By Andy Wistreich, our 'Society' correspondent

I recently returned from pilgrimage to Buddhist sacred places in Nepal and Tibet. While I was away, Occupy Bristol took over College Green.  Like the camp at St Pauls Cathedral and the ones in the US it seems to be inspired by the camp in Tahrir Square in Cairo earlier this year.  

The protesters claim to represent the 99% of us who are not top bankers, company directors and so forth.  Last Friday it was reported that directors of UK top businesses increased their salaries last year by 49%. The highest earner is on £18M per year.  I wonder what he does with all that money!

In Nepal and Tibet everywhere I saw even very poor people radiating the joy in their hearts.  I doubt that those directors with their huge salaries are half as happy as the typical poor Tibetan or Nepali. 

Inner contentment brings deep happiness.  It comes from not craving more than you need. Greed, however, creates constant dissatisfaction.

This endless craving for more that drives our society comes from our collective feeling of a big hole inside us that always needs filling up.  We are like someone who never stops eating because he’s never satisfied.  For him food is no longer a means to sustain the body – it has become an attempt to numb out the hollow feeling of meaninglessness at his heart.

This craving and greed can never be satisfied.  Of course life isn’t perfect there, and there are many economic hardships as well as political constraints on personal freedom, but I think the people I encountered in Nepal and Tibet are happier than most people here, because they haven’t yet developed this terrible consumerist disease, at least not collectively. 

The only way to cure this disease is to transform the mind to one of contentment, and their culture encourages this.  If promoting such a spirit here is an objective of the College Green protests, I for one am filled with hope and I support them.