The Economy of Gifts
by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu
Copyright © 1997 Thanissaro Bhikkhu
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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.
Source:
http://world.std.com/~metta/lib/modern/economy.html