Detaching from materialism has little appeal when people everywhere are pursuing materialism with every breath. Yet the genius of Buddha's teaching lies in its universality.

A basic tenet of some schools of Buddhist philosophy is that suffering in the human experience is caused by attachment to excessive and unnecessary desires.  And yet, isn’t that exactly what’s been at the core of the old good life?  Aren’t excessive and unnecessary desires exactly what modern advertising is designed to promote?

If everything we look at is generating dissatisfaction, how does that affect us as a people?  If we’re constantly being lured to buy a new cell phone, a bigger house, an upgraded computer system, or a new car, how does that affect our prospects for self-contentment and inner peace?  Do we start looking at people and and saying that if they don’t make our lives more pleasant, they are disposable?  Do we become less capable of being faithful to ourselves and one another?

The new good life requires a different set of tools and a different way of looking at things.  It doesn’t require abstinence or austerity, but it does ask each of us for a new thoughtfulness about the way we live and a sober skepticism toward the corporate agenda.  It does entail a refusal to be entranced by the messages bombarding us day and night from a culture that sometimes seems to be trapped in a hypnotic trance.

Americans now spend nearly seven times as much time shopping as they do playing with their kids.  Thirty-four  percent of Americans polled ranked shopping a their favorite activity, double the number who preferred being in nature.

Is there something infantile about a world that so excessively values immediate gratification?  Is there something impoverishing about a culture that encourages us to understand and express our identities through the brands and products we consume?  Is there something sad about a society that believes spending money is the route to feeling good about ourselves?

Indeed, there are no luggage racks on hearses.

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It is often said there are no luggage racks on hearses.  No matter what worldly possessions any of us have acquired, we leave it all behind in the end.

What then do we take with us?

There is a story about a teacher who asked his students,  “if I have five hundred dollars, and in the course of my life I give away four hundred dollars, how much do I have at the end of my life?”

The students eagerly answered, “One hundred dollars.”

"Consumption. This is the new national pastime. Forget baseball, it's consumption, the only true, lasting American value that's left . . . buying things . . . People spending money they don't have on things they don't need." -George Carlin

“That’s what you might think,” the teacher said.  “But the deeper truth is that if I have five hundred dollars here on Earth, and I give away four hundred dollars, then at my death what I will have is four hundred dollars.  Because in the end, all you have  is what you have given.”

-Excerpts from The New-Good-Life- (2010) by John Robbins