If I had a million dollars…

I’d buy your love.

I would.

I might.

Okay, you got me.
I wouldn’t.

I’d quite possibly buy a lot of stuff and most of it I wouldn’t need, but I’d probably take my queues from the super-rich Beatles (as in ‘Can’t Buy Me’ more than ‘All You Need Is’) over the probably-barely-getting-by-anymore Barenaked Ladies and forgo the love buying.

Meanwhile, I must confess that I feel bedraggled and borderline ill. I’m mainlining zinc and  considering another dance with the devil (AmbienCT, which made me puke about ten days ago) in order to get some much needed – if not necessary – zzzzs.

In the meantime, and in the spirit of compensating for over two weeks of doing for others, I spent the day indulging in three of my favorite, pointless activities:

1. Reading cookbooks

2. Watching old episodes of Tony Bourdain’s No Reservations

3. Window shopping online

And the critical word there is WINDOW because I’m not exactly financially solvent at the moment and because I spent two entire days purging a colossal amount of stuff from my closet…and it’s still brimming with a veritable shit load of stuff. Beloved stuff. Precious stuff. Cute stuff. Stuff I love. Stuff I (obviously) can’t part with. And yet the love of new stuff surfaces in the face of so much stuff…

On the surface you might think I’d make a really bad Buddhist, but that’s not the case. Nope. One can love their stuff so long as they maintain awareness that the stuff (both the stuff I have and the stuff I do not have, but would like to have) and I are one. Loving my stuff is self-love.

Allow me to make this a little bit more confusing:

In Buddhism, non-attachment (the ideal state) is the exact opposite of separation. To have attachment, you need two things:

1. The person who attaches
2. The thing the person attaches to.

In non-attachment, you’ve unified with the whole universe. There is nothing outside of you. Thus, there’s nothing to attach to and the notion of attachment becomes absurd.

However, because as a species we tend to believe that we are having an autonomous and intrinsic existence within our skin, and what’s outside our bodies is “everything else,” most of us go through life grabbing for one thing after another in an effort to be safe or feel happy.

And the rub there is that we ‘pursue’ happiness because we think it is an external quality, something that lies outside ourselves. And because we think it is ‘out there’ or external, we stress and worry about gaining it…and losing it. Whatever can be found can also be lost.

Which is, in the end, a long-winded way of saying that I am one with the items for sale at Urban Outfitters.com and thus looking at them and owning none of them brings me the same level of pleasure as owning them. Although, admittedly, if I had a million dollars, I would own a few of them.

Like this skirt:

And this wallet:

And this jacket:

And this jewelry holder stacked doll chairs thingamabob:

And this sweater:

But in a totally non-attached way…

Really.

Honest injun.

Cross my heart and hope to die.

I can’t get this to format how I want, so sorry about that. Sometimes (more often than not), WordPress mystifies me.

Tags: Actually that's a lie. There's a lot going on right now but I'm not at liberty to discuss it because it involves someone else's private health issues., Attempt to explain difference between attachment and non-attachment in Buddhism, Attempt to explain non-attachment, buddhism, Buddhism and clothing obessions, Buddhist non-attachment, feed the blog is hard, funny random stories, Humor, humorous blog, I am a really bad clothes horse., I do not feel well, I feel really drained, I have not slept more than six hours a night in weeks, I love clothes, I'm tired, It has been a long ass few weeks, Its so dry in here it hurts my nose, Life, Maybe tomorrow I'll take on the Four Noble Truths?, me me me, My closet isn't that excessive if you were to compare me with Mariah Carey, My nostril is sore, Need to wrap this up and get cracking on editing, pointless random observations, random musings, random sh*t floating around in my head, Sometimes I truly have nothing to tell you guys, Strange Buddhist rant, This is a strange blog post but it's probably as good as its going to get today

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