Vegetarianism and voluntary nonconsumption are the pillars of Krishna conscious lifestyle. Hence more on the theme of affluenza and spiritual dehydration from a Christian blogger:
It’s got to start with the small things. The details. That’s where the devil is. You can’t just go after the big, obvious signs. For example, preachers and evangelists here in the South are always talking about extramarital sex, drugs, alcohol, partying, hanging out with the wrong crowd, and on and on. But those things are only symptoms of a deeper disease. Josh Harris wrote a book called Sex Is Not The Problem (Lust Is). That’s true too. You don’t treat lung cancer with cough drops.
Some of us have identified other issues, sins that are easier to hide and more accepted in church circles. Anger. Materialism. Apathy. Quiet greed. Wasting time. The lust of the eyes. The pride of life. Meaningless living. The American dream.
How do we rid ourselves of these things, these traits that are lauded by our culture and have somehow wormed their way into our hearts and minds, seemingly inextricably? Sometimes the way we live here in these United States seems inescapable, a juggernaut that cannot be avoided except by monks or Amish. It seems so entangled with our being that the people of God are not immune, they are walking contradictions, those who are in the world and most certainly of it.
Here’s a way to tell this, if you don’t believe me: look at a Christian’s Myspace/Facebook page. It usually briefly mentions God/Jesus as the Most Important Thing Ever, and then goes on to document and endorse their love of the horrific, the mundane, the mindless, the antichrist (attitude), the utterly selfish, the perverse, the popular, the merely common, normal things that everyone else loves.
How does one begin to live, think, and be different? First step: examine your life’s smallest habits. It takes a trillion grains to make a beach.
August 12, 2008 at 1:09 am
Thank you.
What do you mean by the Krishna “conscious lifestyle?” Do you believe the majority of people lead unconscious lives, and if so what does that mean?
August 12, 2008 at 7:42 am
You’re welcome.
Krishna is another name for God, meaning the “most attractive person”. So it is a way of saying a God conscious lifestyle.
Lifestyle has to do with culture. There is culture, religion and spirituality.
Most people get caught up in current culture, or at best rise to some religious consciousness, but fail to reach the deeper spiritual life. The average person does this out of innocence, and the consumer society does the best it can to keep people thinking they are their body, and that the way to happiness is threw having more material things.
A symptom of someone who starts to derive they happiness from the inner, spiritual connection, is that they start to lose interest in over consumption of material goods. This will be reflected in their lifestyle.