The Hunger

Good Evening Brothers and Sisters!  The Reverend hopes that this day finds each of us stronger and freer, and living large amongst our Brethren.  Tonight, I would like to talk about the fundamental path that leads us to the pitfall of consumerism.  That path is the path of desire.

Before we go further, let us reiterate our goal.  We are not seeking to renounce the world and worldly good, nor are we urging folks to run out into the desert to subsist on honey and locusts.  There are enough conservation issues in desert ecosystems without a bunch of us running around in the sun, acting like dogmatic nincompoops.  Our goal is to bring about a greater level of personal freedom amongst our Brethren.  We seek to do this by reducing our consumer debt, and by doing so reduce our dependence on the very corporate culture that seeks to blind us and enslave us.  

I am here to spread the word, Sisters and Brother!  There is good cargo, the stuff that makes our lives comfortable, that good that keep our loved ones clothed and fed and warm.  There is nothing wrong with the things that provide ourselves and our communities with a level of existence that allows us to become better human beings and more evolved citizens of the world.  

When we acquire goods for the benefit that the goods themselves can render, we strike a balance between desire and need, consumption and benefit.  When, however, we stray from that balance and acquire the cargo for its own sake, for the prestige of ownership, or to try to fill a void in our lives, we lose our balance.  In our consumer-oriented society, where we are constantly bombarded with messages encouraging the pursuit of cargo, the balance that we seek is often put to the test.  

I can testify to the travails a human can suffer when placed between the anvil of desire, and the hammer of unchecked spending.  It is all too easy to consume beyond ones means in an effort to placate that desire.  The result is debt, something that, unfortunately, many of our Sisters and Brothers are passing familiar with.  

This is not a new problem.  Many a wiser feller than myself has tackled the human trait of desire.  These wise teachings come from around our wide world and across the sands of time.  Here are just a few of them. 

From the Buddhist tradition, we can read this pearl, which has become one of my personal favorites.  I value the idea of the object, and the person that desires the object, disappearing.

Grasping at things can only yield one of two results:
Either the thing you are grasping at disappears, or you yourself disappear.
It is only a matter of which occurs first.
Goenka

From the wisdom of Islam, we may read and learn from this:

Have you seen him who makes his desire his god, and God sends him astray purposely, and seals up his hearing and his heart, and sets on his sight a covering? Who, then, will lead him after God [has condemned him]? Will you not then heed?

Qua'ran 45.23

Perhaps the folks at Haliburton should take a gander at a verse from the Bible:

What causes wars, and what causes fighting among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.

James 4, 1-3

Then there is this pithy pearl from Judaism:

Envy and desire and ambition drive a man out of the world.

Mishnah, Abot 4.28

Sisters and Brothers, it is not the cargo that is the cause of our despair.  We do not renounce the goods of the world which ease our lives and bring us comfort.  And yet, and yet Brethren, if we lose our balance, if we consume beyond our means, if we become ruled by desire for the stuff, comfort is not our reward.  The wages of desire are debt and discomfort, insecurity for our families, and even the unraveling of our communities.  Debt brings not the security and freedom that we seek, but insecurity and fear of the future, the opposite of contentment.  

It is awareness that will set us free, Brothers and Sisters.  We must see the chains before we can break them!  Until we meet again, be well, be strong, and strike a blow!