Overcoming the Bias of Materialism in Our Viewpoint About Living a Meaningful and Happy Life

0:00 Western civilization has a distinct bias in favour of what we may call a materialistic viewpoint. Money, possessions, status and power based on monetary power, a drive to own ever newer possessions, and the need to try to increase our enjoyment and satisfaction of life through these factors leads those born into Western civilization to consider that having a good job, amassing wealth and buying things constitutes the basis of enjoyment. This viewpoint has infiltrated most of the world by now, so that the predominance of the materialist outlook on life is almost, but not quite universal. To be sure, to live in the modern world, a certain amount of concern for material well-being is important. The question that arises, however, is whether this concern should be all consuming or whether it needs to be balanced with other viewpoints and other value sets in the way we go about making life choices and allocating our time and attention and determining what our actual goals can and should be.

1:18 Should we allow the materialistic viewpoint, for instance, to represent the central purpose of our lives? Or is there perhaps another significance for which material stability is helpful, but which nevertheless needs to take a more central role in our life goals, objectives, and satisfaction? Our very way of judging the value of everything is tainted by a reference to its monetary value rather than being viewed on a scale that is not based in material valuation. Concerns in a world that is quickly experiencing what is known as the 6th planetary die off in large part caused by our valuing material wealth above having a clean and healthy environment and forcing everyone to focus on accumulating and enjoying wealth rather than living a more balanced life in harmony with the rest of the people and other beings on the planet and keeping the needs of the environment itself in mind. We seem to be creating consequences that are playing out in terms of imbalance in resource access and allocation, the consequent breaking out of wars and mass migrations, deterioration of our natural environment, and increasing impacts of both climate change and pollution on our very health and well-being, our genetic

2:48 integrity, and the spread of ever more virulent disease vectors. If we destroy the land, the air, the water, and the ability of people to live harmoniously together, are we really better off? That is, unfortunately, what our current fixation on material wealth is forcing us to grapple with. If we look to other civilizations of the past and from other parts of the world, different values have come to the fore that dealt with creating a community of caring and mutually supportive people in some cases, or focused on spiritual growth and development in other cases.

3:36 Some cultures supported expression of our deepest feelings and sentiments through art or music. Some developed deep philosophical or religious reflections that motivated large numbers of people to focus their lives on issues other than pure material satisfaction. The question is not an either or decision, but more of a balancing of our need for material stability and well-being with an appreciation of and development of values that go beyond the physical and vital needs and desires to address the higher and larger capabilities that humanity has within its nature and its future development.

4:23 The Mother writes. Quote Throughout this teaching of the Dhammapada, there is one thing to be noticed. It is this. You are never told that to live well, to think well is the result of a struggle or of a sacrifice. On the contrary, it is a delightful state which cures all suffering. At that time, the time of the Buddha, to live a spiritual life was a joy, a beatitude, the happiest state which freed you from all the troubles of the world, all the sufferings, all the cares, making you happy, satisfied, contented.

5:10 It is the materialism of modern times that has turned spiritual effort into a hard struggle and a sacrifice, a painful renunciation of all the so-called joys of life. This insistence on the exclusive reality of the physical world, of physical pleasures, physical joys, physical possessions, is the result of the whole materialistic tendency of human civilization. It was unthinkable in ancient times. On the contrary, withdrawal, concentration, liberation from all material cares, consecration to the spiritual joy that was happiness.

5:53 Indeed, from this point of view it is quite evident that humanity is far from having progressed, and those who were born into the world in the centers of materialistic civilization have in their subconscient this horrible notion that only material realities are real, and that to be concerned with things that are not material represents a wonderful spirit of sacrifice and almost sublime effort. Not to be preoccupied from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn, with all the little physical satisfactions, is to bear evidence of a remarkable spirit. One is not aware of it, but the whole of modern civilization is built on this conception.

6:42 Ah, what you can touch, you are sure that is true. What you can see, you are sure that is true. What you have eaten, you are sure you have eaten it. But all the rest, Pooh, we are not sure whether they are not vain dreams, and we are whether we are not giving up the real for the unreal, the substance for the shadow. After all, what are you going to gain? A few dreams? But when you have some coins in your pocket, you are sure that they are there, and that is everywhere, underneath everything.

7:23 Scratch the appearance is just a little. It is there within your consciousness and from time to time you hear this thing whispering within you. Take care, don't be taken in. Indeed it is lamentable. End Quote. Reference Sri Ro Bindu and the Mother, Looking from Within, Chapter 1, Looking at Life and Circumstances, pages 14 to 15.