Yes, there are two paths you can go by
The hedonic treadmill, material wealth, and spiritual poverty
After last week’s post, my friend Fahad asked what I meant by “spiritual poverty.” Rupert Spira is a potter and spiritual teacher, summed it up in this longish passage. It’s worth it:
In order to fulfill the desire for happiness, most people engage in a relentless search in the realm of objects, substances, activities, states of mind and relationships. This search also takes the form of resistance to whomever or whatever is perceived to jeopardize our happiness. Thus, seeking and resistance are the two main impulses that govern the thoughts and feelings, and the subsequent activities and relationships, of most people.
The activities of seeking and resisting are an inevitable expression of the sense of lack or suffering that underlies them. However, most of us never question the origin of our suffering, so busy are we escaping the discomfort of it through the acquisition of objects, substances, activities, states of mind and relationships.
Our belief that happiness is dependent on objective experience is not altogether without foundation, and hence its almost universal allure, for every time a desired object is acquired or an unpleasant situation successfully avoided, happiness is indeed briefly experienced.
However, although the acquisition or avoidance of the object or situation puts a temporary end to the suffering that underlies it and, as a result, brings about a brief moment of happiness, it does not uproot it or bring it to a permanent end. It simply masks it.
In this way we become addicted to the endless cycle of lack, seeking and temporary fulfilment… Many people spend their lives managing this despair more or less successfully, medicating it with substances, numbing it through the acquisition of objects, avoiding it through exotic or meditative states of mind, or simply distracting themselves from it with activities and relationships.
“I could get used to this”
Which brings us to capitalism; we try to escape our discomfort through the acquisition of objects, substances, activities, states of mind and relationships. Both work and consumerism is an endless cycle of lack, external seeking, and temporary fulfillment.
And we’re surrounded by it.
Watch this 30 second commercial:
From Chase Sapphire’s press release: “Michael B. Jordan joins as a co-storyteller, sharing the ways Sapphire Reserve helps with traveling the world, trying first-class dining, and experiencing unique adventures.”
The problem with this:
Chasing objects, substances, experiences and even states of mind is simply a hedonic treadmill. Everything is a temporary high. And when the hit of dopamine fades, you need more later. In other words: addiction. Michael B. Jordan makes the point (unintentionally): “I could used to this.”
Chase Sapphire is a credit card company. The commercial is selling debt. In America, the average credit card debt is $9,260 per person. So we’re going into debt, taking money from our future selves, chasing the hedonic treadmill.1 And it means as a society we have to keep producing more in the future and as individuals we have to keep working more in the future. It's another way this is an addiction: you progressively need more and more.
Compared to previous generations (ask your grandparents), we live in absolute material abundance. We live in an era of human history where we can buy whatever we want2. In fact, we have to constantly innovate to create new things to want. We have to keep creating and producing more to maintain our current levels of dissatisfaction.
Even if you can fund the lifestyle without debt, you are still in debt. Debt to the endless cycle of lack, external seeking, and temporary fulfillment. As Spira says, the search to escape ourselves is relentless.
The easy way, the hard way
The Dhammapada is a collection of the Buddha’s original teachings. In it, the Buddha offers two paths for human conduct, each leading to a different kind of destiny. The first kind of conduct caters to conditioned human wants and is easily accomplished and temporarily satisfying. The second kind of conduct, the spiritual path, runs contrary to the pursuit of pleasure, but offers a “greater happiness.” According to the Buddha, in the long run, the first easy path only leads to more suffering; the second, harder path leads to long term bliss.
“If one who enjoys a lesser happiness beholds a greater one, let him leave aside the lesser to gain the greater.” - Dhammapada (translation: Eknath Easrawan)
I think human development is releasing the first path, and going onto the second.3 As the song says, “Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on.”
The spiritual wisdom of all the traditions say we have to choose between the external and the internal. But I'm guessing most people reading this newsletter want both; they want pleasure in this life and they want a deeper satisfaction and contentment that the outside world can’t give.
Is there a path where you have both material wealth and spiritual wealth? The traditional answer is no, but I don't know.4 But I do believe that personal finance is a spiritual discipline. Not going into debt to fund your lifestyle. Saving and investing money for your future self. Finding right livelihood. Living lightly on earth. Believing in lagom, chisoku anbun, enoughness.
As I said last week, taking more when you have enough is spiritual poverty. Taking more steals from people who don’t have enough. Knowing that you have enough and not wanting more is being in right relationship to the world. And ultimately, maybe that’s the spiritual wealth we want.
The U.S. economy is two-thirds consumer spending. In other words, if we don’t keep spending, our economy collapses. That’s why George W. Bush told us after 9/11 that to fight terrorism, the most patriotic thing we could do is keep buying things.
And get it in a couple of days. Think about that.
“Soul activist” Bill Plotkin says that problem with modern society is that we live in a “pathological adolescence.” We have a narcissistic and shallow way of seeing the world.
Jesus had something to say about it.