[Buddha-l] I confess

[Richard Hayes]

Dear denizens,

All right, I will have to begin by admitting that when Tom Head posted an 
announcement that About.com was seeking a "guide" in Buddhism, I looked into 
it. Not for any of the usual honorable reasons, but because I live in a 
decadent empire in which the government cares more about expanding its 
influence in foreign lands than in looking after the health and educational 
needs of citizens at home, as a result of which I have dental and medical 
bills not covered by my outrageously expensive health insurance. What better 
way to make a bit of quick money, I thought, than to be a Dharma Whore. So I 
applied to be a guide. (I figured selling off a bunch of old lecture notes 
was about the aesthetic equivalent of a composer burning his manuscripts to 
provide heat through a winter evening. In other words, it was from listening 
to La Bohème that I got the idea of selling my lectures on Buddhism to pay 
off the dentist.)

Much to my horror, the good folks at about.com pretended to be delighted to 
accept my application and sent me all sorts of material on how to build a 
website to their specifications. It was only after looking at several already 
existing pages on about,com that the enormity of my folly (and my greed) 
struck me. What about.com is really about is advertising. Lots of it. (I 
should have known from the name that the website is all About Commercialism.) 

Mind you, it's all "smart" advertising, of the sort that Google and Amazon.com 
do. Go to Google and type in the word "armadillo" and several advertisements 
discretely appear on your page. Perhaps you're interested in buying a product 
from Armadillo Software company, or perhaps you need a reliable armadillo 
exterminator, or perhaps a good used book on the mating habits of armadillos. 
Or perhaps you'd like to buy a bootleg CD at eBay of music by the famous 
country hip-hop fusion band, Armadillo Roadkill. Or did you mean to 
type "Amarillo"? You get the idea.

Above.com works in the same way. Let's say you're interested in Buddhism. So 
you go to buddhism.about.com. And there you will find, sandwiched in between 
blaring obtrusions advertising such obviously Buddhist products as Vonage 
plans (see Joanna Kirkpatrick's message on yogis and cell phones) and 
hand-knit meditation sweaters and His and Her meditation cushions with 
matching designer cocktail glasses for that post-meditation pre-seduction 
glass of Wild Turkey, a few lines about Buddhist ethics and mindfulness of 
breathing. Bah! In an instant, all my greed and delusion was transformed into 
ill will.

I fired off a testy letter to the good folks at about.com, explaining that 
Buddhism is all about reducing one's desires, not about getting whipped up 
into a fever pitch of debt-producing consumerism by a bunch of garish 
database-induced advertisements screaming at people innocently seeking a 
little bit of information about how to improve the quality of their lives. 

In short, the job of Buddhist guide at about.com is still open. May it remain 
unfilled for as many years as there are grains of sand on the banks of the 
Ganges, or as there are pennies in Bill Gates's piggy bank.

-- 
Richard P. Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes