What is important?

Last year I fulfilled a long wish that is to buy a 'toy' car. When we were in Shanghai we had a 'Driver' (Fen) which was wonderful for those late night parties and dinners when you never had to worry about drinking and driving. Our trusty Honda < took us to many cities in China. Later when we moved to HongKong we leased through the company scheme a Volkswagen (a great car with oomph) all was missing was the Audi A4 badges and Fen to drive us. What we did lack however was many places in HK to drive to except the Airport or Clear Water Bay Golf Course. So that vehicle spent more days in the garage than on the road. Fast forward to our time in Kobe and the standard issue Toyota Harrier (Lexus) 4 Wheel Drive was just great with a amazing GPS Navigation system and TV (all in Japanese of course)



For me arriving in the USA meant a chance to really select the car that I wanted rather than from a short-list of cars. The opportunity to drive a sporty BMW 328 was too much of me to deny and that was my choice. For Anna after much deliberation about the planet and focus on the Toyota Prius, with the lack of stock of that vehicle she adjusted her focus ever so slightly to purchase a Mercedes C300.

Now after a year these are just cars....they get us from A to B. We have used the cars to take us to Chicago (the city) and also to the countryside to see Chicago (the band).

But to the real point of this story - what is important?

I've learnt that gas mileage is quite important as we have seen in the past year at the petrol pump. Seat Warmers in the cold of Indy are also quite handy. The All-Wheel drive transmissions that our cars have has proved useful when the roads are slipping and sliding. And the split fold seats for carrying golf clubs and buggies has been an absolute godsend.



However what is really important - is that I'm over the idea of toy cars. I looked at my car the other day and said I have a 'BMW' - great !

So I started to wonder although Buddhism does not take issue with of material goods, it does find fault with people’s attachment to material goods. According to Buddhist theory only greed and desire for material items brings suffering,