
A Buddhist Approach to Consumption - mancuso5
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0267257X.2019.1588557
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sandworm101
>>Back in 2015, I was invited to lead a mindfulness retreat in Ireland. Upon
arriving in Dublin airport, I made my way to the immigration counter.
Presenting my passport to the officer, he asked me whether this was my first
trip to Ireland. ‘Yes’, I replied:

I love the irony of an author speaking about the Buddhist approach to
consumption while engaging in the most consumptive act imaginable:
international flights to a meditation retreat. We need to get consumption
under control. We need to reduce not only our carbon footprints but our
overall impact on the natural world. Buddhism, or any other approach, isn't
useful if it promotes excess. Flying to Ireland to discuss philosophy, or to
indulge in a better or more pure mode of eating, is exactly the type of
excessive consumption we need to curtail.

>> In the photos taken during our day at Universal Studios,

>> In October 2015, I was walking around in New York City.

>> It reminded me of a talk our teacher gave when we were travelling in China

We get it. You like to travel and have the time+money to do it. What does
Buddhism say about boasting?

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Retra
It's not altogether unsurprising though. Most religions tend to align
themselves with the notion that "being a good person" is the same as
"developing your _public status_ as a good person", (in that the mechanisms
they'll employ for self-correction don't make any distinction between the two)
and westerners looking to ancient eastern philosophy for answers have always
played right into that game.

Alternatively, every good idea that came from Buddhism doesn't need to be a
Buddhist idea to be a good idea, so there's no point in selling good ideas
using Buddhism unless you're trying to promote the bad ideas as well. Good
ideas stand on their quality of impact, not on the quality of their source.

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tenpies
The concept of public prayer (what you referred to as providing _status_ )
versus private prayer (the opposite) emerged fairly early in Judaism and was
inherited by the other Abrahamic religions. It is alluded to and mentioned
outright several times in almost all the holy books and oral tradition (if
applicable). I don't think it's a problem with the religions themselves,
although possibly with religious education.

I also find that in the West, most people go about religion by finding that
which fits the lifestyle they already have. Very few are willing to sacrifice
anything meaningful or make serious changes to fit a religion's teachings. It
is much easier for them to find the sect of X religion that also allows them
to Y and Z.

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Retra
The reason I am willing to attribute it directly to religion is because
there's a kind of 'natural selection' that goes on with regards to people's
religious attention such that those who practice their religion exclusively in
private end up being those that practice dying religions (as they can't
effectively compete for mindshare against those that proselytize.) Obviously
that's only an approximation, but even so it is a pretty good one, as it is
not a coincidence that the spread of specific religions correlates with
promotion of public religious practice.

Most religions will associate the promotion of their religion as a good deed,
and they are willing to overlook many bad deeds that lead to it for those
reasons.

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aakash58
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965261...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652617311769)

It is a review of work in mindfulness and consumption. It is slightly deeper
(but also academic).

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amriksohata
Gautama Buddha was born Hindu, a lot of these approaches to Buddhism were
taken from Hinduism, the Gita etc

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asood123
Surprised that this is ranked so high with a paywall. Is there an easy way to
access the article?

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whamlastxmas
Maybe someone will copy and paste it for us

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yorwba
[https://sci-hub.tw/10.1080/0267257X.2019.1588557](https://sci-
hub.tw/10.1080/0267257X.2019.1588557)

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whamlastxmas
Thanks!

