Tantric Giving, or Social Justice in India

Last updated on: December 4, 2010 at 1:06 pm by Justin Whitaker

Tantric Giving, or Social Justice in India 2010-12-04T13:06:00-07:00 Justin Whitaker

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I pass by an Indian man dressed as a sadhu. He wears colorful orange robes and a bright yellow turban, a caries a walking stick and a small stainless steal bucket, used for gathering alms-food or money. He could be a real holy man. He could be a fraud who makes a living by dressing as a holy man. I am told there are plenty of each throughout India and I’m in no mood to ask for a discourse on God or to conduct any other kind of test. I’ve passed him a few times before on this road and each time I smile instinctively and greet him with a “namaste.” He always smiles back, brightly, as if it’s the first time he has heard a Westerner utter that word. “Namaste,” he says, and passes by.

But today, along with the cheerful “namaste,” he asks the time. Noon I tell him, showing my watch. “You buy me chai?” he seems to ask. “Very hungry now.” I have an unusually full pocket of change today. I reach in and give enough for a very simple meal, roughly Rs 15 or 35 cents US.

The sadhu thanks me and as I turn back to the road there is a young Indian boy deformed (perhaps by lepracy) and appearing blind. He has the same shiny bucket and makes pleading gestures as I near. I drop in six more of my rupees. Looking up there is yet another; an elderly lady sitting just ahead, watching eagerly as I draw near. Six more rupees.

All really nothing to me, financially. No great windfall for them either, of course. But it’s something.

Before encountering the sadhu I had been thinking of my day here in Dharamsala. I had planned on seeing H.H. the Dalai Lama, who gave Bodhisattva and Tantric vows today at the request of Russian Buddhists. But instead, in my rush and – to be honest – laziness, I had hoped to run a couple quick errands, purchasing stuff for friends and family, and those had wound up taking up the whole morning. I managed to listen to much of the teaching on the local radio, but we all know it’s not the same as being there.

Being there, as I was yesterday, is something quite amazing, beyond words. A thousand or so of us, it’s impossible to tell because of the layout of the temple, crammed together on our cushions and blankets, shivering in the very cool mountain air. An elderly Tibetan man and I lean, shoulder to shoulder, against a pillar as young monks scurry over and around us carrying buckets of bread and pots of Tibetan butter tea.

We watch His Holiness on a flatscreen TV, unable to see him in the small main shrine room. We listen on that same radio channel to the English translation. The experience is heightened by its novelty. This is not a book, to be picked up and put down at leisure. Nor a DVD or website. This is reality. A scarce commodity in the modern world, both avoided because of its discomfort and unpredictability and fetishized for its raw and somehow magical power.

Instead of spending a second morning at the teachings, I was fulfilling a promise to pick up a few things here and ship them to the US, hopefully in time for Christmas. It occurred to me what an idiot I might be judged to be by some of my friends, perhaps rightly so. A block or so away, free admittance, H.H. the Dalai Lama giving tantric empowerments, and I’m negotiating fabric and mala prices.

But, as I heard His Holiness say as I walked along, what’s most important is motivation. Without right motivation one cannot practice properly. One must intend to act always for the sake of the enlightenment of all beings. So, I wondered, could I infuse these simple gifts with such a motivation? Could I hope that these would be accepted as more than mere “things” or commodities, but as manifestations of Buddha Nature? That was my thought as I came across the sadhu.

We’ve had some good talks about social justice in Bodh Gaya, talks that have left thoughts and ideas bouncing around and little, if anything, settled. It’s an obvious issue – or should be – for relatively wealthy foreigners in a poor and developing country. We have the truly expert guidance of our program director, who has been here every year for over 30 years. But even he cannot answer all of our questions. And he shouldn’t. Things like social justice are things we should each grapple with.

And there don’t seem to be any simple answers. A simple example being the rickshaw drivers. The generally accepted set rates for their labor are extremely low by Western standards. You can pay one to pedal you around for an hour for about a dollar US. What should one do if the driver demands $1.50 at the end of the ride, as often happens if a price hasn’t already been agreed upon? Or in the case of a very short routine ride we often take in Bodh Gaya. The set price is anywhere between 6 and 8 rupees (15-20 cents US). Yet getting change is often a hassle if you pay with a 10, the most commonly available small currency. You can argue with them, refuse to pay, check ahead of time that they have some rupees as change, or just give the 10 (roughly a quarter).

Are you doing ‘good’ by paying extra? Or fueling an economy of dependency and skewing the previous order of the small society?

There are no answers here. I found this the other day, another ‘gift’ from facebook via my friend Alisa. It’s an article we all should read, and perhaps re-read, as we browse for gadgets this holiday season: Costs of Convenience.

For more good thoughts on some of this and an amazingly diverse set of suggestions for life in India by someone far wiser than myself, see this post from Monsoon Diary (thank you, Nellalou).

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