can sometimes be so utterly unhappy.

The karmic seed that's planted by training ourselves to be satisfied with any level of material comfort is different. This seed ripens as pure contentment, and it's worth a huge amount of wealth seeds. A person who is contented with simplicity has surpassed wealth itself.

It really is true that there is no school like being put into difficult situations and learning to excel because of them. Karmically speaking, the decision to commit ourselves to something that is truly meaningful forces a lot of old, very dangerous seeds to go off—prematurely, but much more gently than they would have otherwise. It's sort of like the inconvenience of missing a flight that ends up crashing.