Comfort

I've never been much of a layabout, but I do enjoy some comforts: A good mattress, a reclining reading chair, a subcompact car. Like the Buddha, I think harsh asceticism is highly overrated as a path to enlightenment.

Trump Tower in Dubai

Americans seldom stop to realize the baseline comforts that are part of their daily lives. Fresh hot and cold water from their taps, flush toilets and sprawling supermarkets stocked with relatively inexpensive food and dry goods. That is just a short list. I wish I could say that living with these comforts, exceptional by comparison to a vast part of the world, has enabled a free flow of progressive thought and scientific advancement to rapidly and significantly benefit all our brothers and sisters across the world. Progressive thought is still struggling against entrenched selfishness in America.

The quest for more and more comfort or luxury is usually a symptom in my experience. Craving comforts can be the result of too many comforts, just as constantly craving food is one of the symptoms of gross obesity or severe constipation. In this recent New Golden Age, we have seen a resurgence of this comfort mania in the media. Oprah's many mansions, the Kardashian's many glitzy homes (built on the fortunes of O.J. Simpson's defense attorney), Trump's glamor palaces.

I see an inverse relationship between internal comfort and the need for external comfort in my own life. When I am physically well and true to my humanist practice, my need for external comforts is minimized. When I am unbalanced by trauma, fatigue or crisis, my desire for external comfort rises significantly. 

Over twenty years ago, I was fortunate to spend time with Japanese Buddhists and took an interest in Zen philosophy. That experience helped me to realize that I had a daily practice from which I derived a great deal of internal peace. That experience also gave me inspiration for practice. The Zen approach to organic and practical utility is very comforting to me. It values the process of labor and seeking psychological harmony with environment. By taking comfort in doing and being within a practice of personal values, I experience freedom from cravings for more and more things or diversions. Practice is a comfort which sustains itself.