Two subjects have come up today on this forum that left me thinking about desire. The first was the idea that desiring less was a great way to become wealthy. The second was Card's mention of triplets, and wondering why they usually feel so good.
Don't worry...this rap is mainly about the former subject. :-) A few years ago Tricycle magazine published a won- derful article -- an analysis of advertising by a long-time Buddhist who had, before he became a monk, worked in the advertising industry. What he had to say was fascinating. >From his point of view, advertising was all about *creating desire*. Every ad -- on TV or the radio, in a magazine, or on a billboard -- has an unspoken last sentence. That sentence is, "Buy this, and you will be happy." The ad itself may portray successful, nicely-dressed people laughing and having a great time as they toast each other with a glass of Bud, but the *message* of the ad is, "Buy Bud and you will be happy." Same mes- sage if the ad is for a Lexus or a tampon or a laundry detergent or a deodorant. Especially if it's for a deodorant. "Buy this and you'll be happy." :-) The fascinating thing, from the author's position as a Buddhist monk, is that while advertising is about creating desire, Buddhism is about diminishing it. Desire is an interesting concept. In Hindu cosmology, it's basically given as the reason for relative creation. "I am one; let me be many." In many people's notions of evolution, it takes shape as "Let me be better (or higher)." In everyday life, it takes many forms, some as noble as "Please God, let there be world peace," some as base as "Please God, let me find a deodorant that works so that I can be surrounded by triplets the way that guy on TV was." One of the things I've been noticing since moving to Spain is how hard it is to go shopping for anything but food and drink and other such consumables. I walk into a store and walk around admiring the clothes or the furniture or the computers, and I enjoy every minute of the shopping, but I invariably walk out of the store without buying anything. I just don't need anything they sell there. I'd begun to wonder about it, but this idea of needing less being a great way to have more has reminded me that it's really not a bad thing at all. (Unless you're the shopowner, of course, and with kids to feed.) And not desiring a whole heckuva lot tends to keep one's monthly expenses low. Would they still be as low, I wonder, if there was a store around here that sold triplets? Now *that* is a koan worth pondering... :-)
