Paying for teachings

[avatamsaka3]

What is the standard in the Tibetan tradition on paying for teachings? I have heard some say that ideally one should not have to pay, for instance, for vajrayana or sutrayana teachings. Is there a text that forbids earning money off the dharma? Is there a rationale that permits one to make money off the dharma, based on the tradition?

[Queequeg]

If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

Joking, but, seriously...

If you can receive the real thing, there should be no question about how much you should give: everything.

On the other hand, you should not have to give more than you can afford.

Last I checked, there is no menu with prices for Dharma.

As for the practical aspect of giving, it costs money to support teachers and facilities. Draw your own conclusions about what you should give.

Texts say be generous without limit. In practice, measure sincerity.

[PeterC]

There have been a few threads on this in the past.

If it's ordained sangha we're talking about, vinaya rules (depending on which recension) may prevent them handling money in the first place. This is stated explicitly in some sutras (e.g. the Maniculaka Sutta, SN42:10).

If we're talking about lay teachers, vinaya doesn't apply. There is a very long-standing tradition, however, that Dharma teachings should not be sold. Generally Dharma teachers try to uphold this tradition and not turn people away due to inability to pay. That said, teaching events incur costs - flights, hotels, booking halls, food, etc. - in some cases quite significant costs for major teachings, and these need to be paid somehow. Teachers also usually have activities to support - monasteries, translation projects, books they want to publish, etc. This all requires money, and for the vast majority of teachers the contributions made are insufficient for the teaching and activities they want to support. It's therefore both reasonable and necessary for organizers of events to set up mechanisms to raise funds, the simplest of which is just fees for events. For the vast majority of teachers these fees are well within students' means, and I've never heard of students with a genuine lack of funds being turned away - indeed quite the opposite, many teachers make funds available for sincere students who want to attend a teaching but cannot afford to do so.

When it comes to the Vajrayana, different traditions apply. Students traditionally make offerings to the teacher, and modesty in this regard is not a virtue: the student is receiving something of inestimable value, and should attempt to reflect that in the offering made. In practice, I don't know of any (non-fraudulent) teacher who takes money from students just because they can. (One of the hallmarks of a fraudulent teacher is that they very quickly create a Ponzi scheme and call it a dharma organization.) I have had teachers ask me for symbolic offerings for specific teachings - for instance, I've had to offer something made of gold for a certain type of teaching, though the size was unimportant.

In general if a teacher really cared about revenues, beyond the broader issue of meeting costs, I would not receive teachings from them. I've never met a teacher like that, fortunately. A number of dharma organizations do care about revenues, but that's not necessarily out of self-interested motivations - they want their teacher to be able to do more, and having more money enables that. However this is a very fine line to walk. The vast majority of people are trying to do the right thing. The most common fault is on the part of students who due to their greed, create rationalizations of why they shouldn't be contributing. The antidote to that is simply to force yourself to make offerings, however small, to break that habit.

[Grigoris]

Please continue the conversation here.