In this world, one commonly observes two classes of people—one class giving freely and ceaselessly; the other going about begging. Those with wealth are the givers; those lacking real or imagined property are the receivers, expectant and grasping. The givers are weary, exhausted; the receivers, gorged with alms, plunge into the fires of desire, crying for more…and more. Let us pause and consider: what are the givers thinking? What are the receivers truly doing?
As bees circle the honeycomb with unwavering attention, the receivers surround the givers in just the same manner, unrelenting and constant. Fearful of the relentless beggar, many wealthy people in this world have long since ceased to stretch out their hands; yet even as men die of hunger at their doorstep, such rich folk scarcely turn their gaze. For they know this truth: whoever has once extended a hand finds it impossible to withdraw it in this lifetime. They have surrendered all their substance to the auction block and still found no redemption. They understand that indiscriminate charity, rather than conferring virtue, merely renders mankind idle; and the dependent beggar's desires are never, ever satisfied. It is a vicious circle of dependence!
Avarice never diminishes in the human heart. Given ten, one yearns for a hundred; given a hundred, for a thousand; given a thousand, for ten thousand. Not only this. When one beggar receives ten, another watches and craves a hundred for himself. Denied, he will excavate fourteen generations of the giver's ancestry before he rests satisfied. Satisfy one person, and ten more will arrive at your threshold. Satisfy ten, and a hundred will come. Satisfy a hundred, and a thousand beggars will besieged you. Thus has this country spawned countless millions of beggars. There is no easier path to an effortless existence!
No matter how wealthy you are, tell me—how long can you fill the want of such a beggar? You can try, but what comes of it? He to whom you gave ten now says, why not a hundred? He to whom you gave a hundred spreads lament—why not a thousand? By giving, you purchase only infamy, or at best you render mankind lazy; the world gains nothing. You exhaust human strength itself, and in this exhaustion you incur the sin of murdering humanity.—Thus speak the stingy rich. And there is truth in such words, yes; but some tender-hearted wealthy souls, moved by the anguish of others, cannot remain unmoved—they are as if intoxicated with the urge to give! The moth leaps joyfully into the flame; and these generous hearts too yearn with equal fervor to plunge into the fires of another's desire. They fall into this fire, yet shame binds them so they cannot rise; they cannot discern whose want is genuine; and so, in blind profusion, they pour out everything, sacrifice even their own lives—and yet find no peace. What a grievous state our country has fallen into!
I know of a kindhearted wealthy man. It is as though he was born solely to give. I also know his close friends and relatives. Nearly all of those I know are engaged in trying to extract something from him. Those whom he once considered friends, he now sees through—and he has been quite startled by their designs. One day, grieving, he spoke thus: "Now whenever I see people, I am seized with fear; I think, surely this one too comes to ask for something. Day and night, whoever draws near seeks something. And then? Alas, gratitude is out of the question; not a soul offers even the slightest disinterested sincerity—some among them even do me harm. I have grown weary from giving and giving; I can bear it no longer. For a while, perhaps I should simply stop giving!"
The very next day after he said this, I heard that he had given large sums of money to several people. This friend of mine—how many he has helped, how many he has assisted—lamented to me one day that many of them are now attempting to harm him and spreading all manner of nonsense about him. Truthfully, we ourselves have rarely heard anyone praise him. Having received and received, everyone has grown greedy, eager to extract still more from him. Self-respect has fallen to such depths that begging has become second nature to a whole class of people. Through various stratagems they seem determined to plunder him completely, as though the recipients' vow can only be fulfilled once they have taken everything. Day by day his visitors multiply, day by day the number of beggars at his door increases. Tormented by shame or by some sense of obligation, he drifts like a lost soul upon an endless ocean of giving!
We also know a certain recipient—one devoted to proclaiming a universal, benevolent faith. He is a lover too! His conviction and belief are that the world is obliged to help him. As if the immeasurable wealth in the homes of the rich exists solely to aid his religious mission. He has received much, yet many sensible people have simply redirected him, pointed him another way, placed the burden of charity in others' hands through letters of request, and sent him on. Now he is deeply resentful about this. One day he lamented, "People have become depraved; nothing comes forth from their hands anymore." Moments after such reproaches, I have seen him again at another's doorstep, begging for something.
The very person who curses others at one moment comes to another's door begging at the next! And yet what reverence he shows for his own self-reliance! He keeps his hand perpetually open—as though his very gesture says, "I am taking, so pour everything into me!" To close one's own hand, to go begging at another's threshold, and then—whenever opportunity permits—to revile that very person or force one's demands upon another's compassion, whether this constitutes righteous conduct I cannot say; but this I know: it is precisely for this that many givers have become miserly, that many wealthy souls have shut their doors to charity forever.
On the other hand, many people, despite circumstances favouring them, enlist themselves among the ranks of beggars and indulge idleness. Everything has its limit. Even charity should have bounds; even the acceptance of alms should have bounds. If one who cannot move forward despite exerting all his strength must beg, that is still bearable; but who does not know how fundamentally contrary to principle it is to approach others without exercising one's own strength? It is not well that a king, by giving charity, becomes a roadside beggar; nor is it well that people, by begging, lie upon the milk-white bed of indolence and nourish their bodies through the help of others' scraps, and corrupt their tongues with curses upon the giver. This too is not well. Intelligent and talented persons, therefore, stand between both classes. They write letters of recommendation for others and place the burden of compassion in another's hands, thus remaining at ease themselves. They do not wish to elevate people to the added dignity of self-reliance, and this is as it should be. For this very reason, both the compassionate rich and the "generous beggar" regard them with eyes of both favour and contempt! Yet are they, in truth, committing any greater wrong? Your father's funeral rites are not performed with splendour, your child does not receive education, you are absent from your daughter's wedding, or you perform no pilgrimage or religious preaching, no other good work—does not your service to the poor count as service to the divine? What business is it of the rich man? Tell me. The Creator has given you hands and feet as He has given him; he, using his hands and feet, through wit or by the merit of his ancestors, has obtained something—either through his own capability or through wealth left by his father—and you sit staring at it with wide, longing eyes. Why? Use your strength to earn that money, spend it, free yourself from the debt to your father and the obligation to your daughter's wedding. You have not striven all this time; for that, others cannot be blamed. Whose fault is your misfortune? Why do you trouble him who bears no responsibility for it? You have taken some doctrine as the essence of your own life—very well. But must you now thrust that doctrine upon every door in the world? Who asked for it or desired your doctrine? Very well, no one is stopping you—go ahead, preach; but why, for that reason, make demands upon others? Did not the Creator give you hands, feet, and a head like everyone else? You have taken a vow of service to others—excellent; then earn money by labour or business, acquire some wealth, and spend it freely in the service of the poor—who forbids it? Why do you coerce others into compliance with your compassion? Have you received the responsibility of dragging people by the collar to heaven and making them virtuous by force? What commission do you get per soul? Go to heaven or wherever you wish with your own righteousness—no one troubles you for it! You are devout, but must another now be punished with a fine because of your devotion?
When someone offers you help unbidden, accept it gladly—but why rail bitterly at those who do not? Can compassion be compelled? Who asked you to take such a vow? Will your penance send others to heaven, or has anyone begged you to? I have known women who labor for wages and pour that earnings unstintingly for the poor. They do not marry, so they have no husband to serve, no children to tend—their whole life is devoted to this single work. We are wretches; we can see such examples, but cannot live by them. We must bear children year after year, and under the guise of service to others, beg at strangers' doors to feed the poor—all for applause; and when no one gives, we must curse and rage until the very heavens crack!
Alas, what misfortune! In a land whose streets teem with countless beggars idling away their days in hope of others' charity, now arise educated, capable, knowing, refined beggars! We have been born in difficult times. If it is shameful to sustain a household through begging, then it is equally shameful to perform good deeds and alms through begging. The Creator has arranged this fertile, fruitful, verdant nature to provide for my children's food and raiment, and sent me forth as a farmer. I must toil, brow to earth, until my sweat falls upon the ground—only then will His purpose be fulfilled. What is your heap of riches to me? I must gather my own humble fare through my own labor. If my own exertion and self-earned livelihood are necessary for my wife and children, then when I take upon my shoulders, drawn by uncaused love, my suffering brother and this destitute world, I must offer them too the same labor and earnings.
If I cannot tend the world's afflicted and poor as I would my own children, as my own flesh and blood, then I should not burden myself with their care—for charity alone does not uplift; it is love that does. Only when they become my own people will my heart impel me to sweat and toil for them, and then I shall truly serve them. Without this, all such vows of benevolence are mere pretense—nothing but an easy path to glory without cost or hardship. One may win praise from the world even in these harsh times for such observances, but the law of dharma offers no reward, no merit. Dharma yields its reward only when people, free from desire, serve the men and women of the world as they would their own children. That is the first rung on the ladder of the world's self-reliance—that is the sacred stairway to liberation's grace.
The bond between father and son is surely one of the sweetest and most sacred relations in this world. The father gives; the son receives. There is no weariness in the father's heart, no fatigue in his spirit. In the son's mind there dwells neither longing nor hope nor despair. Whatever the father gives, the son accepts as his due; in that he finds fulfillment. The father gives without expectation, and no one has asked him to give. There is no request, no entreaty here. If he does not give, the son does not revile him; if he gives abundantly, the father does not believe he has given too much. Here there is giving and receiving, yet both lead toward self-reliance. The father gives without desire; the son receives without desire. The father labors by the Creator's command to raise a helpless child into a human being; the son, by the Creator's will, accepts the father's aid to stand upon his own strength and leave behind his helplessness. Here there is giving and receiving, yet self-reliance abides. Such giving and receiving alone is the ideal. At its root lies the love of heaven. Not through emotional outburst, but inspired by this heavenly love—if a person gives unstintingly and without desire, then that gift succeeds; and if another, inspired by this same love, receives something unasked, it does not impair his self-reliance. It is the absence of such desireless love that makes the rich man give in a frenzy of feeling, then lament at day's end; and the beggar or supplicant, even when given alms, finds his desires unfulfilled, curses the giver, and thus defiles his own tongue. There is another vision—the world is not man's goal, nor are the riches and splendors of this world anything to him. Man's only goal is God. Only the soul turned toward God understands the taste of desireless love. Such a soul desires nothing of this world; he cares not for wealth or fortune, money or fame; he gazes only toward the grace of the Creator. He gives by His will, he receives by His will—or rather, he takes His own things back to Him and gives them to Him. Should want come, he does not knock on any mortal's door; he clings to the feet of the Father Eternal. Should he receive immeasurable riches, he keeps them not but distributes them among the children of the Father Eternal. Receiving brings him no joy; losing brings him no sorrow. Giving stirs no irritation in him; abundance kindles no attachment. In all circumstances, with undisturbed mind, he beholds the play of the One alone and revels in it. When he asks, he asks only of God; when he gives, he gives to God's children. He knows no emotional excess; his heart is vivified by heavenly love. Here there is no weariness, no fatigue; here there is no revile, no shame. His goal is nothing of this world—his goal is to stand in silence and worship the Mother of the Universe, the Father of All. His goal is to place his senses and faculties in His service and offer them at His feet. His goal is to pour out his life and breath eternally at His feet. That dependence is self-reliance. That self-reliance is servitude. That servitude is freedom. Even in death, he will not, in his own estimation, beg from men; starving, he will say—Thy will be done—Thy will is my will. Whether He gives or gives not, He alone shall decide. The person who dwells ever in this thought, detached from the world, free of desire and longing, whether he be giver or receiver, his heart remains unmoved in all circumstances.
This means—giving and receiving are sacred, they lead to the highest good, only when they flow from the Creator's will; but when they spring from human desire or impulse, they become hell. The one who thinks, "I give by His will," is the true giver; the one who believes, "I receive by His will," is the true yogi. Those who cling to the ego-sense suffer in the end. When a person relies wholly upon the Creator and moves according to His will, there is no weariness in giving, no attachment in receiving; no pride in the gift, no begging or compulsion in the request. Then there is no thoughtless giving, no unguarded asking or taking. Who is the giver, who the receiver? For the true devotee, for the sage devoted to God, all beings in this world are but servants and handmaidens driven by the will of one God.
Annapurna's storehouse—she pours it all out. Annapurna herself, changing her form, takes it back again. He who gives, looking toward her, by her will, finds his storehouse ever fuller. She who receives, looking toward her, by her will, is content with what she gets; even though sustenance lies open before her in abundance, she asks for nothing more; even surrounded by plenty, she takes no more than she needs. She is not consumed by the fire of craving, she does not force her will upon compassion. In this state, both giver and receiver are expansive of soul, free from desire. The giver here has not taken up the vow of charity lured by fame's mirage or prompted by emotion; nor has the receiver donned a false mask of humble poverty.
Wherever giving or receiving is clouded by the desire for fame or honor, weariness and exhaustion are inevitable. Wherever service or the wearing of masks has been undertaken in pursuit of reputation or esteem, the extinction of longing remains but a sky-flower's dream. There, giving becomes stained with pride, the ego flares forth; receiving breeds indolence, swallows self-reliance and dignity. There the giver acts drunk on arrogance—thinking, "There is no one as compassionate as I"; the receiver too is drunk on attachment—thinking, "People are bound to give to me, the wealth and fortune of all exist for my sake!" Stain upon the gift—alas, stain upon the receiving too! To uphold the vow of desirelessness in this world, in these times, has become terribly difficult. What the Creator wills—who can know!