Sorry for the hiatus! I’ve been flat-out busy at work, with what seems like a trillion writing deadlines. But I’m back, to give you a little update on my buy nothing project.
So, it’s going really well! I haven’t bought anything at all – other than the allowed food, travel and bills – and the cravings for ‘things’ are slowly subsiding a bit. I’m also learning to change my day-to-day habits when I do want to have something. Instead of thinking ‘oh, that book sounds interesting, I need to buy it’, I am starting to think ‘I wonder if the library have a copy of that book’. Which is a major shift for me. I’m also streaming using Spotify (free version), instead of buying music. The one exception to all this was a work-related purchase of a Dirty Projectors/Bjork EP (downloaded for £4.99), which was necessary for a book chapter I’m writing on Bjork. Though it’s always interesting to assess what we consider to be ‘necessary’!
What I *have* noticed though, is what I’m calling transference. Because I can’t buy anything, my food shop has got more important to me. It’s like that’s a kind of treat. Even if I don’t buy anything particularly special, it still feels quite luxurious just to engage in the act of buying. So I’ve transferred the pleasure of consumption to my food shop.
The same has also happened when I’m at the library. I feel the need to take lots of books and DVDs out. As though I’m starving, and need to bulk up with lots of carbs. Books are my carbs. Nom!
This all suggests to me that I’m still reliant on things in my life. I still feel the need for new things, and newness generally I think. And transference is giving me that, to some extent.
So, I’ve just done a basic food shop, so in the next two weeks I’m going to try to not buy much food (probably just bread and milk, and our veg box) and will also try to not take anything else out of the library. I really want to explore what it feels like to really, really strip back.
I wonder if I will ever feel free of searching for something new, something different? I guess this is dukkha – a feeling of unsatisfactoriness. Can stripping back everything give a better sense of being satisfied in the present moment, with our experience exactly as it is? And is it possible for an unenlightened being to feel that sense of satisfaction? Big questions, but perhaps I’ll have a better sense of the answer after this experiment.
The Buy Nothing Buddhist 