[Buddha-l] Re: Buddhist Charities (was Will new the pope verify...

[Andrew Skilton]

Richard Hayes:
> ...Buddhism as a form of narcissism, a preoccupation with
> nothing but one's own well-being... 

Joanna K.:
>In the USA, charitable organizations are one obvious and almost
>required means of justifying membership in a religious group, or one that is
>perceived as such. Perhaps this is why Buddhists continue to attract such charges.
>(Unless I've missed a big bunch of Buddhist charities in these here states. I can't
>speak for the EU.)

Richard Hayes:
>All of the Buddhist organizations I have been associated with have been
>made up of individual members who were very much involved in various
>social actions, political causes and charitable work. Most of them seem
>to see such work as integral to their Buddhist practice, but few of them
>go out and do this work in any way that makes it obvious that they are
>Buddhist. At the level of the organization itself, most outfits I have
>know do a lot of work at the neighborhood level but not much by way of
>donating huge amounts of money

I spent a number of years involved in a Buddhist organisation in the UK, and I was increasingly disappointed by the shape of altruistically conceived activity, especially the use of dana, in those circles. In practice this was directed along two channels: a) primarily local and/or national projects that were essentially about either capitalising the burgeoning hierarchy or increasing recruitment, and b) secondarily towards an in-house charity that supported relief work amongst the ex-untouchable community in India.  A major incentive for those involved in the latter seemed to be how fundraising could augment their 'personal development'.
My experience at the time was of almost constant bombardment with requests for 'dana' for one or another member of my own Buddhist community - rarely because they were in actual need, but more usually to support them to do full-time in-house activities. I will spare you representative stories.
My experience seems to contradict Richard's, in that my impression has been that many UK Buddhists I have met have not been involved in "social actions, political causes and charitable work". This has been paralleled by a bizarre indifference to external events, e.g. Tiananmen Square or the Dec 26th tsunami.  Like Richard's observations (?), my comments are anecdotal, and so are not representative of the whole picture even in the UK, but may go some way to addressing Joanna's query a while ago about US/UK differences.

Has anyone mentioned the issue of conversion yet?  Many converts seem to convert in response to a perceived personal need of some description rather than for social factors. These personal needs can dominate their outlook for a long long time * and why not?  It also seems that the need to finance non-economically productive members of the group (teachers and beaurocrats) can all too easily lead to an obsession with beaurocracy and economics.  In such a climate my rather limited experience suggests to me that altruism is easily conflated with recruitment to one's own group, not least just to maintain the economies of scale.  And then there are those folks who simply find themselves economically and socially 'marooned' in their group, long after the motive that led to conversion has been lost, but after functional links to the broader secular economy have been severed. (I have a few friends in this category.)  I have no criticism of these people either, although I wonder if they are likely to be more common in a welfare state such as the UK than in the US? 

Andrew Skilton