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RE: Material Pursuits

From the Bhakti List Archives

Koustubhan, Purnima, BRMC • July 15, 1999 


		Thumbs up! What an excellent topic. Everyone can relate to
it yet it is not likely it will create a frenzied discussion that can end
only in a stalemate.

		 I would like to submit a thought to the discussion. Is it
possible that the issue is not so much How much money/wealth we amass But
rather when, if ever, we are satisfied? I think when we seek to provide for
ourselves and our family, sometimes we create a burden not of wealth but of
envy and competition. You are happy with what you have until someone you
perceive as having "more" or "better" moves in next door. This does not just
have to be about money and cars. It can also be about "I go to the temple
this many times and do puja every day. "oh how nice I do as well AND I have
a priest come to my house once a year to do Satyanarayana Puja" and it goes
on and on. 

		It gets worse when people increase the sphere of this
competition. it is really painful when people discuss their children as if
they were commodities. How much this one makes. How that one is a
valedictorian and violin prodigy who just won the Science fair and you are
so proud until a new family moves in and their child is all of the above and
recites shlokas in Sanskrit. Now your kid is taking swimming and Hinduism
classes at the university gifted program just to keep up.

		Do you know what I mean? What do you think? Is this too much
of a tangential topic?