Begging & it's place in spirituality

[3bob]

Begging and its place in spirituality:

 

I think it's a big topic which I believe hasn't been touched on much at this site....

 

In many "western" cultures begging is often looked down on although helping someone down on their luck is not, but that is different than the begging in cultures where it is accepted or recognized for certain people and thus not looked down on.

 

A problematic aspect is when or if it is found out that some people are faking it or taking advantage those who do or would give donations - then those that really need help (and are not faking it in any way) are less likely to be given help from those who feel they have been taken advantage of.

 

The most sincerely needy beggars I have ever seen are in India!  Many people are barely getting by there along with many that are not... further, one can often feel or make a spiritual connection with those who are begging to get food so they can live and have hope for just one more day of life!  People in such conditions bring survival and spirituality to an immediate and clear-cut point where one is glad to be able to help another person survive and ease some of their suffering!  (which is also a blessing for the help giver)

 

open discussion for your thoughts and experiences:

Edited March 25, 2015 by 3bob

[liminal_luke]

Where I live (Zacatecas, Mexico) children, often very young children, wander through downtown cafes and restaurants asking for money.  I don´t have anything to say about this other than I think it´s sad.

[MooNiNite]

money is a representation of value.

[MooNiNite]

If money did not exist, what would the begging children be doing instead?

[Marblehead]

Hi 3bob,  Yes, different cultures treat begging differently.

 

I will speak only to the spirituality aspect of this concept.

 

Buddhists are known for the requesting of alms (begging).  But they do give back to the giver of alms.  So I look at it more as recieving payment for a service.

[3bob]

MH, In a way such would not really be a "spiritual aspect" if both parties expected something either way... it would then be more like business and or of terms related to a deal.

[Marblehead]

MH, In a way such would not really be a "spiritual aspect" if both parties expected something either way... it would then be more like business and or of terms related to a deal.

While what you say is true, reality is what it is.  You know me, I can't see beyond reality.

 

There aren't many people who can live up to the standards of a Mother Teresa.

[Cheshire Cat]

What is missing in the West is the figure of the "worthy beggar": the spiritual seeker supported by the community because he represents High spiritual value and because he brings "good luck".

 

Apart from this special spiritual figure, begging is a disease of non-tribal societies.

Obviously, beggars are not to be blamed: may they be happy and may they be helped by good-hearted people.

[Taoist Texts]

MH, In a way such would not really be a "spiritual aspect" if both parties expected something either way... it would then be more like business and or of terms related to a deal.

yes thats exactly  what it is. Why should not it be a deal? Or why its not spiritual?

[3bob]

if a lot of preconceived conditions and or judgment's started getting attached to the situation they could override or wipe out the compassion and joy of any spontaneous giving from the heart,  - also if you will such a spontaneous act might described as an aspect of  wu-wei working in the world... granted there are established norms of householders supporting monasteries' which has its place and is or can be more or less like a pre-planned and accepted "deal"; on the other hand a situation may arise that puts one outside of what can devolve into a solely materialistic and or mechanical like pre-planned conditional action/reaction.

Edited March 25, 2015 by 3bob

[Marblehead]

I dont disagree with you 3bob.  And I am sure there are many who fit into the condition you speak of.

[thelerner]

this may be a little off topic; when I was 24 and back packing around Europe and the Middle East, it took a while before I was comfortable taking gifts/meals from strangers.  I traveled w/ some Australians and they pretty much expected a couple meals a week from tourists.   I picked up there habits and soon invited into restaurants, trading stories and travel advice from the tourist class.  A distinctly different bunch then the backpack/hostel group. 

 

It was good for me, I learned an interesting mix of humility and hubris.  It was good for them too.  Every now and then if I see a backpacking world traveler I'll pick up a tab. 

[voidisyinyang]

Last year, Oxfam reported that the world’s 85 richest people have the same wealth as the poorest 50 percent (3.5 billion people). This year, Oxfam said the reality has become even more worrisome, with just 80 people owning the same amount of wealth as more than 3.5 billion people.

 

 

http://rt.com/news/223963-oxfam-wealth-davos-report/

 

We live in a very messed up planet. People have been mind-controlled just like Nazi Germany to blame the poor.

 

Voluntary poverty is seen as a statement against the materialism not just of the wealthy few but of those who aspire to be like the wealthy few.

 

There was a long debate in China about Buddhists living off the imperial money funding their monasteries versus Taoists living off more self-funded means - and of course sometimes the powers that be backed the Taoists....

 

Sometimes this issue aligns with the techniques used in meditation - for example in Thailand the forest monks are considered "power monks" using full lotus while the Theravedan mind meditation monks don't make as much spiritual power. So then the military regime funds the forest monks with lots of money - and this is ironic since for the forest monks to get meditation power they had needed to live secluded lives.

 

And similarly Ramakrishna in India was said to be shaken out of samadhi trance if someone put money in his hands - just the touch of it was evil to him. Yet the Ramakrishna Society was too expensive for most aspiring students to join, as Professor Hugh B. Urban documented, and so the poor had to become tantric students, relying on more familial paths with not as much celibacy focus and so not as much spiritual power.

 

We are taught in the West through the protestant work ethic that sublimating your life force energy, as per Freud, enables you to make more money - so to be more spiritual means to be more wealthy. But this is an individualist approach that ignores the inherent logarithmic distribution of wealth based on the logarithmic distribution of and development of resources, based on logarithmic math.

 

There's a good book exposing the lies of this family work ethic approach to wealth -

 

Fiction, Famine, and the Rise of Economics in Victorian Britain and Ireland

 By Gordon Bigelow

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=BLIwbbcbuKcC&pg=PA97&lpg=PA97&dq=economics+victorian+dickens+wealth+ireland&source=bl&ots=e4qOIZi2LW&sig=gMczHyiWN-_eGToUe94IL7c88xo&hl=en&sa=X&ei=p2sTVbGZCoGjgwSIiIKYBg&ved=0CCkQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=economics%20victorian%20dickens%20wealth%20ireland&f=false

 

googlebooks

 

So basically this book exposes how the genocidal starvation of Ireland was justified by this boot-strap free market lies about the family sublimation racket.

 

"the metaphysics of circulation" as a proper household and therefore a proper economy....

 

"in this evangelical system, work and profit were understood as spiritual deities, steps towards salvation, rather than signs of social good."

 

The Irish were considered lazy since they didn't fit into the proper sublimation model for commodification of the money economy.  http://eh.net/book_reviews/fiction-famine-and-the-rise-of-economics-in-victorian-britain-and-ireland/

 

Basically this is a spiritual bait and switch by equating gold as money with spiritual solar wealth and then arguing that the spiritual wealth is infinite and so the gold can be converted to paper money for infinite investments that anyone can access. But in reality the paper money is inherently tied into a logarithmic distribution system of investment and technology, etc. as capitalism. Material wealth obviously is not infinite. There has to be "structural unemployment" since capitalism relies on automation to keep labor costs down - from an oversupply of labor.

 

So this is also what happened with qigong in China as exposed by Professor David Palmer's book Qigong Fever.

 

So at first there were thousands of different qigong styles and the masses in the 1980s used it as a sublimation practice to build up energy - but then the government co-opted the training and enforced very expensive entry fees for the qigong training. So then the other mass-focused styles were outlawed - like Falun Gong which relied on free teaching by volunteers with free photocopy of training materials. So then the real qigong masters were controlled by the government as "national treasures" like Yan Xin and his mass healings were stopped since it was too difficult to control the masses.

 

So then qigong became like a "vanishing mediator" -  a means for China to modernize with the masses sublimating the energy but then the government took that energy and focused into a Westernization of the economy for a quick industrialization and the spiritual goals of the qigong

training were quickly downplayed. Real spiritual training once again became too expensive for the masses and the spiritual focus was brutally attacked as with Falun Gong being tortured and Tibetans tortured.

 

Automation is also the number one cause of job loss in China.

 

Basically whether it was India or China or the West - spiritual training has been pushed into a logarithmic hierarchical economic system with cults shaped on a pay as you go - the more you pay the more you climb up the pyramid for better access to the leader. Most of the time the spiritual leaders are fake. This was well exposed on the documentary on transcendental meditation - https://www.linktv.org/programs/david-wants-to-fly

 

David Wants to Fly

 

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/davidwants2fly

 

watch it there in Germany I guess.

 

 

 

Tibet was a hierarchical feudal system also with the masses often being beaten and starving - but each member of the family was able to have a monk live a better material life while also striving for spiritual enlightenment.

 

So Buddhism was at least a reformation of the caste system of India which kept that inequality locked into the family people were born in. Then in southeast Asia - every male member of the family joins a monastery for a brief period to consider whether to become a monk for life. But what's happened in Thailand with modernization is that the monasteries instead are being used as the last resort for the poor who can't find work and so often people become monks who have no interest in spirituality at all - and so those monks have actually formed gangs of thugs in the monasteries.

 

http://thecnnfreedomproject.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/04/gang-profits-from-maimed-child-beggars/

 

These gangs then actually injure children on purpose for begging - this was made famous in the Bollywood-Hollywood film recently -

 

 

They also bashed his skull with a brick.

Investigators say members of a criminal gang were trying to force the boy to become a beggar on the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital.

 

The boy was slashed many times, his healed wounds now forming a large cross in scar tissue across a section of his chest and from his throat to his pelvis. Investigators with Bangladesh’s elite police force, the Rapid Action Battalion, say the gang members were trying to kill him because he refused to beg and would be able to identify them to the police.

 

But he survived, and he and his family have been placed in a witness protection program. The boy is now the star witness in a case that has exposed a criminal gang that, according to investigators, has snatched children off the streets, maimed them and sent them out to beg for money. It is a case depicted in the Oscar-winning movie “Slumdog Millionaire,” in which a child is kidnapped and blinded in order to increase sympathy from the public and bring money to gangs. Pity pays.

 

 

This was true even in Korea with mothers injurying their own children so they could become "legitimate" beggars.

 

China's Fake Monks: Gangs Of Men Use Buddhism To Cheat Tourists

 

http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-fake-monks-gangs-men-use-buddhism-cheat-tourists-1091796

 

Fake Thai monks beg in Singapore DPA, Jull 9, 2007

Singapore -- Bogus monks and nuns from Thailand have been collecting alms from Singaporeans and evading police by making speedy getaways, The Sunday Times reported.

 

Numbering as many as 100, they take refuge in a four-storey hotel in the red-light district of Geyland.

 

http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=57,4451,0,0,1,0#.VRN1gpNjcxI

 

Yeah so unfortunately begging is not the best way to deal with a person's poverty since the money can just be used to prop up someone's vices.

 

There were some "gutter punks" in my old neighborhood - which became yuppie but was known for having punk rockers back in the mid-80s. So they were begging to get their travel money as they were sleeping outside and jumping trains I guess. I knew they were the real deal but the yuppies were not so sympathetic to them.

 

So I sat in full lotus on the sidewalk with them and so the yuppies appreciated that personal "sublimation" of energy for materialist gain and so gave the gutter punks more money. haha.

 

Maybe I will have to resort to that for a living - but the loitering and begging laws as such - I think you have to "Keep moving" if you're on a sidewalk and its enforcement varies depending on the status of the person, etc.

 

Monk’s at East Pattaya temple fight over accusations of stolen money from donation box

 

 

 

http://teakdoor.com/thailand-and-asia-news/77908-pattaya-buddhist-monk-gang-beat-up.html

 

I actually moved into a Buddhist monastery that my friend set up - Burmese style - but I could read the energy of the monk they had brought over from Burma - and he was a perv! I left in the middle of the night in the cold rain. haha.

 

A big problem with the buddhist monasteries is that because of Westernization the community of laypersons have taken charge of the monasteries so it is more "democratic" - but the problem is that they are not skilled in spiritual training and they don't really respect real spiritual training since they don't understand it - instead the monasteries are turned into training centers for charity work or educational work and the real spiritual training is lost. So the monasteries essentially become like Western churches.

 

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1370&dat=20020316&id=3JkVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=nQsEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4064,1738516&hl=en

 

monks gang raping a women in Thailand - again a lot of fake monks out there - why? Because at least they get housed and fed.

 

 

Last September, authorities seized nearly £470,000 of assets, including a Porsche and a Mercedes-Benz, from a monk who was defrocked for a controversial trip in a private jet and who was also accused of fathering a child by an underage girl a decade earlier.

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/19/monks-bad-behaviour-hotline-thai-buddhist-authorities

 

New "bad monk" hotline in Thailand.

 

I mean obviously the monasteries in Thailand have been a great way to feed people and provide services - better than the churches in the West even though they do a great deal.

 

But overall charity is a very weak way of addressing poverty compared to having job programs and increasing wages, etc.

 

http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/03/01/thailand-buddhism-idINKBN0LX13V20150301

 

I would say the real issue about spiritual begging is a structural materialism in modern society that does not allow for a real training based on real spiritual infinity as it was understood in ancient times.

 

 

fearing millions of dollars in temple donations and a rapidly modernising nation are corrupting monks.

 

So here a monk is saying all the donations to Buddhist temples are corrupting Buddhism.

 

 

Surrounded by verdant green rice fields at Wat Or Noi temple, Issara said he wants better oversight of temple finances and to shake up the fossilised structure of Thai Buddhism.

"Buddhism in Thailand is a poisoned fruit. The highest level of the Buddhist religion has turned out to be the devious one," he told Reuters in an interview.

 

Buddha Issara's quest began last month when the Supreme Sangha Council (SSC), Thai Buddhism's governing body, cleared the abbot of Dhammakaya temple over allegations by the military government's National Reform Council (NRC) that he embezzled some 900 million baht ($28 million) in donations.

The Dhammakaya temple members include some of Thailand's most powerful politicians and is regarded as the country's richest Buddhist temple.

 

 

http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/03/01/thailand-buddhism-idINKBN0LX13V20150301

 

I was actually considering being a monk in Thailand - but realized it was just too much - it's been too westernized.

 

 

worldly temptations are everywhere and temples are flush with cash.

 

I would say this is exactly why training is so difficult.

 

For example the qigong master quit his job and became homeless so he could train qigong full time and he had rely on the charity of his friends to survive - and most importantly the charity of the original qigong master who let him train in the qigong center - but that was because he had the best aura of any of the other qigong students. haha.

 

But real voluntary poverty like that is a dangerous situation and yet - a constant threat considering 25% of people working in the U.S. make $10 an hour or less - and so homelessness is a very near threat for a lot of people.

 

For example I heard about a boy in North Korean who begged for food by searching for single grains of rice! That's how he tried to survive - and why? Because the U.S. has sanctions against north korea and so there is a lot of starvation there. The sanctions against Cuba cause even the toilet paper to be rationed and so you use only a half sheet of toilet paper at a time. The sanctions against Iraq starved to death at least 1.5 million people - and yet these crimes against humanity are not focused on in the news in the U.S. since they would challenge the logarithmic distribution of wealth system of  the capitalists.

 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/sanctions-of-mass-destruction-smd-us-sponsored-economic-blockade-destroys-north-korea-s-health-care-system/20215

 

Review: Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity

 

http://books.google.com/books/about/Wandering_Begging_Monks.html?id=-kUjt5yLMIkC

 

So a new book documenting how begging monks in 4th century Europe were patronized by the rich and were a powerful independent voice to help organize the monasteries of the church.

 

I actually lived as a part-time beggar - I worked at an environmental nonprofit for many years - where the main job there was soliciting funds. For most people this was beer money beyond their immediate needs. So for me I just worked part-time in the office - I didn't have to beg - and so then I dumpster-dived for food - I did that for 10 years but before that I did beg for environmental nonprofits - going door to door asking for donations - for full time job for 2 summers. It's horrendous work and very humbling - but some people who did it on the phones actually did the job just because they could make more money than at other jobs and they could really not care that much about whether the money was put to good use for the cause, etc. So that's why I stopped any donations for people calling me - because besides being very poor myself - I have paid my dues in that racket. haha. There is a good book on that called Activism Incorporated.

 

So yeah in Egypt in the 4th Century A.D. the wandering monks were starving to death and so formed monasteries doing manual labor to feed themselves - but this soon became a charge against them being more concerned about food than spiritual training.

 

The real monks supposedly just at wild plants that were gathered - much like Milarepa lived off stinging nettles, so much that his skin turned green.

 

 

But because ascetics competed with these "involuntary poor" for alms, at Ancyra Nilus fretted about idle monks as parasites who were abusing their spiritual vocation.

 

So when the monks did resort to begging they became outcasts for being considered too lazy not to do manual labor. A kind of catch-22.

 

http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2003/2003-02-09.html

 

So the final deciding factor was how the elite tried to sway the masses to give them their alms - as the bishops and the influence of the wandering begging monks in who would be the bishops- the final result being the bishops outlawing the begging monks.

 

The presence of both wandering monks and wandering barbarians forced a redefinition of the exact meaning of civilization.

 

This is also very similar to Thailand - were the forest monks are used to evangelize and convert the indigenous non-Buddhist communities still self-sufficient in the jungles.

 

So at best we can say that begging is a kind of parasitism of the urban environment - even villages - whereas before that the real ascetics lived off the land in the more verdant areas relying on wild plants, etc.

Edited March 26, 2015 by Innersoundqigong

[3bob]

"So at best" (?) I do not agree with your ending summation... but thanks for all the information to consider.

 

 

Edited March 26, 2015 by 3bob

[9th]

This is an extremely interesting topic to me, because it touches on the economics of cultivation traditions that are largely removed from the marketplace.  Its a strange situation to me, I personally see it as trappings of civilized humanity which devalues what has been called "spirituality".

 

In the past, especially in terms of asian buddhism, begging is supposed to have benefits all around - it humbles the beggar, and allows the benefactor to feel they have helped someone .. and also, crucially, they get "merit" or good karma for it.  People who are unfamiliar with buddhism as it has been practiced in the east (since ancient times) will not understand how much of a big deal "merit" is.

 

And the concepts extends beyond that, certainly - but it seems like a "solution looking for a problem" imho.  

[liminal_luke]

Begging is like kissing: there´s so many ways to do it.  It can be a beautiful invitation to gain merit that fosters good feelings in both parties, or an aggressive shakedown.

 

To answer a previous posters question about what young Mexican children might be doing if they weren´t begging, well, I suppose they might be playing.  Play, after all, is the activity favored by the 5 to 10 year old set all over the world.  Begging is a little bit like cold calling--you have to weather a lot of rejection--and young children just aren´t equipped, in my opinion, for the job.  As a child, my mother-in-law was regularly locked out of the house until she had collected her quota of coins for the day. Good times. 

[3bob]

Another aspect or variation related to us as beggars and helpers but of a rather different context which I believe can also be correlated to the subject is the saying, "cast your bread upon the waters" or "Send your substance [out] over the face of the water that you may find it again many days hence. Give a share to seven, or even to eight, for you cannot know what disaster may come upon the land."

 

 Of which I found the following interpretation, "...The message to be gained from these verses is really not so much "here's how to invest and make money", but rather "don't set your heart on riches, for everything in this world is uncertain". Most of us do not have any "excess capital" laying around, let alone enough to make it worthwhile to ship it off to seven or eight different places. This was certainly true of most of Solomon's original audience as well. In the history of the family of God, the privileged have been few (Matt.10:25; cf. 1Cor.1:26). No, these verses are first and foremost meant to produce a sense of humility in the face of life's uncertainty. We who live from day to day (or more or less so) put our trust in the Lord. But those who have an excess of worldly means are subtly reminded here by Solomon that worldly wealth is in fact a very uncertain thing, even if the ephemeral nature of worldly riches is often blindly ignored by most of those who possess them for a time..."

Edited March 27, 2015 by 3bob

[9th]

Begging would be a way to get by while still avoiding the brunt of bad karma that is intrinsic to civilization. ---I am recalling monastic vows of poverty and a religious ethic that considered even touching money to be a sin... 

 

This is exactly what I mean by a "solution looking for a problem"... although that statement probably doesnt explain it very well.  What I mean to say is that starting off from the perspective of civilization being inherently "sinful" or "evil" or "worldly" as being something inherently opposed to spirituality which is "holy" and "good" and "pure"... is the very root of the issue.  

 

The influences must mix, combine, transform each other into something better than they are individually on their own.