{"id":571,"date":"2009-06-10T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T06:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html"},"modified":"2009-06-10T06:30:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-10T06:30:00","slug":"less-is-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html","title":{"rendered":"Less is more"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>More and more, people are learning to get by with less and less, and writer Pico Iyer has shared some of his thoughts on his own self-imposed austerity in this week’s New York Times<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Though I knew that poverty certainly didn\u2019t buy happiness, I wasn\u2019t convinced that money did either.<\/p>\n

So \u2014 as post-1960s clich\u00e9 decreed \u2014 I left my comfortable job and life to live for a year in a temple on the backstreets of Kyoto. My high-minded year lasted all of a week, by which time I\u2019d noticed that the depthless contemplation of the moon and composition of haiku I\u2019d imagined from afar was really more a matter of cleaning, sweeping and then cleaning some more. But today, more than 21 years later, I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old monastic cell look almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media \u2014 and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can\u2019t think of a single thing I lack.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m no Buddhist monk, and I can\u2019t say I\u2019m in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I\u2019ve written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn\u2019t want or need, not all I did. And it seemed quite useful to take a clear, hard look at what really led to peace of mind or absorption (the closest I\u2019ve come to understanding happiness). Not having a car gives me volumes not to think or worry about, and makes walks around the neighborhood a daily adventure. Lacking a cell phone and high-speed Internet, I have time to play ping-pong every evening, to write long letters to old friends and to go shopping for my sweetheart (or to track down old baubles for two kids who are now out in the world).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Continue at the link<\/a> for the rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More and more, people are learning to get by with less and less, and writer Pico Iyer has shared some of his thoughts on his own self-imposed austerity in this week’s New York Times: Though I knew that poverty certainly didn\u2019t buy happiness, I wasn\u2019t convinced that money did either. So \u2014 as post-1960s clich\u00e9…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links-r-us"],"yoast_head":"\nLess is more - The Deacon's Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Less is more - The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"More and more, people are learning to get by with less and less, and writer Pico Iyer has shared some of his thoughts on his own self-imposed austerity in this week’s New York Times: Though I knew that poverty certainly didn\u2019t buy happiness, I wasn\u2019t convinced that money did either. So \u2014 as post-1960s clich\u00e9…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Deacon's Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-06-10T06:30:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/Si-M-6nH2gI\/AAAAAAAAFuQ\/ZnPhkrykYLk\/s400\/empty+room.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"deacon greg kandra\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Less is more - The Deacon's Bench","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Less is more - The Deacon's Bench","og_description":"More and more, people are learning to get by with less and less, and writer Pico Iyer has shared some of his thoughts on his own self-imposed austerity in this week’s New York Times: Though I knew that poverty certainly didn\u2019t buy happiness, I wasn\u2019t convinced that money did either. So \u2014 as post-1960s clich\u00e9…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html","og_site_name":"The Deacon's Bench","article_published_time":"2009-06-10T06:30:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/Si-M-6nH2gI\/AAAAAAAAFuQ\/ZnPhkrykYLk\/s400\/empty+room.jpg"}],"author":"deacon greg kandra","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html","name":"Less is more - The Deacon's Bench","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/Si-M-6nH2gI\/AAAAAAAAFuQ\/ZnPhkrykYLk\/s400\/empty+room.jpg","datePublished":"2009-06-10T06:30:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-06-10T06:30:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/052b8cd86cc713feaccdc8282b03cf10"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/Si-M-6nH2gI\/AAAAAAAAFuQ\/ZnPhkrykYLk\/s400\/empty+room.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/Si-M-6nH2gI\/AAAAAAAAFuQ\/ZnPhkrykYLk\/s400\/empty+room.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/06\/less-is-more.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Less is more"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/","name":"The Deacon's Bench","description":"Where a Roman Catholic Deacon Ponders the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/052b8cd86cc713feaccdc8282b03cf10","name":"deacon greg kandra","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a4e\/a4e07ce6fde3f10d4d9753243fd48d45x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/a4e\/a4e07ce6fde3f10d4d9753243fd48d45x96.jpg","caption":"deacon greg kandra"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/author\/deacon-greg-kandra"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/365"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}