Business and consumerism and Buddhist principles

Last week one of my good friends set me the link to a 20 minute speech/lecture about business and consumerism and Buddhist principles. 

Clare Melford was the speaker and that 20 minutes flew by as I listened to her ideas which make such sense.  As she says what individuals do is important but business can make more of an impact over a wider audience.

The three principles which she thinks businesses should take from the Buddhist mind set are:

• That everything is connected
• Mastery of our impulses and desires
• And finding a middle way

These are all things that can be taken into personal life not just in business;  thinking about the consequences of our actions, learning to understand ourselves and trying to live in a sensible way rather than by extremes.

There was so much to take in I shall have to listen to it again (and again).

If you’d like to listen to it you can find it on the Radio 4 Four Thought site, look for 2^nd May, Clare Melford.  I don’t know how long it will be there for but having looked at the rest of the podcasts in the series I’ve downloaded a large number to listen to later.

Nowhereisland

Today I became a citizen of Nowhereisland. 

This is part of a public art project which will form part of the Cultural Olympiad this summer.  There are 12 art projects running across the UK and this one is based in South West England.  In fact it will be floating round the coast.

This is what the website says “Nowhereisland has already come to represent the possibilities for thinking about our values and beliefs as citizens. 52 Resident Thinkers from around the world are contributing to a year-long programme of Letters to Nowhereisland. Over 4000 people have already signed up to become citizens of Nowhereisland and will begin collectively writing the island’s constitution from January 2012 […] in a time of global crisis, it opens up an opportunity to debate and consider important global questions that affect us all.”

Two of those resident thinkers are people I really admire – Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall and Keri Smith and they are giving the citizens the chance to write letters too.

So if you had the chance to start again from scratch what would you do?

I’d like a place of community.  Somewhere where I know my neighbours.  Where I can buy all my food from a farm just down the road.  Where I can buy all my clothing from someone else down the road, or even make my own.  Where people respect each other and their skills.

The best example I can give of this is an episode of Grand Designs that I watched last year.  A stonemason was renovating an old stone pump house in Cornwall.  If he needed help with plumbing he got his mate round and then paid him back by spending the equivalent time building him a shed for his tools or what ever he needed.  He did this over and over again with all the trades that he couldn’t do himself.  I would love to have the skills to be able to exchange in this way.

What I think we really need to work on is greed and this consumer culture that we currently exist in.  Why do I need this new product of yours – phone, computer, car, etc – the one I have works fine or, even, why do I need it in the first place?

“Owning things doesn’t make me happy.  Doing things makes me happy.  Helping others makes me happy.  Creating things makes me happy.”  Mnmlist.com

Minimalist

I’ve just started reading a very interesting blog on being a minimalist, called mnmlist.com.

It has inspired me so far to delete 8 pages of old emails that I really don’t need, and to finally empty a cardboard box which has sat there untouched since we moved into the flat more than 2 years ago.

But it is not just about not owning stuff, more about being aware of the things you do own, having less of things you just don’t need, and not just buying things for the sake of it.  Reading this blog has made me more aware of the things in my life that my grandparents would count as ‘luxury’ items, stuff I could live without, like the microwave, TV and dishwasher and more aware of items which I could live without but make my life easier like my car or hairdryer.  

In one post he tries to list his 10 essentials, but only gets to 8.  Over the last couple of days I have tried to come up with my own 10 essentials, but have found this near impossible without knowing what activity I would be faced with.  If I was making books I would need my knife, steal rule, pencil, needle, thread, etc, going to work, for a walk or run require their own essentials.  Basically I have bought into the consumer society and believed the advertisers when they tell me that I need all this stuff.

I think that I am on the beginning of a long journey to reassess my life and what is important in it.  The image above is of Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall and when it says ‘I want to be like Hugh’, I mean it.  I like his ideas about life and food, that our food should be sustainable, we should grow our own (we do a bit) and that our work-life balance is important.  I want to take all these ideas and turn them into a life with more time to do the things I enjoy with the people I love.