The Full Question:
Some Buddhist monks rely on the monetary donations of some well-wishers who eat meat and engage in vices to survive. The ancestors of monks eat meat and engaged in vices. How could a monk balance the karma?
The answer:
Thank you for the question. I’m not a Buddhist or a monk, and I don’t eat meat, I will try to provide an answer from what I know.
Karma requires a self to be attached to, yet the heart of Buddha’s teachings is that there is no self. If something appears to be karma, perhaps it only appears as it does and there is nothing to own it. Like a cloud appears in the sky, the sky is undisturbed by its presence and does not claim it as its own.
Were a monk not to accept donations he would be making a judgment from his beliefs and his views. Yet, as equanimity tells us that all is One, single Totality, and what judges and is judged is nothing but itself, then in Reality, Life appears as a gift to itself, from itself.
The One appears as a person before a monk who is the same One. One seems to be giving and the other part of the same One seems to be in need. Yet in the One, there is no lack and no abundance. There is only itself. Buddha.
In the moment when a monk receives a donation, if they are present only to that moment, no thoughts of where that has come from, or what type of person has brought it… none of that story comes into Presence. Life offers a gift that Life accepts. To not accept is to be resistant to what Life has manifested. And when we are in resistance it is often our sense of self that does so.
This does not mean that everything offered must be accepted. Silence reveals the Way.
A river is not in resistance when a bird lands on its surface. A tree is not in resistance when a wind blows through it.
Donations often come as an expression of Love. They might be given from a personal need to receive blessings from a holy person or temple.
When one knows the Beauty of the One, meat does not need to be eaten.
When one knows the Beauty of the One, there is no one to partake in vices.
Buddha would receive the gift from the position of no-mind.
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