There’s a story about a Chinese recluse named Xu You, who watched a mole drink water from a pond. He realized that the mole, when thirsty, only drinks just what it needed. The mole doesn’t bother itself with more more more because it would disrupt his natural order of things. Unlike humans, who often consume much more than they need. We may not drink water in excess, but we certainly fill more than just our stomachs up with items that just sit around, collecting dust.
Consumption comes with a price as well as resources, labor and other marketing schemes required to keep up with the latest consumers and its competition. Meaning, many people are willing to work themselves into an early grave as they accumulate without ever wondering to themselves, “who am I really buying this for, myself? “I have more, so I am more” is the motto of these individuals obsessed with their worldly possessions with in turn increase their “sense of self”. These are the people who are upgrading their car every year, trading in their iPhone for the latest model and they see this need to “keep up” with the latest trends so they may display their wealthy lifestyles.
There’s a movement in our society known as minimalism. From Maria Kondo’s philosophical approach to decluttering our home and sparking joy to interior designers creating a false sense of the concept with their "minimalistic homes”. So, what exactly is a minimalist? Well, minimalists are people who have turned their backs to overconsumption and decided to live with the essentials and not a thing more. Even though it’s recently been trending in the states, minimalism is a concept that people have been practicing for centuries. There’s a sense of freedom in simplicity, and not possessing much, which many sages and philosophers have experienced time and time again. They saw that possessions don’t define who we are and that this fixation on external things prevents us from experiencing life to the fullest.
Minimalism can be understood in various ways such as living with the bare essentials to reducing clutter. In other words: to keep it simple. However, there are certain forms of minimalism that are a bit extreme. For example, extreme asceticism which is intended towards going below the minimum.
When Prince Siddharta Gautama lived as an ascetic he ate one grain of rice a day so eventually his body grew gauntly thin. It makes sense that you are “consuming” less, however, this practice will eventually lead to self-destruction. Siddharta Gautama concluded that enlightenment is not found by punishing the body. He would then quit this ascetic lifestyle before being the Buddha.
The power behind minimalist living, which is that our baseline happiness is achieved with a minimal amount of resources, and is detached from status and wealth. This can be difficult to accept when our ideology of his culture is capitalistic. This has everything to do with how we collectively value social status. And that social status isn’t measured by one’s virtue or spirituality, but by the car one drives, the house one lives in, the furniture one possesses, and the clothes one wears. What we have seems to determine our place in this capitalistic system.