Material Musings...

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Note - The following is for posting to my webpage, and so is in "essay"

format.

 

Material Musings

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"Be in this world, but not of it." - A Biblical saying.

"He who dies with the most toys, wins." - An American joke.

 

Adi Shankara, the famous vedantic sage, spoke of living in the world of

sense-cravings and material possessions as "a miserable fate." What did he

mean by this?

 

At first look, it appears that money and material possessions are desirable

to have, and that sense-cravings are pleasurable and harmless. But let's

examine the situation in further detail.

 

Most people in the United States (USA) today live "just beyond their

means." What this means is that if a person earns $20,000/year, this

person lives as if they were making $22,000-$25,000/year. Why might this

be? Could it be that they are not happy with the amount of money they're

making, and so stretch it to the very limit?

 

Let's take an example of a somewhat typical lifetime lived in the dualistic

world, and we'll see why indeed living in the world of materialism is a

miserable fate.

 

An intelligent, healthy, learned man is working at a job, earning $25,000

per year. But that man is probably not happy. He looks at his neighbor,

who is earning twice as much, and just bought a new boat and a nice car,

and thinks to himself "I want that too."

 

So the man works all the harder, gets a large promotion at work, and soon

is earning what his neighbor was earning. He buys a boat and a car. But

then he takes a drive in his new car, to a fancy neighborhood nearby, where

the average income is $100,000 per year. The man thinks "Who are these

people, are they better than I am? Why do they live in luxury while I have

the miserable fate of being in this lousy neighborhood I'm in, and being so

"poor?"

 

So the man quits his job and finds a better one. After a number of years

of slaving 12-16 hours per day at his new job, at last he has achieved

wealth and a high position at his company. He moves into this

long-dreamed-of neighborhood. He has a new Rolls-Royce automobile. He can

now retire and enjoy the fruits of his labors.

 

But something is wrong. There is nowhere further to go. The man can now

have anything he wants... but what is there to do with all this accumulated

junk?

 

So the man begins to indulge heavily in sensual pleasures. He overindulges

in alcohol, maybe indulges in cocaine and other drugs, anything to fill the

emptiness inside. But the emptiness is not filled. It seems a bottomless

cavern.

 

At last the man is 65 years old, sick, fat, weak from abusing his body for

years. And still a space remains inside.

 

Adi Shankara: (from Moha Mudgaram - The Shattering Of Illusion):

 

"When the body is wrinkled, when the hair turns grey,

When the gums are toothless, and the old man's staff

Shakes like a reed beneath his weight,

The cup of his desire is still full."

 

So, at last the old man dies, having left behind a lifetime of slaving 12

hours/day in misery without satisfaction, a corpse, and a pile of material

junk that is aging and rapidly becoming dust. Perhaps (if lucky) he left

some money in the bank for his grandchildren, so the cycle can begin again

when they get old enough.

 

A miserable fate indeed!

 

Sense-cravings, like material cravings (basically one and the same thing),

can never be satisfied. An ultimate example is a heroin addict. No matter

how much such a person takes of the drug, it is never enough. But drugs

are only an extreme example of what's wrong with today's society.

 

A common enough saying is "When are you going to make something of

yourself?" This saying I have never understood. Am I not already made,

already whole? What else is there to make?

 

s: "He who dies with the most toys, wins."

q: "Wins what?"

a: "Wins death, a corpse, and an old pile of junk in the attic."

 

A miserable fate indeed!

 

Let us have compassion for those in the dualistic world who are caught up

in this endless cycle of misery. "Forgive them Father, for they know not

what they do." Indeed, they know not what they do. They waste their lives

in the quest for material gain, only to find that no matter how much

material is gained, it does not bring happiness. Give a person a hundred

thousand pounds of gold, and he will not be happy. The average person will

take that gold and overindulge in the senses until he kills himself.

 

A miserable fate indeed!

 

.... Tim Gerchmez

 

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