Living Buddha, Living Christ Review

Living Buddha, Living Christ Review

Hi everyone,

I hope you all have had a great weekend and are ready to start a new week! (I can just feel the groans through the screen haha). Normally, when I write blog posts the main focus is on fashion or specific products or causes, but one thing that I have never really touched on is spirituality. Although to most people spirituality may be a completely different topic altogether, for me it is something that I try to incorporate in all aspects of my life. So for this Sunday Inspiration post I decided to write about a book that I am currently reading by the renowned Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh called ‘Living Buddha, Living Christ’.

UntitledIn this book Thich Nhat Hanh marries the core beliefs of Buddhism and Christianity whilst giving his own anecdotes of encounters where he has been inspired and has encouraged people of other faiths and backgrounds. The idea of finding links between different faiths plays quite an important role in my life as I have been surrounded by people from all walks of life as a child but as I have gotten older my personal beliefs have amalgamated all the other religions and thus been separated from my Christian upbringing – in short it can be quite confusing to understand exactly what beliefs I am committing myself to.

There was one particular part of this book that, so far, has stood out to me the most: Cultivating Compassion – which is a section in chapter seven. Hanh writes about there being Five Precepts in Buddhism that gradually help us to transform and thus transcend suffering. The first precept that is mentioned is the “awareness that lives everywhere are being destroyed” which is the origin of suffering. The recognition of the impermanence of life as a whole is one of the core truths for transcending suffering on a personal level but just focussing on ourselves is equally as limiting as not understanding this truth. Hanh takes this notion one step further by discussing the destruction of life and suffering in relation to killing stating that “No act of killing can be justified. And not to kill is not enough”.  It cannot be the case that we merely strive to ‘not kill’ and not cause suffering on a personal level but “We must also learn ways to prevent others from killing”. There should be a proactive effort to incorporate your belief against suffering as much as you can, especially when you are aware that there is more to be done! This very simple message resonates with me as it is this core belief that inspired my blog in the first place; my blog is not just about the products and causes but about us really embracing these values of kindness and compassion in our life like we do with the values from our cultures. I hope the message resonates with you all as it did with me, regardless of whether you are spiritual and religious or not.

“When we appreciate and honor the beauty of life, we will make every effort to dwell deeply in the present moment and protect all life.”

I hope you all enjoyed my Living Buddha, Living Christ review; I would love to know all of your thoughts on the topic of spirituality & life and whether there is anything (book, film, quote, can literally be anything) that has moved you. For more inspirational posts, click here.

And click here to get your copy of Living Buddha, Living Christ – Thich Nhat Hanh. 

Faux labels

Faux fur has increasingly been dominating the fashion scene, yet the concerns over the production of real fur is not as outdated of a problem as we like to think. Although we are led to believe that most of the major brands and retailers that typically sell faux fur are ethical and just, this is unfortunately not the case, in fact recently the problem of what I like to call ‘faux labels’ has been highlighted on many instances in the past few months. This particular problem is not a simple case of buy from this company and avoid that company due to the fact that the labelling itself cannot be trusted and this requires further investigation into the nature of the companies selling the supposed faux fur products.

Both the Daily Mail and The Sun uncovered the mislabelling on fur products in the past month from major companies like ASOS, TK Maxx, House of Fraser and Sports Direct. In the U.K there are laws that state that any products with fur has to be clearly labelled as to whether or not origin of the fur is from an animal, if this label is not available on the product then it is mostly likely real fur and is also breaking consumer laws. When you look at this problem on a more grander scale it seems to be quite a complex mess, as we in the U.K buy faux fur that looks and feels like real fur but most of our faux fur is imported from countries like China where there is no legislation to govern the production process. In China and across Asia many street animals are slaughtered, mislabelled and sold as faux fur in the U.K and there is not much questioning of the production behind the supposed faux fur due to the cheap availability of it.The price of fur with partial animal origin does not guarantee the living conditions of an animal neither does it justify a ‘humane’ method of obtaining fur.

I personally have difficulties telling the difference between real fur and fake fur so I looked up the different methods online and one that seemed to be (kind of) effective was to pick at strands of the fur and then to burn it to see if it burns like plastic, meaning it’s faux, or if it burns like hair, meaning it’s real. But of course you can’t walk around a store with a lighter and burn the products before you buy it so the safest way would be to do your own research into which companies genuinely do sell faux fur and which companies have a bad reputation of not sticking to their word.

I really do urge you all to become proactive in learning more about the companies that really do sell faux fur and the companies that are misleading. It won’t take as long as you think, there are many different resources available online like the Peta, Humane Society International, Cruelty Free International and Care2 websites as well as many blogs.

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