The big uh-oh

It's getting so rough out here on the ocean of Samsara, I am having the Dickens of a time trying to hold on. Just when I think nothing could get worse than drowning in our killer wave of political and financial skullduggery, or being held hostage by the endless army of Armani-suited pirates brandishing lethal agitprop, the kiss of death comes to my nuclear strength moisture cream. I know the Buddha warned that everything changes but what a revoltin' development this is. 

Trust me. I lack the fish-like scales to pass for a mermaid because that cream's claim to be "dry skin therapy" is actually true. Neither cracks nor blotches or scales have erupted on my sandpaper legs since someone handed me a bottle saying: "Try this. I swear by it." Since I don't scratch my hand when it pulls up my leggings, I swear by it too. That's why I freaked when I discovered the cream just wasn't going to be that--and I mean this literally-- into me any more. I knew the relationship was over the second I saw those three little cruel, heartbreaking words placed like ta-da! on my new plastic bottle: New and Improved!

Of course when life serves you graying hair, a thickening waist and drying skin as "new", it serves them with a side of experience. That,  I suppose, is what's "improved", because I've now seen enough of those three little words to know exactly what they mean.


"New" means the company that controls the cream. Some huge, rapacious numbers crunching corporation or equity monster has chewed up the little diligent company that created it.  The gobble gobble of companies ravenous for "sustainability" requires them to kill off all competition and have the products to themselves. That's why the quality of the product becomes beside the point. Without competition they can throw it aside. They bought a name. What made the name is so...so... yesterday.

What's actually "improved" is the new owner's bank account and executive pay. The big conglomerate gives the winning highclass formula to its hackers to copy with cheaper chemicals it can sell for the same price. You know, snake oil in a truffle oil bottle. 

In the 80s the real coconut in the original Body Shop moisturizing shampoo was replaced along with the do-gooding company founder (the sales claim being there just wasn't enough coconut to source, ha ha ha ha ha) and in the 90s the real honey shampoo that kept my dry hair silky went bye bye too. "They're coming out with an improved version," the salesgirl said with a big smile. Well, I new and improved that by shopping elsewhere happily ever after.

When Ross Perot warned against that giant sucking sound of collapse, he could've been talking about the gargantuan feat-seeking maw of the cosmetics industry. All those cute make-up artists with funky products that glam and glow your face have been sucked into the corporate creativity vacuum, neatly reducing the field to just two mega-companies whose factories churn out the same product--profitably packaged  and magically marketed as dozens of different brands! "New and improved" of course with shiny new names that make watermelon slush lipstick "ice pink fire."  I've taken to foiling the greedy bastards by buying relatively cheap drugstore products that actually are the same as those mega-marketed department store brands and don't bring in enough profit to tinker with.

Frankly, what with the daily, endless barrage of "app" and software updates that assault my computer and phone, keeping up with what's new has become a tiresome challenge. It's not just Microsoft  anymore. Even Apple is regularly issuing critical--stop now and install!-- "new and improved" operating.

If it were just my skin cream and lipstick and non-glitched version of iPhoto that got kissed good-bye, maybe I wouldn't be ranting like this. But as I said, it's gotten rough out here: somebody's messing with my lifeboat. The leaders of my beloved weekly Dharma class  have started surfing the "new and improved" wave too. This is really cause for revolting. For 2,500 years Dharma has worked even better than my lubricating cream to eliminate the chafing, blotches and crack-ups of life, but they just gave it the kiss of death.

Since the Buddha's teachings made their way out of India, they have had to adapt themselves to every culture they migrated to in order to survive. We have self-effacing Theravada traditions in Thailand and Burma, stupendous vegetarian cooking in Chinese monasteries and warrior touches like Kyoto and whips in Japan's Zen. 

Much discussion of how Buddhism would adapt to the West has churned since it crossed the Pacific some 50 years ago as geeks bearing the gift of tofu. Unfortunately the major manifestation of all that spin on the American way, the big hint we now have how Buddhism will look in the decades to come, is the American way itself: flashy marketing spiels. Magazines, websites and brand names have spun Buddhism into "happiness", "mindfulness", "well-being", "five minutes to a calmer you!" 

A year ago here in northern California, one of my teacher's smartest lamas was asked by a group of seriously stressed young techies what might help them remember to find time to meditate. To my surprise, he simply said: "Think of the benefits." 

"Why did you say that?" I rushed to ask as soon as they left. "Rinpoche always always always answers that question with "the four thoughts that turn the mind: odds-beating chance of a human birth, impermanence and death, karma and the frustrations of Samsara."

"Yes," he said, smiling. "I know. But I now know Americans. These people didn't want to hear anything difficult. Only happy things. They want only happy."

And nothing makes us more happy than talking about ourselves. Even in Dharma which is supposed to train you in selflessness. So what the Dharma class has now become is a consciousness-raising circle where everyone is all touchy feely about how ten minutes of meditation was for them. We no longer hear the precious, glorious advice of the great masters and get to chew on it to make it more digestible. We get only personal reports of how's it workin' out for ya.  "It's boring," another person who left confided.

It's wrong, the late brilliant Traleg Rinpoche warned, to conflate Buddhism with psychotherapy the way Americans tend to do these days. When I got home I looked at that plastic moisturizer bottle, I realized that's why and how the Mother of all moisturizers, the ocean of Samsara, was being purveyed as "new and improved" too. 
What a really revoltin' development this is.




~Sandy Garson "Wordsmithing to attest how the Dharma saved me from myself!"
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