preparing to eat the orange, and finally tasting and chewing the sweet, juicy miracle of orangeness. The lesson is about slowing the consuming process way down to notice its many parts. By being more fully present for the act of consuming, we are more present with our own experience and maybe a little less driven toward the next hook of desire.
You can try this slowing-down process with any sort of consum- ing. It is especially effective in the terrain ofimpulse buying. If you do any sort of shopping online, you know how quickly you can act on the impulse to buy. Just a few clicks of the mouse and that good deal on eBay is yours, almost before you thought about it. But if you apply mindfulness to the process, you might notice your body hunched over the computer, your breath suspended in concentration, your fingers moving like speedy little mice on the keyboard. By shifting your attention to direct observation of what is happening, the intoxicating spell of buying is broken, or at least interrupted. That inter- ruption is your golden opportunity to call off the whole purchase, to say to yourself: wait just a minute—do I really need this? Y ou have a chance, a microsecond of mindfulness, to ask this question and reconsider.
In my “Unlearning Consumerism” class, the very first assignment is to make a list of everything you own. Everything. The students gasp in terror. Everything? Yes, everything. Clothes, toiletries, kitchen items, books and music, electronics, toys, posters, jewelry, cars, bicycles—everything you are personally responsible for as its owner. This is a crash course in mindfulness of stuff T aking the time to name everything makes.it painfully obvious just exactly how much stuffyou have. If you look at each item long enough to notice its existence, you begin to wonder where it all came from, what you are going to do with it, and whether, in fact, it is all really necessary. These are all very helpful questions and worth your attention, even if they make you uncomfortable. We can’t begin to really understand the full environmental impact of our things if we don’t even know what we have.
But let’s bring some mindfulness to the uncomfortable feelings themselves. What comes up ? Maybe guilt or shame, perhaps the urge for more, the naked wanting itself What is that like ? Can you bring your attention to notice the wanting itself? Often, it seems, we buy things as a displacement activity to cover over our feelings. The mo- mentary delight of a new thing distracts us from unpleasant feelings we’d rather not acknowledge. But most likely it is these very feel- ings that most want your full attention. Giving them that attention may reduce the need to consume and thus also reduce your impact on the earth. Once you consider what it really means to consume, you can begin to see how your own consuming is part of a vast human appetite gnawing away at the planet. It is important to truly see this, to fully observe the cumulative impact of so much consuming.
Engaging the Links
Insight on this scale can be quite galvanizing; you want to take ac- tion, to do something, to somehow improve the situation. Mindful' ness practice stimulates motivation, so let’s look at a second method for working with desire: actively confronting the links of craving. Recall how desire is stimulated by feeling states generated by the senses (including, in the Buddhist view, the mental sixth sense of thought). One way to counteract the seemingly automatic body responses to sensory and feeling information is through rational thought. Using the cerebral cortex offers an alternative to the evolu- tionary hardwiring of the reptile brain. By actively using logic, knowh edge, and critical thinking, you can challenge the power of these co'dependent links of desire.
For my class I’ve designed a couple of easy cerebral cortex exercises that provide some quick information in relation to food choices. The first is the Food Energy Log. You make a list of everything you have eaten for three days, with the ingredients separated out as best
you can—that is, not “sandwich” but “cheese, tomato, lettuce, bread,” and so forth. Next to the list of ingredients you make five columns for your ratings. For each food, you assign a o, 1, 2, or 3 for three as' pects of the food (as best you can estimate): (a) the amount of pack' aging, (b) the distance shipped, and (c) the energy used in harvest and production. In the fourth column you double the harvest and production energy number, since this factor contributes the great' est environmental impact. Then add up (a) + (b) + (d) to get a score of 0-12 for each food. The numbers, imprecise as they are, still reveal certain trends. A locally grown, unpackaged apple, for example, might receive a 2, indicating its relatively low energy impact. In contrast, a cup of coffee made from beans shipped from Ethiopia might receive a 12, with high ratings in all three categories. Our rough class data across the years indicates the high energy foods are meat products and beverages—tea from China, hot chocolate from Ghana, orange juice from Florida. You can work with consumer desire by deciding to make it a priority to reduce your food energy footprint. To do this, you would try to reduce the high'impact foods in your diet and in- crease the low-impact foods. Very quickly you can see what your own consumption patterns tell you about desire and energy.
Another thing you can do is read the labels on food products. This can tell you something about how far the product has traveled and how complex the production process is. The idea is to counter the habitual responses to desire by informing yourself about the actual things you are consuming. With the rapid expansion in the food mar- ket for green products, you need to look closely at product claims to check for greenwashing hype. Some green labels such as “fair trade” or “organic” provide useful certified information about the product. Other labels, such as “natural,” “eco'safe,” or “biodegradable” only make general claims that have not been verified by a third party. You can check over a hundred green product labels at www.greener choices.org/ecodabels/ to give you some ballast against the powerful pull of green marketing strategies.
If your curiosity is aroused by either of these exercises, you can research individual products and learn their stories. You need to be prepared to change your diet though; once you know how some' thing is produced, you may have to reconsider what you eat. In the last few years there has been a surge of resources to help track such stories, and they are quite illuminating. I started with Stuff: The Secret Lives of Everyday Things, a great little book with ten chapters on common items—shoes, T-shirts, aluminum cans, and so on. The World- watch Institute has now come out with an online guide, The Good Stuff? A Behind-the-scenes Guide to the Things We Buy (www.worldwatch .org/taxonomy/term/44). If you want in-depth journalistic reporting, take a look at TastToodNation by Eric Schlosser or The Omnivores Dilemma by Michael Pollan. The market research shows that as consumers become more informed about their choices, they want green alternatives. By working with desire through rational analysis, you can strengthen your environmental intentions, sending a message to producers that “green counts.”
Reviewing Consumer Hah its
Ifyou take up the study of desire, you will sooner or later be curious to try some experiments in restraint. Refraining or taking a break from familiar patterns can open up space for reviewing your consumer habits. Contemplative retreats are especially good for this, the longer the better. Some teachers suggest setting aside “mindfulness days,” once a month or maybe even once a week, to settle the mind. Weekend programs at retreat centers offer periods of silence and calming practices that can act as antidotes to the runaway impulses of desire. Even if the focus of the retreat is not unlearning consumerism, it can still be a welcome relief to be in a setting that doesn’t reinforce the wanting. To enable people to slow down and be more present, retreat centers generally stick to simplified activity schedules, simple meals, and minimal social distraction.
One of the more elaborate training practices during Zen retreats is serving and eating meals oriyoki style. Every choreographed step of this Japanese meal form is meant to highlight the practice of “just enough.” Meals are held in silence in the meditation hall, with ex- perienced servers, pots in hand, briskly traveling the long rows of meditators. With a simple hand gesture, you indicate how much you want, the same for second servings. The meal is served in three bowls for breakfast and lunch, two for dinner. To begin the meal, you carefully unwrap your stacked bowls, lay out the small table- cloth, and arrange the chopsticks, spoon, napkin, and scraper in their designated spots. During service and eating, you have endless opportunity to observe the mind s relationship to food. When you have eaten “just enough,” and everyone else is done, the servers come around with hot washing water in teakettles. With another simple gesture, you indicate how much water you want, and then you scrape and wipe your bowls until they are clean—usually with less than half a cup of water. Then back they go into their wrapping, like a Japanese gift, waiting for you when the next meal comes around. The whole process is remarkably efficient, offering many ways to minimize desire and reduce waste. For some people, oriyoki is a hallmark of Zen precision, but I see it as a beautifully crafted green dance, kind to eaters and eaten alike.
Going on retreat can help cultivate your motivation for the green practice path and for whatever environmental work you choose to take up. We may think our idealistic intentions are clear or solid, but they are usually much more ambiguous than we realize. On retreat you have the chance to be more honest about your own mixed motivations and see where you are vulnerable to consumer messages playing on your inner conflicts. You can notice your favorite addictions or attachments and how you organize yourself to sustain them. Sitting still for a period, or taking the time to walk quietly in a natural setting, can help you clarify what matters most to
Working with Desire
you. It is a wonderful gift to be able to see with minimal interruption or distraction. You can hold your intention in focus, feeling it res' onate in your mind and heart, and then consciously choose to set your intention on your top priorities. This gift to yourself can then be carried back into everyday life to support you in your home and work practice.
Inevitably we think, Oh, it’s better on retreat! or, Oh, it’s better at home!” Tasting the simpler life can be enticing, but still we must return to our complicated lives full ofdesire. A useful principle for negotiating this territory is what Buddhists call the Middle Way. Not too hot, not too cold; not too luxurious, not too spare. Green zealots can sometimes insist on one extreme or another, but mostly these posh tions are not very sustainable. The Middle Way is about balance, moderation, and continuous reflection on what is appropriate. There is no single equation for what is right at any given time. Continuous reflection is key, for conditions and options are changing constantly. What seems to be good for the environment at one point in time may later turn out to be problematic. What you are able to commit to as a young person may not be possible in a different phase of your life. Attachments change; so do desires. As we consider ways to sim- plify, it is important to cultivate a sense of contentment that can in' form our Middle Way choices of moderation. This is the fourth practical approach I want to offer in working with desire.
Choosing Well-Being
Contentment is an underrated state of mind in consumer cultures. We hardly know how to recognize it or what to do when we feel content. Maybe we think it’s boring. Or maybe the cynic inside us doesn’t believe it really exists. In Buddhist philosophy, contentment is highly valued as a state free of desire. When you are content, you are actually okay with everythingjust as it is. In that moment you are
not struggling with any complaints or dissatisfactions. You are fully present to yourself and the world around you. A relaxed body, a calm mind, a sense of well-being—nothing more is needed. Can you recognize this state ? You realize you don’t need to go to the store to get anything; you have enough. You don’t need to be entertained by sensory stimulus; you have enough. You don’t need to fill a gaping hole of hunger, anger, loneliness, or exhaustion; you are okay just as you are. This is quite a powerful teaching for combating the endless marketing of dissatisfaction.
But how do you arrive at contentment? For that, I can offer no simple recipe. However, you might gain some insight from trying a “technology fast.” This is another of my student experiments, based on age-old practices of renunciation. Thai Buddhist monks, for example, eat only at daybreak and noon, giving up their evening meal. Trappist monks give up talking and communicate silently in their cloistered halls. Giving up something you rely on, even if only temporarily, is a way to see what it means to you and how it shapes your thoughts and behaviors. Some people try giving up meat, some people refrain from alcohol. In a technology fast, you abstain from using an everyday technology that you normally rely on in some aspect of your life. This could be a car, a cell phone, a laptop computer, the television, the dishwasher, or, for something more challenging, try giving up electricity! One of my students did all her homework by candlelight and the glow of her battery-powered laptop for three days as her technology fast. Three days seems to be long enough to taste life without your chosen technology; one day might be too easy, a week might make it difficult to keep your job and household together. Removing the impact of the television, or whatever technology you choose, opens up new possibilities for contentment through doing without.
An opposite experiment is not to give something up but to completely enjoy and appreciate it. Here the idea is to fully inhabit the material world and realize how fortunate most of us are to be so
well-supported in our basic needs. So often our minds are offin the clouds somewhere, hardly noticing the many remarkable things that enrich our lives. If you try to take up this practice in a general sort of way, it doesn’t really work; you need to have a focus for the practice. Here’s one: knives. Knives are sharp, hazardous, very useful, and good ones are beautifully crafted. In Zen kitchens, students are trained in what is called “knife practice,” that is, how to take care of knives properly. First, this means noticing the properties of the knife while you are using it—its weight, its sharp edge, the way it feels in your hand, how it cuts. Then, when you’re done with the knife, it means washing and drying it immediately and putting it back in the chopping block to keep the knife safe. Doing this practice faithfully changes your relationship with knives. You are practicing caretak- ing as an investment in the well-being of things. This is the opposite of consuming things until they are gone.
Practicing contentment opens up the whole conversation about well-being and quality of life. We know now that more stuff does not necessarily equate to more happiness. In study after study, psychologists have shown that well-being is associated with good health, satisfying work, supportive relationships, and a sense of internal control in your life. These are exactly the things that are under assault in our fast-paced consumer lifestyles. If we want to choose well-being as our aim on this planet, we can design communities, food systems, and modes of transportation that promote well-being. We can replace infrastructures of consumption with infrastructures of well-being . 5 We can develop indicators of contentment that help point us in a direction of sustainability rather than endless desire. We don’t have to keep consuming the planet like ravenous hungry ghosts hooked on craving. We can choose another path based on well-being, on true care for the material world, and on using “just enough” for each of us.
When we choose a life of well-being and contentment, we find that we are cultivating peace, which is the third arena for green path practice discussed in the next chapter. Contentment rests on inner
peace and is supported by social stability and well being. It takes ef- fort and intention to create opportunities for contentment and peace. Choosing peace reframes the way we relate to the earth and its inhabitants. Choosing peace helps to calm the fires of desire and the conflicts they generate. This is how we practice non-harming as a complement to our work with energy and desire. Peacemaking is an act of love and an investment of personal energy in a more stable world. We create hope for sustainability through creating the conditions for peace. The gift of this work calls forth the much-needed efforts of those on the green practice path.