I'm Gretchen Ruben and this is a little happier.

As I've mentioned before, I love coins.

That's KOAN.

I've been interested in Zen Coins for a long time.

In the Buddhist tradition, a coin is a question or statement

that can't be understood logically.

And Zen Buddhist monks meditate on coins

as a way to abandon dependence on reason

in their pursuit of enlightenment.

And so I'm always on the lookout for coins,

which are things that don't quite make sense,

but then make all the more sense because of that.

And perhaps my favorite modern coin, or relatively modern

coin, and the one that I reflect on the most often,

and which I actually used as an epigraph for the Happiness

Project, is a Spanish proverb quoted

by Samuel Johnson in Boswell's Life of Johnson.

And Johnson quotes the proverb,

he would bring home the wealth of the Indies,

must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.

Now, what does that mean?

And then I came across another version of this coin

...