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According to the Buddhist monastic code, monks and
nuns are not allowed to accept money or even to engage in barter or
trade with lay people. They live entirely in an economy of gifts. Lay
supporters provide gifts of material requisites for the monastics, while
the monastics provide their supporters with the gift of the teaching.
Ideally -- and to a great extent in actual practice -- this is an
exchange that comes from the heart, something totally voluntary. There
are many stories in the texts that emphasize the point that returns in
this economy -- it might also be called an economy of merit -- depend
not on the material value of the object given, but on the purity of
heart of the donor and recipient. You give what is appropriate to the
occasion and to your means, when and wherever your heart feels inspired.
For the monastics, this means that you teach, out of compassion, what
should be taught, regardless of whether it will sell. For the laity,
this means that you give what you have to spare and feel inclined to
share. There is no price for the teachings, nor even a "suggested
donation." Anyone who regards the act of teaching or the act of
giving requisites as a repayment for a particular favor is ridiculed as
mercenary. Instead, you give because giving is good for the heart and
because the survival of the Dhamma as a living principle depends on
daily acts of generosity.
The primary symbol of this economy is the alms bowl.
If you are a monastic, it represents your dependence on others, your
need to accept generosity no matter what form it takes. You may not get
what you want in the bowl, but you realize that you always get what you
need, even if it's a hard-earned lesson in doing without. One of my
students in Thailand once went to the mountains in the northern part of
the country to practice in solitude. His hillside shack was an ideal
place to meditate, but he had to depend on a nearby hilltribe village
for alms, and the diet was mostly plain rice with some occasional boiled
vegetables. After two months on this diet, his meditation theme became
the conflict in his mind over whether he should go or stay. One rainy
morning, as he was on his alms round, he came to a shack just as the
morning rice was ready. The wife of the house called out, asking him to
wait while she got some rice from the pot. As he was waiting there in
the pouring rain, he couldn't help grumbling inwardly about the fact
that there would be nothing to go with the rice. It so happened that the
woman had an infant son who was sitting near the kitchen fire, crying
from hunger. So as she scooped some rice out of the pot, she stuck a
small lump of rice in his mouth. Immediately, the boy stopped crying and
began to grin. My student saw this, and it was like a light bulb turning
on in his head. "Here you are, complaining about what people are
giving you for free," he told himself. "You're no match for a
little kid. If he can be happy with just a lump of rice, why can't
you?" As a result, the lesson that came with his scoop of rice that
day gave my student the strength he needed to stay on in the mountains
for another three years.
For a monastic the bowl also represents the
opportunity you give others to practice the Dhamma in accordance with
their means. In Thailand, this is reflected in one of the idioms used to
describe going for alms: proad sat, doing a favor for living beings.
There were times on my alms round in rural Thailand when, as I walked
past a tiny grass shack, someone would come running out to put rice in
my bowl. Years earlier, as lay person, my reaction on seeing such a
bare, tiny shack would have been to want to give monetary help to them.
But now I was on the receiving end of their generosity. In my new
position I may have been doing less for them in material terms than I
could have done as a lay person, but at least I was giving them the
opportunity to have the dignity that comes with being a donor.
For the donors, the monk's alms bowl becomes a symbol
of the good they have done. On several occasions in Thailand people
would tell me that they had dreamed of a monk standing before them,
opening the lid to his bowl. The details would differ as to what the
dreamer saw in the bowl, but in each case the interpretation of the
dream was the same: the dreamer's merit was about to bear fruit in an
especially positive way.
The alms round itself is also a gift that goes both
ways. On the one hand, daily contact with lay donors reminds the
monastics that their practice is not just an individual matter, but a
concern of the entire community. They are indebted to others for the
right and opportunity to practice, and should do their best to practice
diligently as a way of repaying that debt. At the same time, the
opportunity to walk through a village early in the morning, passing by
the houses of the rich and poor, the happy and unhappy, gives plenty of
opportunities to reflect on the human condition and the need to find a
way out of the grinding cycle of death and rebirth.
For the donors, the alms round is a reminder that the
monetary economy is not the only way to happiness. It helps to keep a
society sane when there are monastics infiltrating the towns every
morning, embodying an ethos very different from the dominant monetary
economy. The gently subversive quality of this custom helps people to
keep their values straight.
Above all, the economy of gifts symbolized by the
alms bowl and the alms round allows for specialization, a division of
labor, from which both sides benefit. Those who are willing can give up
many of the privileges of home life and in return receive the free time,
the basic support, and the communal training needed to devote themselves
fully to Dhamma practice. Those who stay at home can benefit from having
full-time Dhamma practitioners around on a daily basis. I have always
found it ironic that the modern world honors specialization in almost
every area -- even in things like running, jumping, and throwing a ball
-- but not in the Dhamma, where it is denounced as "dualism,"
"elitism," or worse. The Buddha began the monastic order on
the first day of his teaching career because he saw the benefits that
come with specialization. Without it, the practice tends to become
limited and diluted, negotiated into the demands of the monetary
economy. The Dhamma becomes limited to what will sell and what will fit
into a schedule dictated by the demands of family and job. In this sort
of situation, everyone ends up poorer in things of the heart.
The fact that tangible goods run only one way in the
economy of gifts means that the exchange is open to all sorts of abuses.
This is why there are so many rules in the monastic code to keep the
monastics from taking unfair advantage of the generosity of lay donors.
There are rules against asking for donations in inappropriate
circumstances, from making claims as to one's spiritual attainments, and
even from covering up the good foods in one's bowl with rice, in hopes
that donors will then feel inclined to provide something more
substantial. Most of the rules, in fact, were instituted at the request
of lay supporters or in response to their complaints. They had made
their investment in the merit economy and were interested in protecting
their investment. This observation applies not only to ancient India,
but also to the modern-day West. On their first contact with the Sangha,
most people tend to see little reason for the disciplinary rules, and
regard them as quaint holdovers from ancient Indian prejudices. When,
however, they come to see the rules in the context of the economy of
gifts and begin to participate in that economy themselves, they also
tend to become avid advocates of the rules and active protectors of
"their" monastics. The arrangement may limit the freedom of
the monastics in certain ways, but it means that the lay supporters take
an active interest not only in what the monastic teaches, but also in
how the monastic lives -- a useful safeguard to make sure that teachers
walk their talk. This, again, insures that the practice remains a
communal concern. As the Buddha said,
Monks, householders are very helpful to you, as
they provide you with the requisites of robes, almsfood, lodgings, and
medicine. And you, monks, are very helpful to householders, as you
teach them the Dhamma admirable in the beginning, admirable in the
middle, and admirable in the end, as you expound the holy life both in
its particulars and in its essence, entirely complete, surpassingly
pure. In this way the holy life is lived in mutual dependence, for the
purpose of crossing over the flood, for making a right end to
suffering and stress.
-- Iti 107
Periodically, throughout the history of Buddhism, the
economy of gifts has broken down, usually when one side or the other
gets fixated on the tangible side of the exchange and forgets the
qualities of the heart that are its reason for being. And periodically
it has been revived when people are sensitive to its rewards in terms of
the living Dhamma. By its very nature, the economy of gifts is something
of a hothouse creation that requires careful nurture and a sensitive
discernment of its benefits. I find it amazing that such an economy has
lasted for more than 2,600 years. It will never be more than an
alternative to the dominant monetary economy, largely because its
rewards are so intangible and require so much patience, trust, and
discipline in order to be appreciated. Those who demand immediate return
for specific services and goods will always require a monetary system.
Sincere Buddhist lay people, however, have the chance to play an
amphibious role, engaging in the monetary economy in order to maintain
their livelihood, and contributing to the economy of gifts whenever they
feel so inclined. In this way they can maintain direct contact with
teachers, insuring the best possible instruction for their own practice,
in an atmosphere where mutual compassion and concern are the medium of
exchange; and purity of heart, the bottom line.
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