The Crisis of Consumerism
by Judith Simmer Brown

Western Buddhism must serve the world, not itself. It must become, as the seventh century Indian master Shantideva wrote, the doctor and the nurse for all sick beings in the world until everyone is healed; a rain of food and drink, an inexhaustible treasure for those who are poor and destitute. We can only imagine the kinds of suffering our children will encounter. Even now, we see the poor with not enough food and no access to clean drinking water; we see ethnic and religious prejudice that would extinguish those who are different; we see the sick and infirm who have no medicine or care; we see rampant exploitation of the many for the pleasure and comfort of the few; we see the demonization of those who would challenge the reign of wealth, power, and privilege. And we know the twenty-first century will yield burgeoning populations with an ever-decreasing store of resources to nourish them.

Fueling the suffering is the relentless consumerism which pervades our society and the world. Greed drives so many of the damaging systems of our planet. The socially engaged biologist Stephanie Kaza said that in America each of us consumes our body weight each day in materials extracted and processed from farms, mines, rangelands, and forests - 120 pounds on the average. Since 1950, consumption of energy, meat, and lumber has doubled; use of plastic has increased five-fold; use of aluminum has increased seventy-fold; and airplane mileage has increased thirty-three-fold per person. We now own twice as many cars as in 1950. And with every bite, every press of the accelerator, every swipe of the credit card in our shopping malls, we leave a larger ecological footprint on the face of the world. We have squeezed our wealth out of the bodies of plantation workers in Thailand, farmers in Ecuador, and factory workers in Malaysia.

The crisis of consumerism is infecting every culture of the world, most of which are now emulating the American lifestyle. David Loy, in The Religion of the Market, suggests that consumerism is based on two unexamined tenets or beliefs:

1 - growth and enhanced world trade will benefit everyone, and

2 - growth will not be constrained by the inherent limits of a finite planet.

The ground of consumerism is ego gratification, its path is an ever-increasing array of wants, and its fruition is expressed in the Cartesian perversion - "I shop, therefore I am." While it recruits new converts through the flood of mass media, it dulls the consumer, making us oblivious to the suffering in which we participate. Shopping is a core
activity in sustaining a culture of denial.

With the collapse of communist countries throughout the world, the growth of consumerism is all but unchallenged. As traditional societies modernize, consumerism is the most alluring path. Religious peoples and communities have the power to bring the only remaining challenge to consumerism. And Buddhism has unique insights which can stem the tide of consumptive intoxication.

How do we respond to all the suffering created by consumerism? How will our children respond? It is easy to join the delusion, forgetting whatever Buddhist training we may have had. But when we return to it, we remember - the origin of suffering is our constant craving. We want, therefore we consume; we want, therefore we suffer. As practitioners, we feel this relentless rhythm in our bones. We must, in this generation, wake up to the threat of consumerism, and
join with other religious peoples to find a way to break its grip. We must all find a way to become activists in the movement which explores alternatives to consumerism.

As Western Buddhists, we must recognize the threats of consumerism within our practice, and within our embryonic communities and institutions. From a Tibetan Buddhist point of view, consumerism is just the tip of the iceberg. It represents only the outer manifestation of craving and acquisitiveness. Twenty-five years ago, my guru, the
Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, wrote one of the first popular Dharma books in America, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. Its relevance only increases each year. He spoke of three levels of materialism - physical, psychological, spiritual - that rule our existence as expressions of ego-centered activity. Unchallenged, materialism will co-opt our physical lives, our communities, and our very practice.

Physical materialism refers to the neurotic pursuit of pleasure, comfort, and security. This is the outer expression of consumerism. Under this influence, we try to shield ourselves from the daily pain of embodied existence, while accentuating the pleasurable moments. We are driven to create the illusion of a pain-free life, full of choices that make us feel in control. We need 107 choices of yogurt in a supermarket so that we feel like queens of our universe.
We go to 24-Plex movie theaters so that we can see whatever film we want, whenever we want. We need faster pain relievers, appliances to take away all inconvenience, and communication devices to foster immediate exchange. All of these create the illusion of complete pleasure at out fingertips, with none of the hassle of pain. When we are ruled by this kind of physical materialism, we identify ourselves by what we have.

But this is just the beginning. On the next level, psychological materialism seeks to control the world through theory, ideology, and intellect. Not only are we trying to physically manipulate the world so that we don't have to experience pain, we do so psychologically as well. We create a theoretical construct that keeps us from having to be threatened, to be wrong, or to be confused. We always put ourselves in control in this way: "As an American 1 have rights. As a woman, I deserve to be independent from expectations of men in my society. I earn my own salary, I can choose how I want to spend it. As a Buddhist, I understand interdependence."

Psychological materialism interprets whatever is threatening or irritating as an enemy. Then, we control the threat by creating an ideology or religion in which we are victorious, correct, or righteous; we never directly experience the fear and confusion that could arise from facing a genuine threat. This is particularly perilous for the Western Buddhist. In these times. Buddhism has become popular, a commodity which is used by corporations and the media. Being Buddhist has become a status symbol, connoting power, prestige, and money. His Holiness's picture appears on the sets of
Hollywood movies and in Apple Computer ads; Hollywood stars are pursued as acquisitions in a kind of Dharmic competition. Everyone wants to add something Buddhist to her resume. Buddhist Studies enrollments at Naropa have doubled in two years, and reporters haunt our hallways and classrooms. Buddhist conferences attract a veritable parade of characters like myself, hawking the "tools" of our trade. Our consumer society is turning Buddhism into a
commodity like everything else. The seductions for the Western Buddhist are clear. We are being seduced to use Buddhism to promote our own egos, communities, and agendas in the marketplace.

This still is not the heart of the matter. On the most subtle level, spiritual materialism carries this power struggle into the realm of our own minds, into our own meditation practice. Our consciousness is attempting to remain in control, to maintain a centralized awareness. Through this, ego uses even spirituality to shield itself from fear and insecurity. Our meditation practice can be used to retreat from the ambiguity and intensity of daily encounters; our compassion practices can be used to manipulate the sheer agony of things falling apart. We develop an investment in ourselves as
Buddhist practitioners, and in so doing protect ourselves from the directness and intimacy of our own realization. It is important for us to be willing to cultivate the "edge" of our own practice, the edge where panic arises, were threat is our friend, and where our depths are turned inside out.

What happens when we are ruled by the "three levels of materialism"? The Vidyadhara taught that when we are so preoccupied with issues of ego, control, and power we become "afraid of external phenomena, which are our own projections." What this means is that when we take ourselves to be real, existent beings, then we mistake the world around us to be independent and real. And when we do this we invite paranoia, fear, and panic. We are afraid of not being able to control the situation. As Patrul Rinpoche (1808-1887) taught:

Don't prolong the past,
Don't invite the future,
Don't alter your innate wakefulness,
Don't fear appearances.

We must give up the fear of appearances. How can we do this? The only way to cut this pattern of acquisitiveness and control is to guard the naked integrity of our meditation practice. We must be willing to truly "let go" in our practice. When we see our racing minds, our churning emotions and constant plots, we touch the face of the suffering world and we have no choice but to be changed. We must allow our hearts to break with the pain of constant struggle that we experience in ourselves and in the world around us. Then we can become engaged in the world, and dedicate ourselves to a genuine enlightened society in which consumerism has no sway. Craving comes from the speed of our minds, wishing so intensely for what we do not have that we cannot experience what is there, right before us.

How can we, right now, address materialism in our practice and our lives? I would like to suggest a socially engaged practice which could transform our immediate lifestyles and change our relationship with suffering. It is the practice of generosity. No practice flies more directly in the lace of American acquisitiveness and individualism. Any of us who have spent time in Asia or with our Asian teachers see the centrality of generosity in Buddhist practice.

According to traditional formulation, our giving begins with material gifts and extends to gifts of fearlessness and Dharma. Generosity is the virtue that produces peace, as the sutras say. Generosity is a practice which overcomes our acquisitiveness and self-absorption, and which benefits others. Committing to this practice may produce our greatest legacy for the twenty-first century.

Judith Simmer-Brown is a Buddhist Studies professor at Naropa University, and has practiced Buddhism for thirty years.