Tao Te Ching
Spiritual Materialism
What is the difference between striving for spiritual goals and striving for fame, fortune, pleasure or power?
E.F. Schumacher told a story about two monks who both smoked cigarettes. Because they wanted to fill their lives with meditation and prayer, they wondered if they could somehow include smoking and decided to ask their teacher. The teacher told the first monk that he should never do this but the second one that he always should. When the monks talked to each other again, they were perplexed and retold each other exactly what they asked. The first (who received the no answer) inquired, “Can I smoke while meditating?” and the second, “Can I meditate while smoking?” This anecdote illustrates the meaning of spiritual—and other kinds of—materialism. For these monks, the main difference was applying a goal-oriented technique to their meditation versus applying meditation to what they were already doing. Any kind of gaining idea corrupts the intent and result of action. In the first case, there was an intention to justify smoking while meditating. In the second, there was only a motive of seeing and experiencing more clearly the reality of experience.
Quotes (78)
“Lord, my mind is not noisy with desires, and my heart has satisfied its longing. I do not care about religion or anything that is not you.”
“Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all sorts of things that are disreputable and worthy of blame when done by men: theft, adultery, and mutual deception.”
“Those on a spiritual path can easily become so intoxicated with the bliss of mental tranquillity that they fail to realize that the world is nothing but Mind.”
“As long as people desire Enlightenment and grasp after it, it means that delusion is still with them.”
“When you do not crave what is useless, you do not hurt your nature by greed... If you are endlessly greedy and ambitious, then penalties will kill you.”
“Seek not, my soul, the life of the immortals; but enjoy to the full the resources that are within thy reach.”
“The descent to hell is the same from every place.”
“Whatever you put out at usury shall have no increase from God; but whatever you give in alms shall be doubled to you.”
“Illumination means the realization that Illumination is not something to be attained.”
“Talking about ‘attaining enlightenment’ is the one of the best ways to drive true realization far away.”
“Because your own mouth is not good for anything you come to note down my words. It is certain that some day you'll sell me!”
“[When asked ‘Why don’t you try practicing Zen?’] Touzi said, ‘Fancy food doesn’t interest someone who’s full.’”
“People all drown in what they love… People chase things and forget about the Tao, while the sage clings to the Tao and ignores everything else.”
“Some people see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and love Him as they love their cow—for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them.”
“A man must become truly poor and as free from his own creaturely will as he was when he was born... He alone has true spiritual poverty who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing.”
“Recognizing the irrelevance of mass propaganda, realization becomes a world-shattering experience as we uproot ego, the familiar fades away, and we lose it's comforting normality.”
“Spiritual seekers often have numerous imperfections that could be called spiritual lust—not because the lust is spiritual but because it proceeds from spiritual things. Never content with what they experience, they continually look to hear sermons and talks, read books, learn maxims. Peevish and unhappy, they strive after the superficial while neglecting genuine spiritual practice.”
“The pompous speak with an echo and at every sentence look for applause or flattery but contempt is the only reward for self-satisfaction.
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“All of you are right now Buddhas, only you do not know it. If you do know it, you break with the Buddhas and Patriarchs. If you do not know it, you become entangled in birth and death.”
“Rather than trying to become a buddha, nothing could be simpler than taking the shortcut of remaining a buddha!”
“To exert yourselves in religious practice, trying to produce enlightenment by doing religious practices and zazen, is all wrong too... by wanting to realize enlightenment, you create a duality between the one who realizes enlightenment and what it is that's being realized... When you cherish even the smallest desire to realize enlightenment, right away you leave behind the realm of the Unborn and go against the Buddha Mind.”
“Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so we can talk about it.”
“We make an idol of truth itself; for truth apart from charity is not God, but his image and idol, which we must neither love nor worship.”
“There is a God-shaped vacuum in every heart that we try in vain to fill with everything around us, seeking in things that are not there the help we cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself”
“people who renounce the world and live for the spirit in this fashion [are] living in a house that has no foundation, that gradually either settles or develops gaping cracks or totters until it collapses.”
“Men who seek happiness are like drunkards who can never find their house but are sure that they have one.”
“Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers.”
“A man does not serve God when he prays, for it is himself he is trying to serve”
“In every country in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection of his own.”
“I am more and more convinced that man is a dangerous creature and that power, whether vested in many or a few, is ever grasping, and like the grave, cries, 'Give, give.'”
“In no instance has a system in regard to religion been ever established, but for the purpose, as well as with the effect of its being made an instrument of intimidation, corruption, and delusion, for the support of depredation and oppression in the hands of government.”
“From desire I plunge to its fulfillment, where I long once more for desire.”
“Buddha is a conception of your mind, The Way isn’t anything that is made… If to reach the south you point your cart north, when can you ever hope to arrive?”
“Deeply rooted in human nature is the mistaken belief that the ultimate goal for all our effort is gaining greater respect from other people… set limits on this great weakness and susceptibility to public opinion.”
“Pride of place, and the power of living well in front of the world’s eye, are dear to us all; — are, doubtless, intended to be dear. Only in acknowledging so much, let us remember that there are prices at which these good things may be too costly.”
“definition of a philanthropist: a man whose charity increases directly as the square of the distance.”
“Everyone strives to keep their individuality, to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for themselves; but instead of self-realization, this only results in impotence and complete isolation.”
“Virtue and wisdom are sublime things, but if they create pride and a consciousness of separateness from the rest of humanity, they are only the snakes of self reappearing in a finer form.”
“Slavery to State and men has disappeared only to make room for slavery to things and Self, to one's own vices and idiotic social customs and ways. Rapid civilization, adapted to the needs of the higher and middle classes, has doomed by contrast to only greater wretchedness the starving masses.”
“Instead of stating that God made man after his own image, we ought in truth to say that 'man imagines God after his image,' forgetting that he has set up his own reflection for worship.”
“Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.”
“The means employed by the lust for power have changed, but the same volcano continues to glow... what one formerly did 'for the sake of God' one now does for the sake of money—that which now gives the highest feeling of power and good conscience.”
“It is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost.”
“Within the herd we are more friendly to each other than are many species of animals, but in our attitude toward those outside the herd, in spite of all that has been done by moralists and religious teachers, our emotions are as ferocious as those of any animal, and our intelligence enables us to give them a scope which is denied to even the most savage beast.”
“If your virtues hinder you from salvation, discard them, since they have become evil to you. The slave to virtue finds the way as little as the slave to vices.”
“I had to do certain yoga exercises in order to keep my emotions in check. But since it was my purpose to know what was going on within myself, I would do these exercises only until I had calmed myself enough to resume my work with the unconscious.”
“For what I always hated and detested and cursed above all things was this contentment, this healthiness and comfort, this carefully preserved optimism of the middle classes, this fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity.”
“If you should enter the temple for no other purpose than asking, you shall not receive.”
“Free yourself from one passion to be dominated by another and nobler one. But is not that, too, a form of slavery? To sacrifice oneself to an idea, to a race, to God? Or does it mean that the higher the model, the longer the tether of our slavery?”
“The end is happiness, and philosophy is only a means; if we take it as an end, we become like the Hindu mystic whose life-purpose is to concentrate upon his navel.”
“Already madness lifts its wing to cover half my soul. Now everything is clear... Nothing I counted mine, out of my life, is mine to take...”
“This history of Europe during the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance is largely a history of the social confusions that arise when large numbers of those who should be seers abandon spiritual authority in favor of money and political power.”
“the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.”
“Man does not only sell commodities, he sells himself and feels himself to be a commodity.”
“But Zen can be dangerous to innocent minds…that may easily see Zen as something good or special by which they can gain something. This attitude can lead to trouble.”
“When we ask what Buddha nature is, it vanishes; but when we just practice zazen, we have full understanding of it… When you give up trying to understand it, true understanding is always there.”
“Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He's a robot, a bureaucrat living not in terms of himself but in terms of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we all face today... How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it.”
“Every wish to experience happiness, to have it at one's beck and call—instead of being in a state of happiness, as though by grace—must instantly produce an intolerable sense of want.”
“the medicine of the discipline becomes a diet, the cure an addiction, and the raft a houseboat... liberation turns into just another social institution and dies of respectability”
“Even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you”
“As a matter of simple logic, there's no difference at all, that I can see, between the man who's greedy for material treasure or even intellectual treasure—and the man who's greedy for spiritual treasure.”
“I think it matters almost infinitely that we practice one of the authentic religions. But if you mean does it make any difference which, the answer is no.”
“Religions appear to be schismatic technical harangues, corruptions of some original pure Vision”
“When these organizations work for their own expansion, they have already started rotting. The aim should be to increase other people’s benefits... if you want your organization to grow, there is attachment and that pollutes”
“When a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without heart, that the path is ready to kill him; at that point, very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave that path.”
“Appeals to the base lusts that hide in everyone no matter how respectable on the surface. Yes, the novelist knows humanity, how worthless they are , ruled by their testicles, swayed by cowardice, selling out every cause because of their greed”
“The materialistic outlook dominates everywhere and the mind is intoxicated with worldly concerns.”
“And the people bowed and prayed to the neon God they made and the sign flashed its warning, in the words that it was forming”
“the risk is that it's taken too literally—to just 'be mindful.' Well, you could have a very mindful sniper and a mindful psychopath.”
“You can best achieve success at meditation by not pursuing success, and achieving this success may mean caring less about success”
“God is a dream, a hope… someone who loves you—even, perhaps, against all evidence, a celestial being whose only interest is to make sure your football team, army, business, or marriage thrives, prospers, and triumphs over all opposition.”
“It is such a mistake to assume that practicing dharma will help us calm down and lead an untroubled life; nothing could be further from the truth. Dharma is not a therapy. Quite the opposite, in fact; dharma is tailored specifically to turn your life upside down.”
“until mindfulness becomes more explicit in stressing an ethical vision, it will serve to sustain our culture of self-interest, or at least fail to mount any serious challenge to it.”
“it's a trap to get attached to any particular experience, especially those that relate to spiritual awakening.”
“Much of ancient mythology is in fact a legal contract in which humans promise everlasting devotion to the gods in exchange for mastery over plants and animals—the first chapters of the book of Genesis are a prime example. For thousands of years, religious liturgy consisted mainly of humans sacrificing lambs, wine and cakes to divine powers who in exchange promised abundant harvests and fecund flocks.”
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