Eating Up Our World

Greed seems to be the enthroned delusion recommended every day in every way in Western culture. Greed is an aggrandizing and expanding of the self at the expense of everyone and everything else. We are actively encouraged to overspill our actual needs and pursue endlessly and aggressively created wants that are designed always to outstrip satisfaction. Hungry ghost, in traditional Chinese and Japanese lore, have a ravenous appetite coupled with a severely constricted throat. Unsurprisingly, they live in a state of extreme irritability and acute anxiety. As hungry ghosts we can never know the calm and confidence of "enough." The economy calls for the anguish of unstinting greed, calling it "consumer confidence." As hungry ghosts, we are eating up our world.

---Upside-Down Zen, by Susan Murphy---