That line is uttered by Mr Spock in the episode “Amok Time” of the original Star Trek series. He directs it to his fellow Vulcan Stonn after he realizes he has been played by his wife, T’Pring. She has engineered events so that no matter what the outcome, she would be with Stonn, her desired mate.

Decades after his death, the American science fiction writer who wrote that episode of Star Trek, Theodore Sturgeon, was described by his daughter as an atheist who detested organized religion (though also, it must be noted, as someone curious about why people believed what they believed). And yet that line—”having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting”—is Buddhist in its perspective.

I’m not Buddhist and I’m most certainly not an expert on Buddhism. But as religions go, it’s hard not to at least admire Buddhism from afar. How can you dislike a movement the founder of which said this?

Buddhism—in the view of some, at least—is built upon seeing through desire. But luxury—the focus of this newsletter—is built upon creating desire. How can I write seriously about luxury and the psychology of luxury while also taking seriously a tradition that warns against craving, attachment, and the fantasy that acquisition will finally complete the self?

In other words, have I lost my mind trying to draw a connection between luxury and Buddhism? I don’t think so.

Luxury isn’t fundamentally incompatible with Buddhist practice or Buddhist-influenced secular mindfulness. Buddha chose to lead a simple, unencumbered life, but there are literally hundreds of millions of followers of Buddhism who seek out and acquire worldly things without violating the fundamental tenets of their religion. Luxury may represent particularly nice things, but that’s a difference of degree, not of kind.

What’s incompatible with Buddhist insight is not the desire for things, but the unexamined desire for things. The distinction is between appreciation and attachment, between choosing an object and being captured by desire for it, between luxury as an experience and luxury as a hoped-for resolution to the wish, “If only I had __________, I’d be happy.”

There are useful questions to ask about luxury purchases before making them, and I’ve discussed many of them in this newsletter: Can I afford this? Is this an example of artisanality? Will this make my life better in some way? And so on.

I want to propose another question to ask: Will having this item be pleasing after the wanting has done its work and convinced me to buy it?