When I look back upon the times of testing that I have already lived through that most or all of mankind shared with me I come up with the following: The Bay of Pigs in Cuba, The Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of JFK, of Bobby his brother, of Martin Luther King, the insanity of Viet Nam, the collapse of the Soviet Union, 9-11, the war in Afghanistan, torture, the War in Iraq, and now the world economic collapse being called at this point a severe recession.
Each of these times has tested mankind, and each in slightly different ways.
Now we are dealing with something that affects more people right where they live, in their pocketbooks. Millions will die around the world from starvation, directly caused by this economic downturn. More will likely die of starvation in the next few years than in all the wars around the world in the last 10 years. This is just a fact of life.
For me, looking at this there is an important side to all this. It is a reality check. In the past many of us have retreated into our computers, computer games and television. Though this escape might have calmed us it also took us away from the real suffering of not only ourselves and our families but also away from dealing with the suffering of all mankind. How can we help ourselves without in some way trying to help others? How can we feel good about our own lives if we do nothing to help others when we have the chance.
This came home to me during my 4 months in India and Nepal in 1985-86. I could not in good faith look away from all the people who lifted their hands and screamed and begged, "Bakshish", which loosely translated means "help me, please share with me!"
At first, my response embarrassed me. I went home and couldn't sleep that night and decided that my response was not useful and that as a person that had taken Ahimsa vows in 1983(not killing anything except in self defense) that my appropriate response had to be to give something to everyone that was safe enough for me to do so. Since people who beg in India are usually very spiritually devout or were in 1985, I was safe to give anything from about a penny to a nickle to a quarter to anyone who begged me to give them something. I also found that the Tibetan Lama tried to give something to everyone who asked as well. One day he bought a bag of candy that had at least 1000 pieces of hard candy in it. We had thousands of people begging on the way up to a holy sight. He meticulously gave every person a single piece of candy. Many of the cried to have a holy man give them a piece of candy. It might have been the only piece of candy that year for them. This experience shook me to the core. Many of these people were lepers. I couldn't believe there were still lepers then because about $5 worth of medicine bought in India could have cured their disease per year per patient. So the fact that there were still people who still had this disease there(I saw thousands with fingers and noses gone) was horrifying to me.
However, what I learned then and still do is that if I feel safe enough to give someone who is begging even here the in U.S. money I will try to give them $5 in quarters that I keep in my car for these occasion or more. In this way that person can buy a meal and at the very least live one more day until something better comes along in their lives. I think each of us needs to start doing this because we don't know when and if that person might be us.
Though I am wealthy now I believe more than any other reason my wealth came from being generous with my time and my help and even my resources to all the people I have met in my life. Wealth comes from the kindnesses you show others. Temporary wealth may come in another way but all permanent wealth comes from helping and serving others. This is the basis of life on earth.
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