We are ever striving after what is forbidden, and coveting what is denied us.
In my feature article last week, I wrote:
Something became obvious to me over the course of [my weekend visiting luxury boutiques in Las Vegas]. I had spent an entire article explaining how to recognize the psychology of luxury, and I thought that knowledge would make me largely immune to it. It didn’t. Knowing what was happening turned out to be very different from knowing what to do about it. In other words:
Knowing the psychology of luxury isn’t the same as being immune to it.
That, I think, is where Buddhism becomes genuinely interesting. Buddhism doesn’t merely tell us to be aware of our craving; it offers practices for examining craving while it’s happening.
That’s where we’ll go next.
How does that work in practice? How do we move beyond awareness that we desire a thing to examination of that desire, to ensure we’re buying things that will truly enrich our lives?
