Obsessive Consumption

Obsessive Consumption

February 27, 2011
Blame Wall Street, politicians, bankers, media, credit cards, high gas prices, your mate, etc. for the hard luck economy, and personal finances ‘tanking’, but mostly it’s ‘you’ being mindless about choices. Over 70% of goods we buy are made somewhere else in another country as we let ‘capitalism’ work for others, and against us. Life is about reigning in unconscious stupidity, and looking to minimize what we don’t need while looking for new ways to make each life better.

America has one vehicle for ever person, or over 300, 000,000 million vehicles! In Japan, or better yet in India, the subways or trains and buses are filled to capacity. In this town, like many towns in the country buses are practically empty as I see neighbors, jump into their cars 5 or 6 times a day, when walking or busing would work as well or better.

People shop at giant ‘stupid markets’ for groceries thinking they are saving money rather than going to farmer’s markets, or local food co-ops that in the long run are less expensive. Who can go to a supermarket on a half empty stomach, and not be tantalized by a lot of food, and merchandise that is displayed to weaken the mind to buy unnecessarily. Most people I meet in my town have the false notion they are saving money by not shopping where all food, and merchandise is from local or ‘made in the USA’. It’s time to wake up to a new world of a religion that’s not ‘money’ and gluttony for one of conscious, spiritual, joyous living. High unemployment with it’s suffering is caused by our collective ignorance.

In the early 20th century, Zen master Nan-in received a university professor who came to ask about Zen. But instead he only talked on and on about his own ideas. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then, while the man continued to speak, Nan-in kept on pouring the tea. The professor watched the overflow until he could no longer restrain himself. “You fool! It is overfull. No more will go in!” Nan-in replied, “Like this cup, you are also too full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your mind?”

The lives of modern Western mind are too filled with ‘junk’, and ‘gotta have’s’ to be able to see that the simple, aware life of discernment creates it’s own magical freedoms. Are you free of the attachment to the pursuit of the material? Happiness can’t be bought nor can love, or the tools to create the many manifestations of it like compassion, sensitivity, giving, receiving and all life’s inner steps of evolution. To die without full love is to have sold out to outsourcing the one divine quality that needs an empty cup to fill itself.
rhata