The Buddha-dharma can be used to do many, many things–without limit. For example, H.H. Dorje Chang Buddha III can also empower his disciples and grand-disciples to improve their wealth and social status. His Holiness’s disciple, Dorje Losang could also grant empowerments that would cause businesses to flourish when the owners followed the Buddha-dharma taught to them. Although having great wealth is not an end in itself, gaining the power of the Buddha-dharma and acquiring the supernormal skills and wisdom of a Buddha can certainly result in a prosperous and wonderful life as well as having the resources with which you can help living beings.
Shakyamuni Buddha taught the Dharma to four classes of disciples: monks, nuns, and laymen and laywomen. Many of the Buddha’s direct disciples were wealthy laymen and laywomen as well as powerful kings and queens. The true practice of Buddhism is to attain liberation from the suffering of worldly existence and eliminating the ignorance that binds us to that suffering. It does not mean that one has to give up the beautiful and pleasurable things of this world, only that you must recognize their true nature and not be attached to them. One does not have to be a DMB (Downwardly Mobile Buddhist) as a recent CBS reporter called those who give up the material worldly life for one of simplicity in a monastery to be a true Buddhist. One only has to give up one’s obsessions and attachments.