Mi'sen

Thread: difference between ‘outside’ and ‘meta’: Recently I’m noticing systems shopping conflated with being meta to systems. This is how I see the difference: ‘Systems shopping’ is my term for picking and choosing, mixing and matching, from different systems. 1/11

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche coined the term ‘spiritual materialism’ for shopping around spiritual systems, pulling out the bits that appeal, adopting different parts from different systems into one’s repertoire; a limited approach in some ways, but useful and serves a function. 2/11

Your definition of spiritual materialism doesn’t seem quite right, but I like what your construct of shopping and meta.

Ah, just saw this. How would you describe spiritual materialism?

I use Trungpa’s definition.

Collecting was the aspect I was emphasizing, iirc I think that’s a key part of spiritual materialism as identity/ego building, but ymmv.

I’ve never really thought of him talking about collecting so much as mistaking material objects and symbolism for actual spirituality.

That sounds right to me too. I’d need to go back to be sure about the collecting aspect - thanks for the comment!