Compassion and Spiritual Materialism

To truly feel a global compassion, one must first mourn and process ones own wounds, but also mourn the fact that life itself, for all humanity, is for all of us sometimes painful. We put on a brave face, make the best of it, sometimes break down, often run, but this truth is there.

It is so much easier, more facile, to conflate niceness with compassion. Nice is an
outer ritual of sorts, an agreeable facade, but it often betrays cowardice and it must be said, confusion.

I have been reading about the “consciousness exploration” of the 1960′, and would echo a phrase from Chogyam Trungpa, that of “Spiritual Materialism”. I would add “experiential Materialism”. This is a topic I have visited before.

What difference is there between greed and
covetousness and social competition for the latest car out of Detroit, or a prime home in the best neighborhood, and those qualities applied to competition for the best guru, highest high, most far out experience, and most “exalted”state?

Can you not have competitions for most setene, or most compassionate?