What about email implies materialism?<p>You&#x27;re also mixing different traditions here, that all have their own perspectives on what monks can and can&#x27;t do.<p>Materialism in the Buddhist sense is about mental attachment. Desire (attachment) stems from the mind, not the object itself (attachment is not a property of the object), and different meditation practices have different techniques to work with that mental attachment. Reducing your possessions is a very effective strategy in reducing attachment--but it certainly doesn&#x27;t do anything without developing mental renunciation simultaneously. I&#x27;m curious if this is an American or Western perspective on poverty--that poverty itself is somehow liberating.<p>In terms of email, there&#x27;s nothing luddite about Tibetan Buddhism. Technology is embraced as another avenue for speech, which the mind can be attentive to.