Common steps and sub-activities
Serving others [charity]
The old fashioned name for this technique is ‘charity’ but this term has become so abused and misused in its meaning that I have picked a name which is more representative of what we are trying to do.
Charity does not mean giving money to charity, it means giving yourself. It means service to others, constant service. Whatever you want to do is replaced by doing what others need – as long as what others want harms and hurts no one or no thing.
Background
These days and it would seem from the quote below in days gone by too, charity was defined as the giving of money or similar to the ‘needy’. So seriously have we western nations taken charity as a virtue, that it is now a state institution, the taking of money from those who are working via taxes and the giving of their money by government to those who are not working whether this is via foreign aid or via social benefits. But again, charity did not originally mean this…………
The Sutra of Hui-Neng – Grand Master of Zen [translated by Thomas Cleary]
Governor Wei said
I have heard that when Bodhidharma first tried to teach Emperor Wu of Liang, the emperor asked ‘All my life I have been building temples, ordaining monks, giving alms and charitable meals; what virtue have I achieved?’ Bodhidharama said ‘In reality, no virtue is achieved’. I do not understand the principle of this, please explain.
The Master said
There really is no virtue achieved; do not doubt the words of the ancient sage. Emperor Wu’s mind was wrong and he did not recognise true teaching. Building temples, ordaining monks, giving alms and charitable meals, is called seeking blessings. Blessings themselves cannot be considered virtue achieved. Virtue is the embodiment of qualities, not cultivating blessings
In effect, you have to be charitable in your action to people, not give them so called charity. It is no use, for example, as a leader starting a war in which thousands are killed, then perhaps writing your memoirs and promising to give a portion to the widows of those killed. The original act of charity would be to not start the war!
The aim of the charitable act is to help you to stop adding to the list of your Desires, and the way it works is by making sure you always think of the other person and their needs first.
By acting charitably towards others on a continual basis, Desires – which are the most stubborn and the biggest block to any form of spiritual experience - are gradually subdued and can be better controlled and even eliminated.
If we take the example above – the start of a war is an act of personal ego, and the writing of memoirs is an act of ego, and the giving of a portion to charity is an act of ego, despite what it may seem, because the objective is to help your own conscience, each act of ego is a block to any form of spiritual experience or influence.
It is worth mentioning that most religions heavily promote the giving of alms and money to them in order that the religions continue. In some ways a bit like giving a subscription to the club you belong to, but this has nothing to do with charity in its true sense. ‘Earning merit’ by giving money to a priest is rather meaningless in spiritual terms, it has no effect at all on your ability to have spiritual experiences. If you want to give money to a priest, it might be better to do it because they have helped you.
There is also another way in which ‘charity’ in its true meaning comes into operation. One of the things that we can access is our Perceptions and possibly the Perceptions of others. It is thus fairly obvious that the more pleasant we can keep these Perceptions the better for the experience. It is, in other words, no use being pleasant and polite to someone, if you are actually thinking unpleasant thoughts about them. The Perceptions will capture both what you said and what you thought, so ‘uncharitable’ thoughts can rebound on you during a spiritual experience and of course may be accessible to others.
The Diamond Sutra - Shakyamuni Buddha
‘Subhuti, what do you think – if someone were to fill the universe with precious substances to use for giving in charity, would this person gain many blessings because of this?’
‘Yes, World Honoured One. The person would gain very many blessings because of this’
‘Subhuti, if blessings had substance, the Realised One would not say that many blessings are gained. Because blessings are non existent, therefore the Realised One says many blessings are gained
Method
How do you do this?
You have to teach yourself. There is gradual tuition of the Will via the use of unselfishness and the constant serving of others. You give and give and give and you give actively, you don’t [like many of our present day charities and clergy] urge others to give – you give. And you serve. If they want and it does not hurt anyone, including the one who has asked, you give and you help.
You do not seek reward, you do not seek for thanks, you do it as an act of genuine charity and and love.
Giving ‘alms’ is giving money and if you happen to have a reasonable amount of money, it needs little thought nor loss of ego. On the contrary it is quite likely to act in the opposite way – to give you a false sense of pride that you gave something to someone.
The objective of a true charitable act is to suppress the Will and your Objectives.
A true charitable act requires activity– you give by doing and by doing without thought of reward and for someone else. In the UK, our scouts used to do ‘bob a job’ which was an act of charity. The little scouts would do whatever job was asked of them by householders, - mow the lawn, cut the hedge, paint the entire house, [no I’m joking] and each time they would be given a shilling [a bob] which is about 10 pence – it wasn’t much even in those days. This 10 pence went into scout organisation coffers.
The saying "Charity begins at home" is used because it is a lot easier to give genuine charity to those around you and near you, but it doesn’t have to be.
I think we need to be aware how very corrupt this term has become and thus how useless many people’s actions are. In medieval Europe, it was customary to 'feast the poor' at the funeral in return for their prayers for the deceased. This is not charity. Institutions may commemorate benefactors by displaying their names, or name buildings or even the institution itself after the benefactors. This then is not charity by the benefactor.
Institutions may be charities or may not. An orphanage is properly regarded as a charity if it actively looks after orphans and perhaps the people looking after the children give their time for free. A hospital may similarly be regarded as a charity if it looks after the sick without charge and without reward. Organizations that visit the homebound, imprisoned, or very old, and actively help them might be charities, if the people who do it are volunteers. But one would be hard pressed these days to find a reason to label many religious institutions as charities, for example, or many organisations that label themselves as charities.
Observations
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- Buddha - Diamond sutra - 04 Charity
- Buddha - Diamond sutra - 08 Merit partakes of the character of no-merit
- Buddha - Diamond sutra - 11 Ganges and sand grains
- Buddha - Diamond sutra - 14 Perfect Peace Lies in Freedom from Characteristic Distinctions
- Dr Seuss - Gerald McBoing-Boing
- Dr Seuss - Green Eggs and Ham
- Dr Seuss - Horton Hatches the Egg 01
- Dr Seuss - Horton Hatches the Egg 02
- Dr Seuss - Horton Hears a Who 01
- Dr Seuss - Horton Hears a Who 02
- Dr Seuss - If I ran the Circus
- Dr Seuss - One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish
- Dr Seuss - The Cat in the Hat 01
- Dr Seuss - The Cat in the Hat 02
- Dr Seuss - The Lorax 01
- Dr Seuss - The Lorax 02
- Dr Seuss - The Lorax 03
- Dr Seuss - To think that I saw it on Mulberry Street
- Dr Seuss - Yertle the Turtle
- Duncan, Isadora - Music is the spiritual wine of humanity
- Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Character - On generosity
- George Harrison - All those years
- Gladstone, William Ewart - LOVE - Serving others [charity]
- Gnostic Gospels - The Gospel of Truth
- Hesiod - Works and Days - Giving, Taking and Thrift
- James - James 2 verses 1 to 26
- Jesus - Luke 18 - Rich men and camels
- Khan, Hazrat Inayat - The Art of Being and Becoming - On the ego
- Khan, Hazrat Inayat – The Art of Being and Becoming - On democracy
- Lalla - Your way of knowing is a private herb garden
- Liszt - Christus-Oratorio - 02 1 Seligkeiten [The Beatitudes]
- Liszt - Christus-Oratorio - 03 2 Stabat mater
- Liszt - Harmonies Poetiques Et Religieuses - 03 Bénédiction de Dieu dans la solitude
- Liszt - Hungarian Rhapsody No 2
- Liszt - Liebestraum - Love's Dream
- Louis Jacolliot - The Bible in India - 04 The Story of Krishna: Preaching the law/disciples/Ardjuna and Sarawasta
- Louis Jacolliot - The Bible in India - 06 The Story of Krishna: Nichdali and Sarasvati
- Louis Jacolliot - The Bible in India - The Thoughts and maxims of Krishna
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from The Third Discourse 01 On the changing world
- Peckover, Priscilla Hannah – quote from Peace and Goodwill, A sequel to the Olive leaf
- Psalm 82
- Rumi - Rubaiyat - A dervish gives freely
- Saint Angiolo Paoli - His gift of multiplying food and drink in the service of the poor and the sick
- Saint Angiolo Paoli - His gift of multiplying food and drink in the service of the poor and the sick – the picnic
- Saint Anskar - Visions of Dying in the Ninth and Nineteenth Centuries - His NDE
- Saint Catharine of Genoa - On the value of undergoing Purgatory whilst alive
- Saint John Joseph of the Cross - He found himself lifted up in the crowd and without touching the ground he was carried right out of the door of the cathedral
- Songs of Flying Dragons – Dedication, Destiny and Serving the common man
- Songs of Flying Dragons – Reducing obligations, Justice and forgiveness
- Songs of Flying Dragons – Reducing threats and employing justice
- Songs of Flying Dragons – Though he was busy with war, he loved the way of the scholar
- Songs of Flying Dragons – Worshipping that which is bigger than us all
- Tarot - 06 Minor Arcana - 04s Power and Desire [Intellect]
- The Lotus Sutra - 02 Expedient Means - 3 The nirvana of no remainder
- The Lotus Sutra - 04 Belief and understanding - 1 Charity and the use of similes
- The Lotus Sutra - 06 Bestowal of prophecy - 2 Subhuti
- The Lotus Sutra - 13 Peaceful practises - 3 Cause effect
- The Lotus Sutra - 13 Peaceful practises - 4 Compassion and patience
- The Lotus Sutra - 16 Distinctions in benefits - 2 His blessings will be such as this
- The Lotus Sutra - 16 Distinctions in benefits - 4 In the evil age of the Latter Day of the Law
- The Lotus Sutra - 17 Benefits of Responding with Joy - 1 When the people hear this Law, all are able to become arhats
- The Means of achieving spiritual experience - Shaivism – 07 The methods of the ‘Bhakta’
- Tirrukural, the - Book 1 from Social Obligation
- Tirrukural, the - Book 1 Gratitude
- Tirrukural, the - Book 1 Hospitality
- Tirrukural, the - Book 1 Love
- Tirrukural, the - Book 2 from Character
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - Commentary on Matthew 9:15
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - Taught in a dream by their guardian angels
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - For the Father incessantly begets his Son
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - God may touch a man from without and from within
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - The sun, moon and the four elements
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Adornment of the Spiritual marriage - Whosoever would know God would go mad
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - The Three Worlds
- van Ruysbroeck, Jan - To be wounded by love is the sweetest feeling
- Wesley, John - Sermon 98 - On Visiting the Sick
- Yassawi - 01 HIKMET 1
- Yassawi - 05 HIKMET 8
- Yassawi - 13 from HIKMET 38
- Yassawi - 20 from HIKMET 75