Do you own possessions or they own you?

He probably was then, too.
It takes an artist to render a bum into a man of legend.

When I was a lad, there was a man known locally as "Two bottle Bill".
Every day you would see him at around the same hour making the same trip to the pub to get his two bottles of whiskey and then walk home. Like clockwork.
I remember him, I remember his greatcoat, I remember the beard and the way he smelled if you came anywhere near him.

If I wrote about him in a telling way, his name would survive... yet he himself would still be dead. My interpretation of him would be history. But he himself, whoever he was and whatever story he had to tell, would still be dust.

Those of us who live in history only do so as caricatures.
 
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swarm said:
To be owned by not having possessions is still being owned.

To have what you have when you have it and let it go with out a care when you don't is the middle way.
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This is how I live. I enjoy the things I own and I don't mourn them when they're gone.

I think the Buddhists are just as ridiculous as the hoarders. Just opposite sides of the crazy coin.
 
swivel said:
This is how I live. I enjoy the things I own and I don't mourn them when they're gone.

I think the Buddhists are just as ridiculous as the hoarders. Just opposite sides of the crazy coin.
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The person you just agreed with was a Buddhist passing on Buddhist advice. ;)

I think you may be thinking of renunciates, with tend to plague any religion and are usually found particularly in monastic orders, in which case I agree.

Aversion to posessions is as bad as lust for them.
 
swamiralff said:
I have heard of an eastern religion or philosophy that only allows the person to own 6 possessions.

If 7 are collected the possessions start having a little ownership over the person that 'owns' them. If 200 are collected, the possessions have a great ownership over the person.

Has anybody else heard this or know the name of the religion or philosophy?
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Modern person owns little except his underwear (and even then....). Tax man owns it, you just rent it from him (in an exchange for taxes, registration and fees...)
 
Vince123 said:
Posession is a great thing. I would die without my shamwow.
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I don't even know what a shamwow is, but I have noticed I am aging.

Is there a connection?

Can one retroactively offset aging and disease if one gets a shamwow, even later in life?
 
I don't know about aging, but if you're washing cars or any other vehicles, you'd be out of your mind not to own a shamwow.
You can cut it in half, use it as a bathmat, use it to drain dishes, use it as a towel--Olympic swimmers use it as a towel, look at that! It doesn't drip, wring it out, throw it in the washing machine--why do you wanna work twice as hard? It's made in Germany and, you know, the Germans always make good stuff.
 
swamiralff said:
I have heard of an eastern religion or philosophy that only allows the person to own 6 possessions.

If 7 are collected the possessions start having a little ownership over the person that 'owns' them. If 200 are collected, the possessions have a great ownership over the person.

Has anybody else heard this or know the name of the religion or philosophy?
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Nothing owns anything because there is nothing to own. We are the same as a rock, a leaf, a couch. The particles that are between us, though invisible to the human eye, are still there. There is no such thing as space between objects. When we blow and a leaf moves a foot away from us, that is not the wind, but the transfer of energy from one dense area, through lighter particles, and through another dense area. But we, the air, and the leaf are separate parts of the same object. We are just as much a part of a spec of dust as it is a part of us. Everything is one and we are all deeply connected.
 
I wonder about this from time to time. I probably lead a simpler life than many, but there a still quite a few pieces of 'junk' that I own which I would be sad to part with, because each of them enables me do to something or has some symbolic value. For instance, there is my snowboarding gear. I love snowboarding, so it would suck to lose my gear, but on the other hand I am not so much attached to THAT gear, it is just stuff I need to snowboard. So perhaps I am attached to snowboarding instead. Likewise for my surfing gear. Then there are my musical instruments. I like playing the viola very much, but I am not particularly attached to my instrument, but again it would suck to lose because it cost me a lot of money and I would have to fork that out again to be able to continue playing. Same goes for my violin.
Finally there is my karate belt. I've had it for something like 7 years, although I have been training for 17, and it is quite symbolic of all that effort. Realistically if I lost it I'd just get a new one and it isn't expensive, but I would still be disappointed in myself for my failure to look after it.
Other than these things I could probably burn the rest of my possessions without feeling too bad about it, except for the burden of having to replace the things I actually need to function efficiently in society. If I didn't have to function very efficiently I'm sure I could live with just a bowl, but it's a bit impractical if one actually has work to do.
 
Hi; I herd an interesting quote on Criminal Minds last week and was wondering if anyone remembers where it came from. This is close to the quote: "That which you possess and no longer need possesses you." Spencer said where it came from but I can't remember>
 
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