Q: Is it ethical to sell spiritual teachings? What is the reason for the ethics dilemma? I would and often do do it for free, but it is legitimately work. It can be incredibly demanding at times. No idea why its been turned into a absolute truth that there should be no money involved for some people. Seems completely arbitrary. Yet people are defending this belief like its the bible. And when you take a step back, you can see the selfishness in demanding it be free. You can see the blindness to whats actually involved. You can see the resentment and distrust around money. Yet no one bats an eye lash about paying to see a movie or going out to dinner. In India, there is a totally different attitude towards teachers. People feel compelled to offer something back. In some places in Europe, even in only asking for donations, everyone happily and willingly offers generously. In the states, for example I recently put on an event that required several hours of preparation, three hours for the actual event and between the eight people only ten dollars were donated. Although everyone expressed a lot of gratitude for the event. To me this reflects an attitude that is out of touch with the beauty of the offering. Hanuman quit teaching because he was old school and couldnt bring himself to ask for a particular amount. The expenses kept adding up and the donations offered didnt come close to covering them. He had a trust fund so his bills were covered and werent of any concern. Gangaji originally only asked for donations And their savings were drained in a few years. Then she realized she had taken on this Indian belief, thinking she needed to live like a Sadhu. She talked to Papaji about it and he conceded that in the west, perhaps it was appropriate to ask for money. Though he subscribed to the old school Indian Sadhu model for himself (by the way there were tons of people donating more than was needed for everything around Papaji) Seriously if you think a spiritual teacher isnt working, your high on a fantasy. Its gets very involved and its not all love light and bliss....You have to dive into everything with everyone. Way beyond the personal pain body... If you are worth your salt as a teacher anyway. The verbal portion is the smallest aspect of it. It can take hours for the repressed energy to work its way through the nervous system. Ramana Maharshi said at one point that he would need just as much time away from people to recover from the energy, physically. Sometimes someone would come and their pain was so heavy it would flatten his body for hours. In the USA most people have a fairly irreverent attitude towards teachers, which I have no complaints about. Maybe its healthy after the guru cult years, but to combine our western attitudes with Indian Sadhu beliefs is shear masochism for western teachers. And I have no interest in being A masochist!
Posted on: Sun, 27 Jul 2014 21:45:09 +0000
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