Author Topic: The poor are more generous?  (Read 10550 times)

pinecone

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Re: The poor are more generous?
« Reply #15 on: August 19, 2014, 06:56:27 AM »
When giving , one must have  good motivations in performing such charity . The essence behind all these act is purely to benefit the recipient and not expecting anything in return and if the giver later expect something in return, therefore it will be classified as battering and not giving. I remembered I happened to  read a story years back about this man who started to contribute 10% of his monthly income (which is USD 240-00 per month), the very moment he started working to the charitable organization every month and this goes on  for years and gradually his monthly income increased to  USD 2,400  and he continued to do likewise until there is a time when his monthly income has grown to USD24,000, he felt a pinch in the 10% which amounted to USD2,400 he has to pledge monthly and eventually, he ceased his contribution. From the story,  we must be always be aware of not letting our generosity be limited to some insignificant amount based on our surrounding i.e the standard of living of the society that we lived in.

eyesoftara

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Re: The poor are more generous?
« Reply #16 on: September 22, 2014, 02:51:37 AM »
There is absolutely nothing wrong with the Buddha's teaching on karma and generosity. The one give the more one gets. It is only from the perception point of view that we see some people who are more miserly getting more back and those who appear to be generous are poor. What I mean is that the timing of the receiving and the poverty does not necessarily be related to the events of this week, month or year or indeed even this lifetime. The poor is poor because of miserliness in a previous life and the rich generosity in a previous life.
This type of confusion is the most common ignorance the non practitioner and indeed even many practitioners have and it can be cleared by studying the dharma.

yontenjamyang

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Re: The poor are more generous?
« Reply #17 on: September 22, 2014, 03:27:06 AM »
It has been said that the rich may not necessarily has good karma and normally thought. It is certain that their wealth was from some generous deeds in the past but the wealth itself may not necessarily means it is good karma. What defines good karma is what they do with the wealth. Whether it is solely to benefit themselves or the benefit others is what defines the karma.
Hence, in this particular topic, the rich who are more miserly; and it seems to be the majority of them; actually generate less good karma for the future compared to the poor.
From the inner perspective, the 4% from poor is many times bigger then the 2% of the income of the rich as we need to that into account the multiples of the income of the rich comparing to the poor as generosity works by how much we have and how much of that we give. So in this case I guess the difference is actually greater than the numbers of percentage given.
From the outer perspective, the aggregate amount of the rich given, I guess should be much more and hence the benefit to others will be greater and hence the good karma generated will be more.