The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.
7th March, 2022
Question: Mr. A and Mr. B donate money to buy something for the Sangha. If Mr. A is the one who passes the things to the Sangha, and Mr. B just donates some money, does Mr. A do a superior wholesome deed than Mr. B? Is Mr. A’s fruit from doing this dāna higher than Mr. B?
Than Ajahn: A little bit because majority of the merit is in what you give. As to doing it yourself, or having somebody else to do it for you, this has a very small difference in term of merits, it doesn't make much difference, really!
If you don't have the time to go to the monastery and you ask someone to give this donation on your behalf, you maybe get about 99% of the total merit. If you go to the monastery and give the donation yourself, you get 100% merit. So, there isn’t much difference.
“Dhamma in English, Sep 12, 2021.”
- - - - -
Question: When I donate $5 or $10, my ego is small, but when I donate $1,000 my ego gets bigger. It is also similar to when I am helping out in the temple for an hour, and my ego is smaller compared to when I spend time helping for more hours when my ego is bigger. How should I train myself in order to eliminate/reduce ego and to cultivate detachment from the dāna that I make?
Than Ajahn: When you do dāna, you must do it altruistically and not want anything in return.
You just want to feel good, that is all. People are sometimes confused; especially some Buddhists think that giving to charity will give them a happier/better life. This is not the result that you will get from giving to charity.
The result is to gain a greater sense of well-being, of fullness, of goodness in yourself, that you have done something selfless. You want to eliminate your ego. Giving dāna is one way of cutting down your ego.
And you find doing this hard, because the more you give, the stronger your ego gets and resists your giving. But if you can win this battle over yourself, then it means you have moved forward. So you used to give $5 and now you want to give $10, but when you find it difficult, you must force yourself to do it. If you can do it, you will feel much better than giving the $5, and the next time you will want to give more than that.
And you can do this by asking yourself, ‘do I really need to keep this money?’ If the answer is no, then what do you keep it for? You are not going to use it anyway. When you die, you cannot take it with you.
Why not give it away? When you give it away, you will feel proud that you have done certain things that you could not do before.
You should also think of great people like the Lord Buddha. All these people gave up everything that they had. The Buddha was a prince and was willing to give up his princely life to live like a beggar. If he hadn’t done this, he wouldn’t have become a Buddha.
If you want to be able to be successful in your meditation, you have to be willing to give up everything. So by giving gradually at first, it is just a step-by-step approach to get you more accustomed to giving, to sacrificing, to letting go of your attachments, and to eliminating your ego. These are the things that are important if you want to move forward.
“Dhamma in English, Dec 2, 2014.”
By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
YouTube: Dhamma in English.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g
No comments:
Post a Comment