Hooked! Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume

Edited by Stephanie Kaza

Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2005, 256 pages, $16.95

Reviewed by Jonathan Watts

Hooked! Buddhist Writings on Greed, Desire, and the Urge to Consume is a collection of seventeen essays by mostly American Buddhist teachers on the nature of consumption and consumerism. Its editor, Stephanie Kaza, is a long-time Zen student and associate professor of environmental studies at the University of Vermont.

In her introduction, Kaza quotes President George H.W. Bush’s famous line from the 1992 Earth Summit in Brazil: “The American way of life is not up for negotiation.” This statement typifies the American attitude toward the way we use resources and the problem of consumerism―it’s simply a non-issue. This attitude seems to have only grown worse in the last ten years as George W.’s global war on terror appears to be no more than a thinly veiled movement to secure the natural resources and economic conditions Americans continue to need for their nonnegotiable way of life. In this way, we could very well regard the issue of consumerism as the most pressing one of our time, integrally connecting the environmental crisis, economic globalization, terrorism, and militarism.

In Kaza’s book, there is a great variety of perspectives, generally emerging out of the three main Buddhist communities in America: the vipassana/Theravada, Zen and Tibetan. But aside from these denominational distinctions, I found the essays tended to diverge into two types based on how the issue was approached. One group of authors, in the general majority, tended to problematize consumption and consumerism. Drawing on traditional critiques of sense desire and attachment, they saw Buddhism as offering various reflective tools as antidotes to the largely unconscious destructiveness of “the American way of life.” For example, Joseph Goldstein in the opening essay offers the traditional Theravada mindfulness training of examining the impermanent, suffering, and not-self qualities of things we cling to. Pema Chodron introduces the title concept of the whole volume in the Tibetan word shenpa, meaning attachment or hooked. She then counsels us to recognize shenpa, refrain from its lure, relax amidst the urge, and resolve to move on in our lives.

Another group of authors, however, took a counter-intuitive approach to the issue. Drawing on the equally traditional Buddhist viewpoint of nonduality based in the teachings of notself (anatta) and emptiness (sunnata), they sought to deproblematize consumerism. This did not mean they did not recognize the problem of consumerism. Rather, they saw that the solution to the problem lay not in a reactive approach of renouncing our various relationships with the material world, but in transcending an either-or mentality and articulating a new “middle way” relationship. As with the Buddha’s own articulation of the “middle way” between sense indulgence and extreme asceticism, this approach does not locate the problem in form or in some outer force. Rather, it reveals the problematic way we relate to form, attempting to liberate both ourselves and form by articulating a new transformative relationship with it. Rita Gross perhaps best expresses this insight: “Too little appreciation of beauty and elegance is counterproductive, and, in a situation in which material goods are abundant, underappreciation actually encourages consumerism and overconsumption. Thus counterintuitively, one of the ways of discouraging consumerism may well be to encourage love of beauty, elegance and dignity, so that we know how to enjoy the right amount.” (p.165)

Certainly, the first path of renunciation is an essential step, as it was for the Buddha, in confronting the addictive quality of consumerism – and Gross recognizes this in her essay. However, this second, nondual perspective strikes me as a very significant and unique part of a Buddhist approach to consumerism. In 1997, the Think Sangha group, with which I work and to which a number of contributing authors in Hooked! belong, held and international meeting focused on a Buddhist response to consumerism. Over the next two years, a few of our Sangha members contributed to the Society for International Development's (SID) March 1998 journal on Consumption, Civil Action, and Sustainable Development; convened a panel at The Other Economic Summit (TOES) in the United Kingdom in May, 1998; participated in the dialogue with the leaders of the nine major faiths and the President and Board of the World Bank called the World Faiths Development Dialogue; and published our first Think Sangha Journal entitled "The Religion of the Market." From our work, I think many of us found that while renunciation and the power of Buddhist mindfulness helps us to take a step back from consumerism, we desperately need alternative models to take the next steps forward in creating a society beyond consumerism that still takes advantage of the material achievements of the last several hundred years. Although most of the essays in Hooked! don’t go into concrete alternatives, one essay on Buddhist environmentalism in Japan offers an incredibly inspiring effort by a Jodo-shu priest in Tokyo. Rev. Hideto Okochi has used his temple as base for a citizens enevironmental movement. Rev. Okochi had the roof of his temple rebuilt with solar panels, appealing to members to pay for individual tiles as a sort of merit making activity. Once the new construction was completed, the temple generated enough electricity to become a local power generator enabling the community to take itself of the main Tokyo power grid which is largely supported by nuclear power and fossil fuels. The power planet has become not only self-sufficient but creates excess power which is sold back to the city. The profit from this porject has allowed the citizens group based in Rev, Okochi’s temple to create a local currency for community services and a micro-credit bank from which members can obtain interest-free loans to buy the more expensive eco-friendly models of consumer goods like refrigerators.

Hooked! offers an excellent compilation of both perspectives that will speak to different readers at different stages in their practice and engagement with the world. This book can have an important impact on the Buddhist community itself, and hopefully be part of the construction of not only a dialogue but a praxis of renegotiating the American way of life.