Sacramento Homeless blog

"Giving away our food we get more strength, giving away our clothes we get more beauty; founding religious rest-places, we reap the perfect fruit of the highest and the best degree of charity, without self-interest or thought of getting more; and so the heart comes back and rests." – Buddha, in his preaching of the Dana Paramita, the Ideal of Charity, as translated in Jack Kerouac's book " Wake Up, a life of the Buddha ."  Sutra translation is by Dwight Goddard, I think. [Also, see quote from "Wake Up" at Google Books .] But this all comes with a caveat [the "without self-interest" part].  To emphasize that, quoting Lao-Tzu (who is Taoist, of course.  Taoist/Buddhist - close enough): "The truly virtuous are not conscious of their virtue. Those of inferior virtue, however, are ever consciously concerned with their virtue and therefore are without true virtue. True virtue is spontaneous and lays no claim to virtue." Thus, as ...

This from NellaLou of the blog Smiling Buddha Cabaret , in a post called " Zizek’s Cultural Capitalism, Trungpa’s Concept of Idiot Compassion and Lifestyle Activists Massaging Conscience " [though I've 'extracted' just  Žižek 's Cultural Capitalism part]: We are encouraged to believe that tokens of charity benefit those who suffer. Rather than look at the cause of problems, an overbearing system, deluded social psychology, personal abdication of responsibility and faulty philosophical worldview all of which try to alleviate problems of it’s own making using the same methodology that creates and sustains these problems, we simply work the dysfunctional system harder and faster. It’s Ouroboros on every level. The circle gets smaller and smaller as the beast feeds on itself. As social, material, psychological and spiritual resources are consumed fear and panic rise which compels further rigidity and clinging to this outmoded and damaged methodology. If you view ...

Poverty and charity are two evils. The former grinds our bones and souls and children into rubble while the latter weakens and ultimately eliminates our ability to live lives for ourselves – leaving us dependent upon the kindness of bureaucrats. You know the ones - those people who have your life in a manila folder hanging from wires in a green filing cabinet that sits behind a locked door that you don't have the key for. The arbiters of philanthropy and good will organizations never prepare us for liberation or revolution; they never question their superior position of humility and selflessness or the rightness of their charity. Charity is the lesser evil but it is still evil. ― Walter Mosley , from his words accepting an award from Liberty Hill Through my veins run 10,000 years of history that touches every continent, deity, and crime known to humanity. This history is not composed of the false accounts of the past; it is the blood and the beat and the light that passes ...