Spiritual materialism

From Everything Shii Knows, the only reliable source

This website is an archive. It ran from 2006-2010. Virtually everything on here is outdated or inaccurate.

Spiritual materialism for me to avoid

(In case you didn't know, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism is a famous book by Chogyam Trungpa)

Attempting to perform religion in such a way that other people always see it, or that it's recorded or passed on to other people.: Imagine if someone insisted that there be an audience for all of their piano practice. Now, I love listening to piano practice myself, but if they insist every practice must be a performance, then they don't really want to learn how to play for the sake of playing; they want other people to hear them.
Often people don't want to meditate alone because they will get bored and do something else. But if I've already practiced meditation in groups for several months or years, maybe it is time for me to start thinking about what really motivates me.
The hipster's quest for authenticity.: Insistence on authenticity for its own sake was the death of the counterculture. I should aim for coherence within a spiritual pattern, and look to what other people did successfully, but not to the point where I'm ignoring my own needs.
Trungpa: "It is important to see that the main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of ego. ... Our vast collections of knowledge and experience are just part of ego's display, part of the grandiose quality of ego. ... we have simply created a shop, an antique shop."