Generosity & Privilege

I visited India and Nepal for the first time on a Buddhist pilgrimage led by Shantum Seth in 2007. The following — which I wrote in Dharamshala, India — is from my 2008 trip.

One of the buildings at Clouds’ End Villa, our guesthouse in Dharamshala

In the courtyard of our guest house, Cloud’s End, some members of our temporary sangha (including me) participated in the Mindfulness Trainings, a ceremony in which laypeople take vows to follow the first five Buddhist precepts. Here’s a basic description of the precepts: They include refraining from harmful speech, refraining from stealing, refraining from intoxicants, refraining from sexual harm, and refraining from killing. I also participated last year, but it’s good to do whenever you have the opportunity.

After the ceremony, the sangha settled back down in chairs and on the lawn to have a talk. We discussed the topics of generosity and privilege, since generosity was such a huge topic in the Dalai Lama’s teachings and so significant to issues we encountered outside the teachings, such as the decision to donate to the Tibetan Children’s Village and the Tibetan Nuns Project.

One of the things for which we should be grateful, and that came up in conversation, is the gift of non-fear: fear, fear of death, how the person who died an hour ago is gone and a new person is there. This includes your work, karma, with mindstream and body-stream not dying but continuing beyond physical…