In his book Simplicity: Notes, Stories and Exercises for Developing Unimaginable Wealth, Mark A. Burch offers “voluntary simplicity” as an alternative to the rapid pace, complexity, and consumerism of modern life. Living simply, as Burch describes it, does not mean merely discarding possessions or moving to the country. For him, simplicity begins with the cultivation of mindfulness, a state of conscious awareness. As we become more mindful, Burch suggests, we will naturally clear away the distractions and clutter from our lives. Throughout his book, Burch uses examples from his own life to show how technology encourages acquisitiveness and haste, and how consumerism teaches us to look outside ourselves for fulfillment.
— Andrew Snee
When I was eleven or twelve, I used to go deer hunting with my father. He would wake me before dawn on cold, crisp October days, and we would dress silently in the dim glow of a night light, not wanting to awaken the rest of the house. He would already have packed his hunting gear in the car, and we would slip out of the house and go to an all-night truck stop for breakfast. It was always still dark when we made our way into the woods along paths it seemed only my father knew, until we found the blind we had built days before, overlooking pathways frequented by white-tailed deer. At first, being too young, I took no gun or bow and arrows, but later I would sit alone in my own blind, my weapons ready, while my father went to a different part of the woods.
This technique was called “still hunting”: one simply sat silently, motionless and endlessly patient, waiting for deer to come down the paths. There was always an abundance of less patient hunters in the woods, noisily crashing about, keeping the deer more or less constantly on the move during hunting season. Once in the blind, we would sit utterly still, our only movements being our breathing and the slow turning of our heads this way and that as we scanned the bush for those enigmatic forms that seemed to appear almost magically out of nowhere. We would sit this way for hours. At noon, we would take a break and return to the car for sandwiches and apples and discussion about where the deer might be, if we had seen none that morning, or, if we had seen a deer, whether my father should or should not have taken a certain shot, given the distance, angle, brush cover, and so forth. Many days, especially when we were hunting with bow and arrow, success was simply getting a shot, much less getting a deer. On most days, “hunting” was sitting, interminably.
One might think such activity would be boring. But my father taught me to overcome my boredom and impatience — the discomfort of sitting, the disappointment of not seeing a deer — through the practice of continually renewed vigilance. Deer themselves were so elusive, so silent and well camouflaged, that at any time one might “appear” that previously had been invisible, although there all along. The possibility of finding a hidden deer created such motivation for me that moments of inattention or boredom were quickly dispelled by the renewed effort to discern the indiscernible. Every once in a while, this effort would succeed, which was reward enough to make me try even harder the next time to stay still, silent, and attentive. Twenty-five years later, I would realize that what my father was teaching me, though he didn’t know it himself, was not hunting but meditation — or, more accurately, hunting as a pathway into meditation.
As my capacity for sitting still became more fully developed, I found I could spend whole mornings in the bush, from false dawn to noon, my senses riveted on the changing patterns of light, color, form, and sound in the forest. I learned to hear things wake up. I learned to see the forest playing, feeding, breathing. I sensed how the whole forest was a community that could observe me. If I was silent enough, it seemed to forget me, or perhaps accept me as part of itself, and then go about its business: birds called, chipmunks played in the leaves, squirrels gathered hazelnuts, chickadees performed their bizarre acrobatic stunts while searching for insect larvae. In all of this, I began to feel less like a hunter invading the bush to get something from it, and more like a part of the forest itself. I started to feel at home. I began to resent the occasional noisy intrusions of other hunters. At times, I felt a contentment so deep that it seemed I was absorbed in a timeless dream, dreaming the forest’s dream of itself. As this capacity developed in me, I ceased to care whether or not I saw deer, and largely lost my desire to kill one. It was enough just to be in the bush, to be with the bush. It also became entirely irrelevant how I was dressed (other than being protected from the elements) and whether or not I had a weapon. Eventually, I started to look on my bow and arrows, my hunting camouflage and boots, not as hunting gear for killing game, but as camouflage gear to hide me from other hunters. They would all think I was out there to get my buck! They would all think I was one of them. But in fact I only appeared to be one of them. Little did they know that, once I was in the forest, my main goal was just to sit!
This transformation from a fidgety twelve-year-old to a contemplative adolescent is an example of the applied technology of simplicity. No thing was required for this rich development of my capacities to see, hear, and feel the forest. Hunting was the occasion, a rationale both my father and I believed in, for something much more important to be taught and learned. I would not have needed to be hunting to learn this; in fact, I didn’t need any thing that the consumer culture could provide. What was necessary was the example of my father’s wisdom, his love of the outdoors, and his patience and generous sharing of this experience with me.
In his utopian novel Island, Aldous Huxley imagined a tropical paradise called Pala. Among many other interesting social innovations, the architects of Palanese society trained thousands of myna birds to call, “Attention! Attention!” and, “Here and now, boys!” to remind the Palanese to sustain mindfulness at all times by paying attention to whatever was happening at the moment. Practicing such attentiveness naturally requires us to slow down the pace of our activities, because we are seeking to become more deeply and intensely aware of each moment, rather than hurrying from one moment to the next.
I once watched a friend prepare a salad. She concentrated very intently on each step of the process, examining the lettuce leaves one at a time as she washed them, gently drying and blotting each one with a moist towel. Next, she washed a sweet red pepper, then carefully dissected it, weighing the knife in her hand, slicing with almost surgical precision. Item by item, she proceeded this way, washing, feeling, smelling, breaking, cutting, placing, and mixing the various living things that would become our meal. As she worked, our conversation was measured, thoughtful, and relaxed. I was as absorbed in watching her as she was in the preparation. The experience was very different from the way we have been taught to perform such tasks.
I am careful not to call North American society “materialistic,” but rather “consumptive.” We have engineered a way of life that equates satisfaction with “throughput,” an awkward but descriptive term that refers to the rate and quantity of things used up, rather than the depth or intensity of experience. A truly materialistic society would love material things and promote their conservation and enjoyment. My friend’s enjoyment of making a salad was not only spiritual but also, paradoxically, very materialistic.
But a consumptive society is neither materialistic nor spiritual. It enjoys less and less as it tries to consume more and more. The very rate at which consumption proceeds virtually negates the possibility of attentiveness and mindfulness. We don’t pay attention to the sources of the things we use, or to the effects of making and harvesting them, or to the experience of using and enjoying them, or to the consequences of having used them. Despite promises to the contrary, the consumptive society produces stupor and waste, rather than pleasure and well-made material artifacts.
When my children were experiencing their first few Christmas holidays, I saw a very clear example of how we teach ourselves to forsake mindfulness for consumptiveness. Emerging from their beds on Christmas morning, they found the traditional tree with piles of presents underneath. Being the only grandchildren in the family at the time, they made quite an enormous haul. Each was handed a present and taught how to open it, a skill that right away required them to forgo their obvious delight with the wrapping paper, the soft ribbons, the dangling decorations affixed to the packages. Discovering their first toys of the day, both children settled down to play, thoroughly exploring the possibilities of these new objects. This would have taken all morning, as it should, if not for the adult relatives, whose joy in the season had come to mean experiencing abundance as quantity, rather than as richness. The object of this Christmas-morning exercise was to open presents, not to experience them. It was necessary to get on with the next thing, to stay in motion, to consume. So (not without smiles or gentleness) one present after another was removed to be replaced by an unopened package. I remember the expression of bewilderment on my son’s face as he was trying to understand the meaning of this behavior. Being a child, he learned very quickly. By late morning, opening presents had turned into a pandemonium of ripping paper. By lunch time, all the presents were open, the new toys were scattered in various corners of the family room, and my children were off playing with the empty boxes. They had learned well: life in the consumer society is the moment of newness, the adrenalin rush of discovery, the hypercharged, narcotic-like flash of novelty that goes with “throughput.” Thou shalt not pay attention. Thou shalt not linger. Thou shalt not enjoy. Thou shalt keep moving.
I do not mean to disparage the generous intentions of my family — only to point out a self-defeating illusion to which we are all prone. The real poverty of our generation is that we don’t know how to savor as well as we know how to consume.
“The Technology of Simplicity” is excerpted from Simplicity: Notes, Stories and Exercises for Developing Unimaginable Wealth. © 1995 by Mark A. Burch. It appears here by permission of New Society Publishers, (800) 333-9093.
