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?

Three times in the past few years I’ve found myself thinking, consciously or subconsciously, “If I can somehow find this luxury item I want, I’m buying it no matter what.” The first time it was a winter scarf, the next it was a three-season scarf, and the third time it was a winter coat.

In each instance, I was traveling and had found something on my own—the winter scarf and the winter coat on maison de luxe (or de grand luxe) websites, the three-season scarf while peering over a salesperson’s shoulder as they looked up a different item for me in their store app. I wasn’t manipulated into discovering them; that I did all on my own. But in each instance, there was a barrier:

In each instance, that potential inability to purchase the item in question just drove me to want it even more. And in the cases of the winter scarf and winter coat, for each item, the price differential between the item if I bought it overseas as opposed to back home made me feel like I was getting a bargain. That’s a great example of the psychology of luxury at work:

For the winter scarf and the winter coat, I let the salespeople know that if it somehow came in while I was still in their city, I’d visit the boutique as soon as possible to look at it. For the three-season scarf, I decided that I’d check all three of the maison’s airport boutiques and again, if I found it, I’d look at it. And in each case, I told myself I was going to do exactly that: if they (or I) found the item, I’d look at it. But I think some part of me knew that if they found it, I’d buy it—and in each case, I did.

So how did that work out for me? Two hits (one of them provisional) and a miss.

The three-season scarf is striking. It’s a 100 cm carré, so as I noted in my article on men’s three-season scarves, it’ll dominate one’s outfit. It’s not quiet, but it works—and on a cold overnight flight, it works nicely indeed. Hit.

The winter coat is easily the nicest coat I’ve ever owned, but I haven’t had the weather or the right moment otherwise to wear it yet. That will come later this year. I believe it’s going to be an amazing coat, one that I hope will last for decades with care—but only time will tell. Hit. But it’s a hit that’s provisional for now.

The winter scarf was the most expensive scarf I’ve ever bought by a factor of two. It’s absolutely stunning. I’ve also never worn it, partly because it requires very cold weather, but also because it’s quite dressy and not the kind of thing one wears to, you know, Dick’s. (Though I wouldn’t mind being the kind of person who could pull that off.) As much as I like it, I honestly don’t see myself wearing it more than a couple of times a year, and at that rate, on a per-use basis, it’s going to be the most expensive luxury item I’ve ever bought. Miss. Sadly.

What do I take from these experiences? More importantly, what can you take from them?

At no point in my desire for each of the items in question did I examine that desire. At no point did I ask myself, “Why, exactly, do I want this item? What is it that I expect this item to do for me?”

I want to quote the Scottish secular Buddhist and author Stephen Batchelor at length here, because what he wrote is both wise and relevant:

In each case, I believed that the item would make me feel good to own it, and so I wanted to have it. Combined with the psychological pressure of ‘you’ll have to pay much more for this later, if you can even find it at all’, that led me to the purchase. Trust me when I say I’ve spent far more time weighing the pros and cons of purchases that cost a tenth of those items, but then I didn’t have the same desire or urgency. And in that observation lies, I think, the key.

If we can let go of the consuming desire for an item, and resist the well-honed psychological pressure the luxury industry applies—pressure which that industry has evolved itself to apply—to make us want the item with urgency, then we can examine it dispassionately. Not saying to ourselves, “I want this item and I’ll be unhappy if I don’t get it”, nor “If I don’t buy this item now, it’ll cost me more or be unavailable, and I’ll be unhappy”, but asking ourselves:

Will having this item be pleasing after the wanting has done its work and convinced me to buy it?

Had I done that, would I have bought the items in question? The three-season scarf, probably; the winter coat, possibly; the winter scarf, probably not. And that would have made me a better buyer and owner of luxury.

You might be thinking this is all easier said than done, and you’d be right. I think most of us—maybe all of us—have had the experience where the desire for something takes hold, and we want that thing, and we don’t stop until we get it.

Fear not, though. Buddhism has more to say about that—not just that we can be happier if we let go of the consuming desire, but how to let go of it. I’ll write more about that next week. In the meantime, if you find yourself in a boutique and hear that inner sentence—”If I find it, I’m buying it”—that’s a moment to pay attention.

Have you ever wanted something more because you were told you couldn’t—or probably couldn’t—have it? If you managed to acquire it after all, did it live up to your expectations?