>>Back in 2015, I was invited to lead a mindfulness retreat in Ireland. Upon arriving in Dublin airport, I made my way to the immigration counter. Presenting my passport to the officer, he asked me whether this was my first trip to Ireland. ‘Yes’, I replied:
I love the irony of an author speaking about the Buddhist approach to consumption while engaging in the most consumptive act imaginable: international flights to a meditation retreat. We need to get consumption under control. We need to reduce not only our carbon footprints but our overall impact on the natural world. Buddhism, or any other approach, isn't useful if it promotes excess. Flying to Ireland to discuss philosophy, or to indulge in a better or more pure mode of eating, is exactly the type of excessive consumption we need to curtail.
>> In the photos taken during our day at Universal Studios,
>> In October 2015, I was walking around in New York City.
>> It reminded me of a talk our teacher gave when we were travelling in China
We get it. You like to travel and have the time+money to do it. What does Buddhism say about boasting?
It's not altogether unsurprising though. Most religions tend to align themselves with the notion that "being a good person" is the same as "developing your public status as a good person", (in that the mechanisms they'll employ for self-correction don't make any distinction between the two) and westerners looking to ancient eastern philosophy for answers have always played right into that game.
Alternatively, every good idea that came from Buddhism doesn't need to be a Buddhist idea to be a good idea, so there's no point in selling good ideas using Buddhism unless you're trying to promote the bad ideas as well. Good ideas stand on their quality of impact, not on the quality of their source.
The concept of public prayer (what you referred to as providing status) versus private prayer (the opposite) emerged fairly early in Judaism and was inherited by the other Abrahamic religions. It is alluded to and mentioned outright several times in almost all the holy books and oral tradition (if applicable). I don't think it's a problem with the religions themselves, although possibly with religious education.
I also find that in the West, most people go about religion by finding that which fits the lifestyle they already have. Very few are willing to sacrifice anything meaningful or make serious changes to fit a religion's teachings. It is much easier for them to find the sect of X religion that also allows them to Y and Z.
The reason I am willing to attribute it directly to religion is because there's a kind of 'natural selection' that goes on with regards to people's religious attention such that those who practice their religion exclusively in private end up being those that practice dying religions (as they can't effectively compete for mindshare against those that proselytize.) Obviously that's only an approximation, but even so it is a pretty good one, as it is not a coincidence that the spread of specific religions correlates with promotion of public religious practice.
Most religions will associate the promotion of their religion as a good deed, and they are willing to overlook many bad deeds that lead to it for those reasons.
I love the irony of an author speaking about the Buddhist approach to consumption while engaging in the most consumptive act imaginable: international flights to a meditation retreat. We need to get consumption under control. We need to reduce not only our carbon footprints but our overall impact on the natural world. Buddhism, or any other approach, isn't useful if it promotes excess. Flying to Ireland to discuss philosophy, or to indulge in a better or more pure mode of eating, is exactly the type of excessive consumption we need to curtail.
>> In the photos taken during our day at Universal Studios,
>> In October 2015, I was walking around in New York City.
>> It reminded me of a talk our teacher gave when we were travelling in China
We get it. You like to travel and have the time+money to do it. What does Buddhism say about boasting?