Hi Everybody,
How time flies. I look at the date of the last episode and it's the 2nd Jan. I had an urgent script commission that had to be completed by 15th. Anyway I'm back. I hope I've been missed!! I think I'd decided in this period of the year that is conspicuous for spending; all those Xmas presents for other people, and then the sales orgy of presents for ourselves. A lot of money flows out of our accounts at this time of the year, so I moved on to Chapter Eleven, Buddhism and Money, because it's an interesting and illuminating subject isn't it, that we rarely dig down into. When did you, last go to a discussion meeting for example, where that was the subject? Never in my experience. Or a Chapter Study. Or a Taplow seminar. And yet of course, as we all know so well, money is a hugely important dimension in our lives, and the source of a lot of agony. So, ww pick it up on page 200 precisely.
' In thinking about our relationship to money, to wealth, the accumulation of wealth in all its forms, we are dealing with something that undoubtedly can have the most profound effect on how we see ourselves, to the point indeed of changing who we believe we are. and whether or not we have ever thought about it, or are prepared to ackowledge it, it would be very strange wouldn't it, if all of us haven't been shaped and conditioned and affected, in some measure, by this long-running, supremely acquisitive, materialist environment that we all inhabit.
If we ask ourselves the direct question, how have we been affected by it, we might find it difficult to give a clear answer, but that doesn't really undermine the validity of the question does it? Certainly it's a debate that those of us who live in the western-way-of-life parts of the world can't really duck out of. Nor should we want to I suggest, given that the impact that money has on our general sense of satisfaction and contentedness with life, is such a big deal. On the face of it, it seems to mplay a very big role indeed in any picture of happiness we paint for ourselves. The longing for the kind of life-style that only money can buy seems to be very deeply embedded in the western psyche.
So how might we define the issue itself, since it's clearly a complex one?
Put at its simplest, the crux of the argument put forward by the sociologists seems to be that we have allowed the endless cycle of earning and spending, buying and acquiring, to become pretty much what our lives are about. It has been called the distinctive signature of our time, although it doesn't sound in the least distinguished does it? let alone desirable. Is that what we really want this time we live in to be remembered for? The sociologosts talk for example about our replacing meaning in our lives, for the mere pursuit of money, and exchanging genuine quality of life, for mere standard of living. As one commentator puts it for example, writing about some of the obvious dysfunctions of the materialist culture,
' One of those shortcomings may be that we chase money at the expense of meaning. Too many in the western world have made materialism and the cycle of work and spend as their principal goals. Then they wonder why they don't feel happy. That's Gregg Easterbrook, an American economist and writer. And elsewhere in the same essay he raises a key cause of the dissatisfaction that many people feel in their lives, comparison with others. He writes,
'Paradoxically, it is the very increase in money...which creates the wealth so visible in today's society...that triggers dissatisfaction. As material expectations keep rising, more money may engender only more desires.'
And, he might well have gone on, more dissatisfaction! So in a sense you could say that we're all chasing our tails. Dr. Edward Diener from the University of Illinois, and one of the prime movers in the field of positive psychology, has expressed very similar views. He talks of our being so conditioned by the materialist environment we live in that we constantly focus on what we haven't got, as opposed to what we already have. So he argues, as men and women move up the economic ladder, most of us immediately stop thinking about, and feeling in any way grateful for our newly improved circumstances. They simply become the new staus quo, the new base line, and our thoughts switch to what we don't have and need to acquire. So in a sense the itch to acquire becomes a constant dimension in our lives. And that's by no means the only scary paradox that research into this issue has revealed. But let's change direction for a moment, and try to determine what Buddhism has to say about this complex issue.'
And that's where we go next time. about Thursday I would hope.
Thank you for reading thus far.
Please pass the blog onto friends if you think they might be interested.
The book The Case for Buddhism is of course available on Amazon, or Kindle as a download.
Hope to see you next time,
William x
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