Collecting objects can be healthy. Collecting is not always a sign of materialism but a means to finding the spiritual.
When my young niece used to visit years ago, we would engage in “clawing,” one of our favorite yearly sports. We would visit the arcades, K-Mart and the local supermarkets to try our hand at the claw machines filled with stuffed animals, balls and assorted toys. Koreans call it “tangjinjaem,” having fun and finding joy by spending small amounts of money. When she was younger, we would score eight or ten animals every vacation, but as my niece got older and more adept, the bounty grew.
Collecting Things – Our Bounty Grew
One year, in a two-week period, she amassed forty-eight plush toys. To celebrate, I photographed her in front of the fireplace surrounded by her booty, smiling like a successful hunter back from safari. Though I suggested she donate some of her toys, she was a kid after all, and since we couldn’t stuff all of them in a suitcase, I UPS’ed them to her home in California.
Missing All the Fun
After my niece left, missing her and our time together, I looked at a photograph and noticed on the mantelpiece above her was the head of a Buddha I had bought in China. “How ironic,” I thought, “the Buddha sitting above all this materialism.”
It was then I realized I was no different from my niece. I too was a collector – a Buddha collector. At first, I placed them in a couple of rooms in the house and city apartment and eventually in every room and the gardens. I even put a small one in my terrarium of carnivorous plants. Friends and family started giving them to me, and like clawing, Buddha-collecting began a quasi-addiction of materialism.
Buddhism is not my religion. To meet the latter need I have a few icons around – the statue of St. Anthony I found at the dump, the Infant of Prague from my childhood and the sculpture I made of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa. Except for another mini St. Anthony next to the Buddha in the terrarium, I don’t repeat these Christian statues.
The Best Buddha Story
When my granddaughter went to Nepal for her college semester-away-from home, I sent her a Halloween care package to share with her friends. I did not know the culture of Nepal so I didn’t want to send ghosts, scream masks or Frankenstein motifs. I decided the jack-o-lantern theme was innocuous enough and then ran to my favorite NYC toy store, E.A.T., to complete the gift. Along with chocolate, candy corn, caramelized popcorn and a mixture of orange and black jellybeans, I sent pumpkin Pez dispensers, a battery operated jack-o-lantern and hundreds of pumpkin stickers. Little of the candy made it to the kids.
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It turned out that my granddaughter’s Nepalese host mother had quite a sweet tooth, and she loved the jack-o-lantern lamp. Nepal loses power quite frequently so it became the family’s evening light. Every time the host used the lantern, she would exclaim, “Bless your American grandmother, bless her, bless her.” The jack-o-lantern stickers, however, made the biggest hit. The host father put them on his work jacket. The family wallpapered one room with hundreds of smiley-face pumpkin stickers. In that room was a Buddha reverently set on an altar-like shelf to symbolize their religion, and it is an important custom to give him gifts. My granddaughter told me the family placed a slew of pumpkin stickers in the Buddha’s hands!
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My granddaughter understood my Buddha addiction and lived in Nepal close to the Buddha’s home. So, she went on a quest to seek a Buddha to top my collection. Soon, she found a woodcarver near the Buddha’s birthplace and commissioned the one in this picture. It sits on our wood stove in the country home, the first object everyone sees upon entering. As custom will have it, I fill his hands with flowers, berries and a few pieces of candy corn at Halloween, remembering that thousands of miles away, each member of a family struggling without electricity is lit up from the Buddha within.
Collecting Objects – Why Do I Collect Buddhas?
Why do I collect Buddhas? Every time I pass one, my shoulders drop, my breath slows, I smile and simply calm down.
Now the Buddha is supposed to remind us of impermanence, the opposite of addictive collecting. Yet, when I pass a Buddha, rather than feeling the end is near, I feel full of life.
Most importantly, I don’t feel anything is wrong with amassing a few more. It goes along with one of my theories of metaphysical decorating – that our objects are placed to interact with us. Our energy affects these objects and vice versa. Sometimes we feel nothing or even mild irritation at our things. Sometimes we feel subtle tugs of unprocessed grief, guilt or fears of scarcity. And sometimes we feel love, joy and gratitude when we are near our possessions. We feel energized when they, in turn, send energy back to us. It is not always materialism that coaxes us to possess things but the reminder of life lessons we have to learn – the true nature of having things.
Whenever I pass my Buddhas, I don’t feel the lessons of non-attachment. Just the opposite, I feel hugs.
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There are two parts to this website, The Lessons, which are more difficult in concept, and the blogs, which are lighter in nature.
Two Lessons that relate to this blog are:
XI. Finding Energy Through Our Relationships With Objects
XII. Our Relationship to Objects and the World
Please note that my website allows you to leave comments at the end of the blogs but not at the end of each lesson. If you have a comment or question about a lesson, you may email me at ruta@rutas-rules.com
Dan Levine says
Love the content!