Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

These were the imitative and self-absorbed qualities that Chogyam Trungpa called “spiritual materialism.”

Insight Meditation and similar Buddhist practices can lead to quietude, to withdrawal from and fear of the world. The emptiness taught in Zen and nondualist Vedanta can lead to a related problem, to being disconnected and ungrounded. Any form of idealistic, otherworldly teaching that sees life on earth as a dream or focuses on higher realms can lea

Many of us are getting to the point in our spiritual journey where we are no longer trying to get high, for we know how to do that. We are trying to be. And being includes everything. We now recognize that if there is anything at all that can bring us down—anything—our house is built upon sand, and there is fear. And where there is fear, we aren’t