Enough Is Enough

05 Aug 2013 Leave a comment

by Anupadin in Buddhism Tags: , , ,

The Barn Of FollyIt’s a fairly well known fact that 90% of the wealth of the UK is in the hands of 10% of the population, which is a shocking state of affairs in my opinion.

Of course it’s fairly easy to be shocked when you aren’t one of the 10%, but it got me wondering whether I would be any more benevolent if I were.

You may remember the fable about the rich farmer who, having grown his crops, decided that he needed to store it somewhere safe, so that the peasants of the area couldn’t get their thieving hands on any of it. So he set about building a huge barn, and made it secure so it kept out the riff-raff.

It must have taken quite a while to build it, but finally it was finished, and he was happy that his crops would now be safe. Of course, there was far more than he could ever need himself, but he locked it all away and hoarded it for his old age. Ironically, the night the barn was finished, he died in his sleep.

So the adage that ‘you can’t take it with you’ is anything but new. So I suppose the lesson from the story is, if you have enough of anything, money, food, whatever, you are fortunate. If you have more than enough, you are more than fortunate, and you might consider sharing some of it with others less fortunate, particularly in these austere times.

Charity Open Season

02 Dec 2012 3 Comments

by Anupadin in Buddhism Tags: , , , , ,

Charity Calendar?Being stuck indoors all weekend, still trying to shift this cold, I have to admit that I have watched more TV than is good for me. I must say that those old X Files still make for good viewing and that Gillian Anderson is rather more appealing as Dana Scully than she is as Miss Havisham in the recent BBC version of Great Expectations.

Anyway, I digress. What really struck me was the propensity of adverts promoting charities. Here in the UK, we seem to have an unwritten rule, that there are no adverts for summer holidays until after Christmas Day.

Clearly no such rule exists for charity adverts. Everything from Save the Children telling me that 20,000 children die every day, to the World Wildlife Fund saying that the equivalent of two football fields of the Leopard’s habitat is felled each hour. The strange thing is, that £2 a month will fix both of these sad situations.

Now I like to think I am as generous as the next person when it comes to donating to charity, but being bombarded by these unconvincing messages really isn’t going to persuade me to give more. With money being tight for everyone at the moment, I really feel we need to be shown the truth, not just peppered with emotive images and fed heart-rending sob stories.

We all know that there are deserving causes out there, and that our charities are seeing reducing donations as a result of the recent economic downturn. It may well be, that research has found that £2 a month is the optimal amount to ask for, when analysing conversion figures, but it all sounds so hollow and I just find I don’t believe their message.

Just to put the lid on the argument, I am told that the 2013 Countryfile Calendar costs £9, £4 of which will be donated to the BBC Children In Need charity. That means that £5 will not be donated. Now that is fine, but they put such an emphasis on the charity side of it, whereas, actually, it’s just another BBC product. To my mind, charity and advertising just do not mix, so please don’t try to pull the wool over our eyes.