A very interesting take on charity that came forth in a conversation between Tulasidas and Rahim. I was trying to recollect it, when I came across a blogger Bhuwan Chand who had not only compiled the Doha but also translated it.
“देनहार कोई और है, भेजत जो दिन रैन
लोग भरम हम पर करे, तासो निचे नैन”
“The Giver is someone else (the God almighty), giving day and night.But the world gives me the credit, unnecessarily, so I lower my eyes in embarrassment.”
A friend of mine Anuradha Goyal https://www.inditales.com/ was talking about it, and then today in addition to being India Teacher’s Day, it is also the international day of charity.
Of course I have put across a few thoughts in 2015 some more in 2016 I have not really written anything different. Probably a little more about Mother Theresa in whose honour this day is commemorated. Mother Teresa however was not really a friend of the poor. Like Christopher Hitchens notes – She was a friend of poverty. She said suffering was a gift from God. She spent her opposing only known cure for poverty which is empowerment of women and emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.
The UN also mentions that the day is about, “global solidarity to eradicate poverty” but keeps quite about the military research or arms production that goes worldwide. Think about this every gun that is made, every warship that is launched every rocket that is fired signifies in a way a theft from someone who is hungry perhaps not fed. Someone who is cold and is not clothed. It’s not just money, its spending sweat of the labourers, the intellect of the scientists, and the hopes of the children sometimes the children themselves. This is not life, its hanging on a cliff.
Talking about charity, this story by Khaled Hosseini in The Kite Runner is an eye opener. He says, ‘the same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little take about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on top of a mountain of pearls knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with beloved wife’s slain body in his arms.”
On the other hand, there is also a quote by Mother Teresa whose passing away the day commemorates where she opines that, ‘ the greatest disease in the west is not TB or leprosy; its being unwanted, unloved and uncared for. We can cure physical disease with medicine but the only cure for loneliness, despair and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the west is a different kind of poverty – it is not only poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There is a hunger for love, as there is hunger for God”
Coming back to charity, as giver if could understand that I am just a tool the true giver is the universe, If as a receiver should understand that true help hand is at the end of my arm, I would realize that in the world of the infinite there is no charity, there is no giver no receiver we are all but the way we view that particular transaction.
The universe is generous to the giver and allows him give what he does not own, to receiver to receive what he does not earn but the energy exchange is of another kind… the giver feels empowered the receiver feels nurtured the universe has balanced too needs.
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