What the wisdom traditions say about having enough

Enough is a harder idea than wealth, because it has no number attached. The ten concepts below come from ten different places and they do not agree with one another. One makes the pursuit of wealth a legitimate aim of a whole life, several treat the wanting itself as the problem, and two simply tell you how to divide your income. I have left the disagreement standing rather than smoothing it into a single message.

Artha — Prosperity as a Sacred Aim of Life

In the Hindu scheme of life's aims, the pursuit of material well-being is named and legitimate, pursued alongside duty and pleasure rather than renounced. This is the concept everything else here argues with.

Kamasutra 1.2 (on the trivarga)

The Peril of the Love of Money

The warning is about the love of money and not about money. The distinction is doing real work in the sentence, and it is usually dropped when the line gets quoted.

1 Timothy 6:10

Santosha — Contentment as a Foundation of True Wealth

Contentment is listed as something to practise, not a mood that arrives when conditions are right. Patanjali puts happiness on the far side of it rather than before it.

Yoga Sutras 2.42

Contentment Is the Greatest Wealth

The Dhammapada ranks contentment above every other kind of holding. The question shifts from how much you have to how little you need.

Dhammapada 204

Stoic Sufficiency — Wealth Is Having Few Wants

Epictetus solves the same sum from the other end: riches are measured in the number of your wants, not the number of your possessions.

Discourses (attributed)

Epicurean Economy — Natural and Necessary Desires

Epicurus separates the desires that are natural and necessary from the rest, on the grounds that genuine needs are few and cheaply met. It is an argument for calm, not for austerity.

Vatican Sayings 68

Plutarch on the Love of Wealth — The Bottomless Jar

Plutarch's warning is that this particular appetite grows by being fed. He is describing a mechanism rather than delivering a scolding.

On the Love of Wealth (Moralia)

The Three Treasures — Lao Tzu on Frugality

Lao Tzu names frugality alongside compassion and humility rather than against them. Restraint here is a source of generosity, not a substitute for it.

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 67

The Middle Way of Spending — Balanced Consumption

The Sigalovada Sutta is unusually practical: divide what you earn, enjoy a portion, put a portion back into the work, and keep a reserve against hard times.

Sigalovada Sutta (DN 31)

Chanakya Niti — Save in Prosperity for Adversity

Chanakya gives the same counsel more bluntly, and adds the warning that being rich now is no protection against calamity later.

Chanakya Niti, Chapter 1

Read together these do not produce one teaching about money. They mark out a range: wealth is a fair aim, wanting is the part that runs away with you, and the practical advice is nearly identical whoever gives it. The real split is over whether enough is a figure you reach or a way of holding what you have.