The ordinary is everything
Joy, meaning, and the terror beneath it all
We have two problems and one opportunity. Two problems:
We are forever longing for something else and something more.
Capitalism can create unlimited supply. As long as there is unlimited desire.
As everyone knows, in the Buddhist Four Noble Truths, the problem is desire.1 Suffering exists, the cause of suffering is desire, and the cessation of suffering comes from letting go of desire.
Which is true.
But I haven’t met anyone that is without desire.
I believe a gentler, and more realistic, opportunity is growing into a greater consciousness of what you truly desire. In other words, knowing what you actually want, instead of just craving for whatever the culture has conditioned you to want. A monk once told me, "The word translated as “sin" literally means ‘to miss the mark.’” Sin is really just misplaced desire.
In the ancient text the Bhagavad Gita, Knishna, incarnation of the god Vishnu, tells us what is temporary isn’t real. Anything impermanent or transitory is a “sense-object” or prakriti. Only things that are permanent have reality to them. I think our desires are the same. Anything you want because culture told you to want it isn’t a real desire. Amazon Prime, iPhones, better furniture or quartz countertops, vacations to Bali: not real desires. Our real desires are culture-independent, desires that we have no matter where and when we were born. As a friend summed up: the desire to be seen, to be heard, to feel connected and to belong.2 The desire for learning, for transcendence, for wonder. Those are the real things that we want. Things desperately lacking in modern society.
“The problem is not desire. It’s that your desires are too small.” - Sri Nisargadatta
Here’s the secret of all spiritual traditions: You don't want more stuff. In this holiday season, I can't emphasize this enough. You don’t even want more “experiences.”3 What you really want is a sense of aliveness in the world, which buying things and sensations can bring, but only superficially, temporarily, and addictively. As I’ve written about before4, it’s substituting our primary satisfactions with secondary ones. The primary satisfactions, what you truly desire, is a sense of connection and meaning: that you matter and that your choices matter.
The rumble of terror beneath it all
To say it again: we’re forever longing for something else and something more. There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, Moonstruck, where Olympia Dukakis figures out why men chase women: fear of death. She then offers the insight to her cheating husband, telling him, “Cosmo, you’re gonna die, just like everybody else.”
The relentless search of something else and something more (this is not it) is simply what Ernest Becker described in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Denial of Death: our ego’s attempt to escape awareness of its mortality and vulnerability.
“To live fully is to live with an awareness of the rumble of terror that underlies everything.” - Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
To live in our egos, anxious and avoidant of life’s finitude is to miss the point of it all. This is it. This moment here. If you subscribe to this newsletter, you probably already sense that trying to escape our discomfort with compulsive work or consumption is automatic, exhausting, and ultimately fruitless. And that there is treasure on the other side, an ineffable prize that we glimpse at, but seemingly always escapes us.
If you could get rid of yourself just once,
The secret of secrets would open to you.
- Rumi
So we try and we try, without realizing that the trying itself is the obstacle. But as my friend and mentor Richard Rohr says, we learn more from doing it wrong that doing it right. When we finally get we can no longer escape, no matter where we go, we find a place we never knew before: home. This is it. I read this short article, worth reading in its entirety, I’m a Death Doula. These are 10 Lessons I’ve Learned About Living from the Dying. The first lesson is The Ordinary is Everything:
A client who had traveled the world and dined at countless impressive restaurants recently shared with me what she was going to miss the most when she dies: her morning bowl of steel-cut oatmeal, the sound of birds, and conversations with her daughter. Over time, she came to understand that a truly joyful and meaningful life includes quiet time, a healthy lifestyle, plenty of sleep, a spiritual practice, everyday acts of kindness, time shared with others, and fewer material possessions.
It’s not the grandiose moments of fireworks and excitement that matter in the end. Looking back over a lifetime, there will likely be some big moments and celebrations, some highs and lows. But in retrospect, people don’t often reminisce about those major events. Time and time again, what people recount most with affection and gratitude are the simple pleasures of an ordinary day.
Look at her list of what makes a joyful and meaningful life: quiet time, a healthy lifestyle, plenty of sleep, a spiritual practice, everyday acts of kindness, time shared with others, and fewer material possessions. This is it, your primary satisfactions. In opposition, capitalism can create unlimited supply of the secondary satisfactions: travel, the restaurants, the fireworks, the excitement. But in chasing secondary satisfactions, we’re getting it wrong, Products of misplaced desire, they won’t satisfy.
Did you know 99% of the stuff we mine, harvest, process, and send through the system is disposed of within 6 months? The average American consumes twice as much as we did 50 years ago and the volume increases every year. Environmental degradation, climate change, and all our other addictions, simply manifestations of our disordered desire.
You’re seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you’re worth." - Haruki Murakami
Nothing that is temporary is real. We don’t have to wait until we face death to get it. Stop trying, this is it. Home. The ordinary in everything. The joy and the terror. The darkness and the light. This very moment.
There’s a lot of intricacy of and commentary on this, especially when translated to English, but go with it for now.
Which is why you should try The Appreciation Effect
Most common thing I hear in Financial Freedom 1: “Oh Douglas, I’m not a materialistic person, I spend my money on experiences.” Both financially and spiritually, it’s really pretty close to the same thing.