How do different wisdom traditions view wealth and money?

Wealth shows up across wisdom traditions less as something condemned outright and more as something to be correctly ranked. The Stoics classified money among the "external" or "indifferent" things (adiaphora) - neither good nor bad in itself, since virtue alone is the true good. Epictetus's Enchiridion opens by dividing everything into what is "up to us" (our judgments and choices) and what is not (our body, property, reputation), placing wealth firmly in the second category: something to be used well or badly, never confused with the goal of a good life. Seneca, who was himself extremely wealthy, wrote that the Stoic sage may possess riches but must hold them as if they might be demanded back at any moment - using money without needing it. Buddhism's caution runs through its diagnosis of suffering (dukkha) itself: craving (tanha), including craving for wealth and possessions, is identified as the root cause of suffering in the Second Noble Truth. The teaching is not that wealth is evil, but that attachment to acquiring or keeping it produces the same clinging that produces suffering in any other domain of life. The book of Proverbs holds work and caution in tension rather than resolving them into one rule. It commends diligence and sends the "sluggard" to learn from the ant (Proverbs 6:6-11), and treats wealth gained honestly as a legitimate blessing (Proverbs 10:22). But it warns just as directly against loving money for its own sake and against wealth gained by fraud or haste (Proverbs 13:11, 23:4-5), and Proverbs 30:8-9 asks God for "neither poverty nor riches," reasoning that either extreme can pull a person away from faithfulness. Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics treats wealth similarly to the Stoics: as an instrumental good, useful for the sake of something else (a flourishing life, eudaimonia), never as a complete end in itself - hoarding money for its own sake, he argues, mistakes a means for the goal.