{"id":25,"date":"2009-11-27T14:54:27","date_gmt":"2009-11-27T14:54:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/omsweetom\/2009\/11\/possessed-by-possessions.html"},"modified":"2009-11-27T14:54:27","modified_gmt":"2009-11-27T14:54:27","slug":"possessed-by-possessions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/2009\/11\/possessed-by-possessions.html","title":{"rendered":"In the Water, Not of It"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n


<\/font><\/p>\n

\"black-friday.jpg\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

“Black Friday” — the day after
\nThanksgiving, which officially kicks-off the Christmas shopping season
\n— doesn’t always bring out the best in human<\/font>beings. Adults start to behave like unruly children, shoving and fighting one another over that last flat screen TV or designer coat. At best its embarrassing; at worst, it can be deadly. <\/font> Last year, a <\/font>34-year-old <\/font>Walmart
\nemployee was trampled to death after frenzied shoppers literally busted down the front doors of the store. But it didn’t end there. Police officers and EMTs who arrived to
\nperform CPR on the employee were stepped on and injured; even a
\npregnant woman was trampled on.<\/p>\n

What’s going on here? What is impelling this grotesque Darwinian push-or-be-pushed survival of the fittest at its ugliest?
<\/font><\/p>\n

The all-consuming quest for more and more stuff<\/i>. <\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’m as much of a shopper as the next guy
\n(probably more so, in fact). And I hardly lead the spartan lifestyle of
\na cave-swelling monk; I have my fair share of possessions, and my own
\nstruggles with being attached to them.<\/p>\n

Still, Black Friday may be a good a time to sit back and to take stock of how much we’re possessed by our possessions.<\/font><\/p>\n

Some Hindu wisdom to help put things in perspective:
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\"Boat_Ganges_Varanasi.JPG\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s
\nnot where you live or how much you possess; rather, it is how you live
\nand how much you are being possessed by your possessions. You can have
\nmany things as long as you don’t get possessed. The minute you allow
\nthem to possess you, you are doomed. A boat’s duty is to stay in the
\nwater and carry people from one shore to the other shore. To do its
\njob, the boat must be in the water, but the minute the water is in the
\nboat, you sink. A multimillionaire may have numerous possessions but
\nmay not be attached to them, while a sadhu<\/em> may be attached to his own water pot. It is not the thing in itself that binds us, it is our attachment to things.
<\/span><\/p>\n

God bless you. OM Shanti, Shanti, Shanti.”<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

– Sri Swami Satchidananda<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Black Friday” — the day after Thanksgiving, which officially kicks-off the Christmas shopping season — doesn’t always bring out the best in humanbeings. Adults start to behave like unruly children, shoving and fighting one another over that last flat screen TV or designer coat. At best its embarrassing; at worst, it can be deadly. Last…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":207,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,3,13,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hinduism-101","category-in-the-news","category-quote-unquote","category-saints-and-sages"],"yoast_head":"\nIn the Water, Not of It - Om Sweet Om<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In the Water, Not of It - Om Sweet Om\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“Black Friday” — the day after Thanksgiving, which officially kicks-off the Christmas shopping season — doesn’t always bring out the best in humanbeings. 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He is a Hindu Chaplain and the Coordinator for Hindu Life at Princeton University, and serves as the North American Director of Communications for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), a worldwide organization representing the Vaishnava Hindu tradition. In previous incarnations, Vineet has been a New York City prosecutor, a cable TV show host, and a hospital chaplain. In his free time, he enjoys relaxing with his wife and his new baby, attending classes at The Bhakti Center, and teaching himself photography. As a second-generation, Indian-American, Vaishnava-Hindu, Vineet ponders new ways of further hyphenating his identity.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/author\/vchander"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/207"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/omsweetom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}