Today's spam haiku:

Brandon Lim spindle
Perfect Breitling Replica
Stop ignoring me.

After a short day at work (arrived late, closed the office at 2:30), I stopped by the Lexus dealer and picked up my new IS 250. 11 miles on the odometer. New car smell. I drove home and watched some movies ("Kontroll," "The Story of the Weeping Camel") on my new flatscreen. As the Gang of Four once sang, "To Hell With Poverty."

In 2000, before I started following the Zen path, I went through a short period of materialism, purchasing, in a very short period, the now Unsellable Condo in Vinings, the now traded-in 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee, and the now broke-down 50-inch Mitsubishi projection t.v., among other things. I felt no connection to any of the purchases however - they were unmistakably mine, but they were in no sense any projection, as I had hoped, of my ego-self. In short, although they all functioned as advertised (at least for 5 years or so), they did not satisfy.

I didn't begin my Zen studies because of this, but it is illustrative of my frame of mind before I started.

Now, having renounced the concept of ego-self, even though I still find myself clinging to the delusion, the new possessions are now mere skillful means to an end - a television to entertain and pacify my mind during quiet times, a car for transportation. These things are not me, I am not these things. These things do not own me, I do not own these things.

Everything has buddha-nature - dogs, cars, televisions, blogs, bloggers, you.

Now excuse me, I have to go drive somewhere.