Baraka_Guru

Fair enough. I'll be straight to the point.

A misunderstanding of Buddhism often leads people to believe that it is either pessimistic or world-denying (or anti-materialistic). This isn't the case.

First, addressing the approach to suffering, Buddha teaches that we can overcome our suffering through enlightenment. But he does not indicate that we can "escape" suffering. Enlightenment is a way to deal with suffering. He further teaches that those who are enlightened should refrain from positioning themselves above the diseased and miserable masses, and instead remain to teach others about the path that would lead them to overcome their misery as well. These enlightened ones who remain among us to teach us the way are called specifically Bodhisattvas, rather than simply Buddhas.

Enlightenment isn't to deny or reject our bodily existence to avoid the misery of the world; it isn't to dissolve our bodies into a kind of godlike mind-existence; it is to overcome our attachment to our bodies as a kind of ownership. Life as its very nature is impermanence. Enlightenment involves being awake to this fact at all moments as a way to let go of worldly delusion regarding our craving for life and pleasure and the avoidance of pain.

Second, Buddha teaches that wealth is something that can be used to prevent ourselves from being a burden on others, though he did warn elaborately against formulating emotional attachments to material things.

The reincarnation aspect of Buddhist thought refers more to karma, which is our burden of suffering as it relates to our actions in life. The idea of previous lives is a kind of meditation on the source of misery. It helps us explain the depths of interconnectedness in the universe and how our actions both positive and negative have direct consequences, whether to our own minds or to others.

The idea of reincarnation as a kind of excuse, reason, or justification for poverty and suffering sounds more like the logic found in such works at The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, which, as it happens, tends to hold ideas opposite that of Buddhism. Buddhism is a philosophy that recognizes awareness and the action of cause and effect. This is why it is called an applied philosophy. Buddhism isn't just about meditation and "mindwork"; at its core is a realization of the importance of action or inaction, with regard to compassion vs. violence, etc.

If you take the practical aspects of Buddhism, you can easily see why those in the field of psychology have an interest in it. You may have heard of recent approaches to the "science of happiness." Buddhism has been analyzed as one means of reaching towards this goal.

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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot