jet.urgyen wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 3:23 am
tobes wrote: ↑Wed Jan 25, 2023 1:14 am
I'm a bit with the OP on this. Not all the way.
I like HHDL's approach - there is a big cost to big events that he holds, and attendees pay a fee. But at the end, the organisers read out a painstakingly boring balance sheet, and if there is any leftover, it is donated.
Yes there is tendrel and this or that siddha giving gold. But there is also the Buddha Shakyamuni never charging a cent for anything that he taught, and look at the legacy. There is no doubt that charging for Dharma opens the door for all kinds of worldly concerns, institutional corruption et al.
i learned, in this very forum, that it's traditional to charge a fee for vajrayana teachings. that's ok also imo, it is correct.
but imo, it's definitely a horrible crime to charge for sutrayana teachings.
Sadaprarudita Bodhisattva from the 8000 line Prajnaparamita Sutra is often used as an example in commentaries. And Sadaprarudita is seeking only the prajnaparamita teachings, not tantric teachings from Dharmodgata. Dharmodgata lives in a jewelled palace enjoying the five desires with a retinue of 68,000 women, but in order to make offerings to him, the impoverished Sadaprarudita sells his body on the market, cutting off his flesh, extracting blood, and breaking his bones to get the marrow.
How many of us would be willing to donate even some mere possessions of ours for the sake of Mahayana teachings to a millionaire guru?
People talk about the example of Shakyamuni Buddha, but he had several royal patrons, and sponsors like Visakha and Anathapindika whose practice of generosity contributed to his decline in wealth but continued to give anyway. And the jataka tales tell of one lifetime in which the Buddha-to-be sacrificed his own body to hear just a half-verse of dharma.
If we're talking about Mahayana teachings, the offerings we make are for the value of Dharma, not the teacher. And no material amount could possibly be enough to match that value. Isn't that why we offer the mandala - the entire universe, our bodies, all our possessions and merits of the three times? Yes, the teacher should practice generosity of dharma, but is there not a risk of the recipients falling into deep karmic debt by taking it for free, for granted? If we want easy access to the teachings in our own backyard, we need to set up and maintain institutions that can provide the teachings, and this will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Otherwise, it will be up to the individual to travel in search of the teachings, once again limiting the teachings to those who can afford it.
For the record, I run a dharma centre that offers all programmes free of charge, both in-person and streamed online. But we have several very generous donors to rely on. We could not depend solely on the day-to-day contributions of our event participants.