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“How do I teach Buddhism to a generation of westerners who just want to be entertained?” - Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

Spirituality seems to be a pretty popular thing these days. More and more people are looking to meditation, philosophy, religion and spirituality for their happiness and peace of mind. But how real are you? Are you actually trying to improve yourself and help others or are you merely looking for a new and more “exotic” form of entertainment that hails from the far east? Let’s talk about spiritual materialism.

Warning - I am going to introduce some concepts in this post that may confuse or distress your ego.

What is spiritual materialism?

Let me take you back to the early 70’s where an extremely high Tibetan Lama called Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was trying to introduce Buddhism to America. Not an easy task. Not by a long shot. He started giving low-key public talks where he would introduce the Buddhist concepts of compassion, love, selflessness and kindness. And that went well. But when he started teaching meditations that attacked people’s ego he ran into problems. The Americans didn’t like having their ego stripped away. After all, they had spent their entire life building that ego up.

If cars, money and fame are representations of physical materialism then blissed out meditations, religious status and teacher “shopping” are representations of spiritual materialism. Trungpa introduced the idea of spiritual materialism when he saw that his American students were using Buddhism as a new ego trip, as a new way to make themselves different to the next person. Like a new status symbol. Trungpa taught that the purpose of religion and spirituality is to destroy the ego that chains you to your habits and sufferings, not to build it up in a different way. The height of spirituality is not a super-ego, but a person who has seen through ego’s games and is not trapped by a sense of self.

One of the most important books I have ever read is called Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. It is a series of talks given by Trungpa in America and much of the book is dedicated to question and answer time where Trungpa interacts and tests out his new students. I highly encourage everyone who is truly interested in growing spiritually to read this book.

Are you a spiritual materialist?

As my long time readers will know I spend a lot of time in India. During these trips I see both the best and worst of spirituality.

One the one hand I see great meditation masters who seem to be free of any ego whatsoever. They live and breathe compassion because their sense of self-interest has faded away. They are completely fearless because they understand that fear comes from protecting an ego that they have long since defeated. And they are glowingly happy because they are no longer under the sway of ego’s ups and downs.

But on the other hand I see the spiritual materialism. I see westerners who change the way they dress and speak because they think it will make them more holy. I see people perform religious tasks because they think it will impress their parents or friends. I see people go from teacher to teacher hoping to get more exotic and esoteric instructions. And then there is the one worse than any other; the guy who writes a popular blog because he thinks it will help people!

After spending many years in India I have learned that spiritual materialism comes in many different shapes and forms. Sometimes it is very subtle.

So how can you tell if you are a spiritual materialist? Here are some sure signs:

1. Your spiritual practice changes all the time
One sign that you are having problems with spiritual materialism is when you change your spiritual practice because you get bored. This is a bad sign because it shows that you are not really working on yourself, you are just trying to entertain yourself or develop your ego in a new way.

Someone who is truly spiritual does not get swayed by boredom. He/she realizes that boredom is part of the path of overcoming the ego and pushes past the bored times no matter how hard it might seem.

2. You constantly search for new spiritual teachings
Do you constantly search for new spiritual teachings? Are you always looking for the next teaching or text that is going to solve all your problems?

Searching for “higher” or more “secret” teachings is a sure sign of spiritual materialism. It is commonly referred to as “spiritual shopping” and is no different to accumulating lots of money because you think it will make you happy. Spirituality is not always so spiritual.

3. You feel proud of your accomplishments
Do you have a big library of philosophy books? Is it positioned somewhere in your house where visitors might see it an compliment you on how well read you are? Or perhaps you like to talk about all the time you have spent meditating or all the trips you have made to India to see your Guru. Take a good look - are you proud of how spiritual you are?

This is the main sign of spiritual materialism and it is the antithesis or what spirituality is trying to achieve. If your spiritual practice is building up your ego to new heights you are getting further and further from the point.

4. You become more opinionated
Religion and spirituality is supposed to make you more gentle, open and loving. If you find that after years of study and practice you are becoming more opinionated then you should stop and take a look at whether you are perhaps becoming too spiritually materialistic.

Think about why people find spirituality. It is normally because they are unsatisfied with their daily life and they want to sort out their problems. As you delve into meditation and start looking at your mind you might come to find that a lot of your problems originated with your beliefs, dogmas and existing opinions. When someone or something disagreed with your opinions it caused you to suffer.

So spirituality is about getting rid of those opinions that caused you to suffer, not just creating new opinions to replace the old ones. If you find yourself lecturing people about how God will punish them for their sins then maybe your are being materialistic. Is that opinion really helping yourself or others? Have you just replaced an old “worldly” opinion with a new “spiritual” one?

How to avoid spiritual materialism

photo credit: Wonderlane

Don’t worry, everyone has some element of spiritual materialism in them. I certainly do. I am aware of it and I still can’t get rid of it. But at least I am trying. And like all vices, the first step to curing them is to just be aware of them. Some people never even get that far.

So how can we avoid becoming too spiritually materialistic?

1. Shift your focus to others
At the start of every Buddhist practice the monks and nuns always bring compassion to their mind. They think about how all sentient beings are suffering and then use this as motivation to practice. This way their spiritual progress is all about helping others and they move further and further away from building up their own ego.

Take a look at any “spiritual” figure that you admire - Mother Teresa, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama - they are all completely selfless. These people live their lives to help others. This is the best way to completely avoid spiritual materialism.

But there is a danger. Sometimes people can feel pretty good about helping other people. Sometimes you might feel your ego perk up at the thought of how much good you have done. That is spiritual materialism creeping back in. You have to learn to do good and then drop it.

2. Develop genuine humility
Another characteristic of truly spiritual people is that they are genuinely humble. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has often been recorded saying that he feels that he is no different to the beggar in the street and the people in his entourage often report that he stops and talks to people that others are too embarrassed to be seen with.

Let’s go back to the example about doing good. It is pretty tempting to consider yourself a virtuous person because of all the charitable deeds you do for others. You might be a doctor who spends the whole day curing people’s illnesses. That kind of thing leaves you feeling pretty good about yourself. And when you feel good about your charity your ego starts to build up.

Humility is the antidote to this type of spiritual materialism. If you look at all the people throughout history who have done good things your contribution might suddenly seem a bit weak. This is a good feeling to have occasionally because it reminds you that you are not “all that”. But don’t let this thought get you down and depressed that you aren’t doing anything good. That is spiritual materialism too!

3. Develop a strong self-awareness
If you want to avoid spiritual materialism and make true progress on your path you need to be able to catch it as soon as it arises in your mind. You need to be extremely honest with yourself and be able to recognize when you are straying from true progress to more materialistic goals. This is tricky.

The reason it is tricky is because it is not easy to be self-aware. We fall under the power of our thoughts and we follow them wherever they go. We are so used to just doing whatever our mind tells us. But it is time to change that habit and become more self-aware. When we have self-awareness we can see through ego’s games.

Once you have seen your mind playing games you just let it go. Don’t try and change the way you think. At this stage it is enough to just be aware of your ego. In fact, this awareness will go a long way to making you less spiritually materialistic.

Finally I will leave you with some words from Trungpa himself. This is an excerpt from Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. This is how a real master teaches.

“According to the Buddhist tradition, the spiritual path is the process of cutting through our confusion, of uncovering the awakened state of mind. When the awakened state of mind is crowded in by ego and its attendant paranoia, it takes on the character of an underlying instinct. So it is not a matter of building up the awakened state of mind, but rather of burning out the confusions which obstruct it. In the process of burning out these confusions, we discover enlightenment. If the process were otherwise, the awakened state of mind would be a product, dependent upon cause and effect and therefore liable to dissolution. Anything which is created must, sooner or later, die. If enlightenment were created in such a way, there would always be the possibility of ego reasserting itself, causing a return to the confused state.

Enlightenment is permanent because we have not produced it; we have merely discovered it. In the Buddhist tradition the analogy of the sun appearing from behind the clouds is often used to explain the discovery of enlightenment. In the meditation practice we clear away the confusion of ego in order to glimpse the awakened state. The absence of ignorance, of being crowded in, of paranoia, opens up a tremendous view of life. One discovers a different way of being.

The heart of the confusion is that man has a sense of self which seems to him to be continuous and solid. When a though or emotion or even occurs, there is a sense of someone being conscious
of what is happening. You sense that you are reading these words. This sense of self is actually a transitory, discontinuous event, which in our confusion seems to be quite solid and continuous.

Since we take our confused view as being real, we struggle to maintain and enhance this solid self. We try to feed it pleasures and shield it from pain. Experience continually threatens to reveal our transitoriness to us, so we continually struggle to cover up any possibility of discovering our real condition. “But,” we might ask, “if our real condition is an awakened state, why are we so busy trying to avoid becoming aware of it?” It is because we have become so absorbed in our confused view of the world, that we consider it real, the only possible world. This struggle to maintain the sense of a solid, continuous self is the action of ego.”

Are you spiritually materialistic?

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