16. What do you do if you find money?

I usually leave coins or bills right there, because, as I've said, money only exists in the head.  It's an excercise to see everything as it is, not filtered through the mind of belief.  If my eye lusts after a dollar bill on the ground like it is something special, then my mind is still not the infant's mind.  The infant mind sees everything as it is.  The infant has no thoughts, no value judgments.  

The Infant mind is the Zen mind.  

Except you become the Zen mind, 

you cannot enter the Kingdom of God.  

An infant has no regard for money, because she knows money does not exist.  She does not know money.  She does not know illusion.   She might see a pretty piece of paper with designs & a picture of a man on it, and is attracted to that for what it is, but that's all she sees.  One time I found a $20 bill and decided to play with it in this way.  I cut it up and made a collage out of it.  Bills are works of art - but only a rare few see them as such.

However, if there is a person near me who believes in money, I will pick up the coin or bill and pass it on to him or her.  Why? Please see 15. What do you do if somebody offers you money or buys things for you?.  Otherwise, coins or bills usually stay right where I find them.

People often say I don't touch money.  If they mean I don't touch coins, bills, or credit cards, they are mistaken.  If they mean I stay away from thought of credit and debt in my mind, they are more accurate (though I am still in the process of letting go of touching money in my mind) 

I must make clear that I have no aversion to touching coins or bills or credit cards.  Aversion to touching coins or bills or credit cards is just as superstitious as attraction to them.  Either attraction or aversion to bills, coins, or credit cards is attributing a power to them that does not exist.  Attraction or aversion to coins, bills, or credit cards is idolatry, in other words. 

To be attracted to or aversed to anything that has no ears, eyes, nostrils, or mouth is to become deaf, blind, without sense and without taste.  Most adults on earth have become deaf and blind, without sense and without taste.  We become what we trust in. 

Their idols are silver and gold, The work of men's hands.

They have mouths, but they do not speak; Eyes they have, but they do not see;

They have ears, but they do not hear; Noses they have, but they do not smell;

They have hands, but they do not handle; Feet they have, but they do not walk;

Nor do they mutter through their throat.

Those who make them are like them; So is everyone who trusts in them.

(Psalm 115:4-8)

 On whatever form a person continually contemplates,

that same he remembers in the hour of death,

and to that very form he goes, O Kaunteya. 

(Bhagavad Gita 8:6)

We die moment by moment.  

And we're born again moment by moment.  

And that which we trust in when we die is that which we become, 

moment by moment.