Portraits of People Living on a Dollar a Day
Dear blog friends around the world,
I have just purchased ten of these books to give away as gift because the message is very powerful. Whatever circumstances we want to believe that put these people in their predicaments is up to us but the fact remains we need to know their story. Perhaps to do something for them or to change ourselves to realize we have so much or both.
Whatever it is, it is important to read through this and contemplate who you are, what you have and what you can do. Are you in circumstances as difficult or dire as the beautiful people in this book? If not, then what is holding us back from doing more or sometimes being totally grateful for what we have. We should always be happy. We must expose our children to this book and explain to them without any scolding but educationally the message it contains. Being grateful is important in the contexts of being happy in our lives.
I encourage everyone to see what I have blogged here. For here is only a part of the picture and stories but to get the book for yourselves, your friends, children or schools. Schools should have this subject matter in their curriculum to study poverty and the reasons in other countries. Schools should educate our children and ourselves from young to really appreciate what we have and to understand so much others don’t have. Understanding is key.
With folded hands and humility, please read the stories I am re-sharing here. I am only sharing because I want to create a awareness of being grateful for what we have and to perhaps do something more. Even if we cannot or will not do something for the poor, we can at least be happy with what we have and be less poor in our spirit and attitudes. Be grateful and be kind.
Tsem Rinpoche
Subadra Devi left India after a drought killed her crops. Now she’s a laborer in the Himalayan foothills.All photographs by Renée C. Byer
Portraits of People Living on a Dollar a Day
—Eric Wuestewald on Mon. April 7, 2014 3:00 AM PDT
Living in a wealthy nation, it’s easy to forget that a whopping one-sixth of the world’s population subsists without stable sources of food, medical care, or housing. More than a billion people around the world are believed to live on a dollar a day—and often less. While the circumstances leading to that sort of extreme poverty are varied and complicated, the situations faced by the planet’s poorest are depressingly familiar. A new book out this week painstakingly documents the circumstances of some of them. Written by Thomas A. Nazario, the founder of a nonprofit called The Forgotten International, and vividly photographed by Pulitzer Prize winner Renée C. Byer, Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World’s Poor offers a window into these people’s everyday lives, and calls for action on their behalf. I spoke with Nazario about his motivations, global inequality, and how to avoid the savior complex.
Mother Jones: Tell me a little about why you created this book.
Thomas A. Nazario: It grew out of a foundation I established about seven years ago. I was tired of spending time with people on the street all over the world who had simply been forgotten—by their families, by their village, and by whatever communities they might be associated with. There seemed to be so many of them, particularly in developing countries. It hit me that something had to be done. I wanted to bring to the attention of the world community that every day these people exist on almost nothing. We spend an awful lot of time in malls and taking care of ourselves and our immediate needs, and these people never enter our consciousness. Why does it take a typhoon or an earthquake to wake up people to the truth that far more people die of poverty every day?
In a New Delhi slum, six-year-old Vishal Singh cares for a baby while her mother is away. Renée C. Byer
MJ: What was your selection process like?
TN: I wanted there to be some cultural and ethnic and racial diversity. I certainly didn’t want to just focus on places like Africa, or those first places we think of when we think of extreme poverty. I also knew of circumstances that existed in given countries that were really quite compelling. So I came up with 10 countries and began to organize trips. That doesn’t mean we caught every story we wanted to catch, but there were also stories we found along the way.
A six-year-old herds cows for his father in Ghana. The family’s economic circumstances make it unlikely he’ll ever go to school. Renée C. Byer
MJ: Which stories affected you the most?
TN: There are three. One was the kids who live on an e-waste dump in Ghana. That was quite compelling for a variety of reasons, but I think if you look at the book and see those photographs and read that piece, it’ll hit you pretty hard.
Another piece was a family in Peru that lives on recycling. That, in and of itself, is not a big deal. Recycling is probably the second-largest occupation of the poor. But [the mother’s] personal story, about how she had been abused by two different husbands, how her boys were taken away because they were needed to farm, and she was given all the girls—and how her kids will probably not ever go to school. She gets constantly evicted from one place or another because she can’t find enough recycling to pay the rent. When we left her—we gave everybody a gift of at least some kind for giving us their time and telling us their story—we gave her $80, which is about as much money as she makes in two months. She fell to her knees and started crying. Not only did I learn that 25 percent of garbage produced in developing countries is picked up by individuals like her, but that one of the biggest drivers of global poverty is domestic violence, and how women and children are thrown into poverty largely for that reason.
Eight-year-old Fati scavenges scrap metal in an e-waste dump in Accra, Ghana, and carries it in a bucket on her head. She is crying from pain caused by malaria. Renée C. Byer
The third story that really touched me was about a woman and her family in Bangladesh. She works in a sewing factory about 8 to 12 hours a day, six and a half days a week, and makes 17 cents an hour. Of course we’ve heard about these sweatshops. They fall apart, they kill people, the working conditions are terrible; people sleep on the floor. But instead of finding someone who was beaten up emotionally, we found someone who was smiling most of the time because she was getting a regular salary, her husband was working, and she actually had a husband who was a kind and gentle fellow. That made it possible for her to keep her kids in school, to educate them properly, to have some hopes and dreams for them in the future, and to probably break out of poverty—if not in this generation, then the next. That meant the world to her. The truth of the matter is that, even though we hear terrible things about sweatshops and phone centers, in many ways they’ve done more to lift people out of poverty in the last 20 years than almost anything else. That was a realization that I didn’t expect.
Hora Florin, who grew up in Romanian orphanages, spends his nights near underground heating vents to keep warm. Renée C. Byer
MJ: There are many contributing factors to poverty, and gender can be a huge one. Can you elaborate?
TN: It’s one of the biggest reasons why women and children live in poverty. Not only do they make far less than men doing the same kind of work—even if they get the same kind of work—but often they’re saddled with raising the children, and that keeps them at home. So they have a limited number of hours and they usually work in labor markets that are informal at best. If you couple that with the fact that they are often required to get water for the family—which in many cases takes three to four hours a day—and that they have to get the food and so forth. Many families think of women as a liability rather than an asset, which is why they’re often sold as children into prostitution or trafficking.
The women of Nkwanta, Ghana, carry cassava, an edible root that they farm. Renée C. Byer
MJ: Climate change plays a big role, too. People on the financial margins are more likely to be affected. Did you see that playing out at all?
TN: We met a woman in Bolivia. She’s over 80 years old. She works her own little farm. She grows wheat and beans. And she frankly didn’t like us— largely because we were from the US. Over the past 20 years, she says, her wheat no longer grows, there’s not enough rain, there’s too much heat, and her beans are almost worthless. She says the biggest reason for this is countries like the United States putting so much carbon in the air. Her climate has changed and made it impossible for her to live. She lives on a mountainside where there used to be quite a bit of rain, snow, and fresh water. Climate change is affecting an awful lot of the poorest of the poor. When you think that subsistence farming is the largest job of the world’s poor, it’s no wonder they’re the first to feel the effects when there’s not enough rain or there’s more drought or flooding.
Nine-year-old Alvaro helps out with the family’s alpacas and llamas since his father died. He was one of the few children in the book who attends school. Renée C. Byer
MJ: According to Oxfam, the 85 richest people have as much money as the poorest half of the world, and 70 percent of people live in countries where economic inequality has increased in the last three decades.
TN: It seems to be getting worse and worse and worse. When we talk about poverty, we talk about how that is associated with lifespan. If you live in a very, very poor country, you’ll probably live about half the time that you’ live in a rich country.
The other thing that’s troubling is that we have a number of billionaires in this country, and they control an amount of wealth so disproportionate that it’s frankly immoral. I think the more people learn about that, the more I think we’re looking at conflict resolution in parts of the world where these kinds of wealth disparities exist. The more it becomes obvious and the more it becomes troubling, the more people will rally around that and the more it will seem unfair. That’s one of the reasons we had the 99 percent movement not long ago.
The Kayayo Girls of Accra collect waste or serve as porters for wealthier residents. They often live in communal settings near or atop the city dump. Renée C. Byer
MJ: We often hear that a disproportionate number of the poor are in the Global South—with one-third in India alone. Why is that?
TN: I think there are some historical reasons—certainly imperialism, and totalitarian systems, and government structures that have used the masses to build wealth have played a part. A country like the US really began to build wealth during the time of industrial revolution—once that happens and you build universities and provide young people with education. Then it kind of snowballs: Countries get richer largely because they have the infrastructure, the education, and the kinds of benefits that you’ll find in a wealthy country. Two hundred, maybe 250 years ago, there really wasn’t a big difference between rich countries and poor countries, rich people and poor people. We were pretty much all poor. Now we have enormous wealth in some countries and very little wealth in other countries.
Hunupa Begum, 13, and Hajimudin Sheikh, six, beg for food in New Delhi. Begum is blind and Sheikh suffers from abnormal fluid build-up in his head. Renée C. Byer
MJ: There’s a concern in the international development sphere about people acting out of a so-called savior complex. How do we separate this from genuine concern?
TN: One of the mistakes we often make is we go in on our white horse and try to dictate what might be best for other people instead of being far more inclusive and spending time with indigenous communities and really asking them. My experience is that most poor people actually have a pretty good sense of what would improve their lives and the lives of their children. They just don’t have the money or the means to get there. It’s that top-down thing that’s a problem, particularly if you have a white face and you’re in a community that sees no white faces. You really do have to work with people and come in with translators and get a sense of what the real needs are and help from the bottom up.
Ana-Marie Tudor in the Bucharest, Romania, home from which her family faces eviction. Renée C. Byer
There are some things that almost always help alleviate poverty, and one is, of course, education. There’s almost nothing terribly political or ugly about providing decent schools in villages that have none—or clean water, or things that are so basic that no one’s going to argue with.
One message in the book is that you don’t have to be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet to go out and help. Everybody—particularly those in the middle class—are people who have enough money to go out once a week and buy a nice dinner. All of those people need to make a concerted effort to once a week or once a month really carve out a little of the funds that they don’t need and help somebody, whether it’s an individual or a family or a village somewhere or a school. We all have a duty to make the world a better place.
You can buy the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Living-Dollar-Day-Worlds-Edition/dp/1593720564/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1396931191&sr=8-3&keywords=a+dollar+a+day
Source: http://m.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2014/04/living-on-a-dollar-a-day-photos-renee-byer-thomas-nazario
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Poverty-stricken people and families might go without proper housing, clean water, healthy food, and medical attention. Each nation may have its own threshold that determines how many of its people are living in poverty. Looking at the photos of the poverty conditions , we should be grateful to have what we have and never take it for granted in life. Anyone who had struggles with poverty will for sure understand it much better. There are many unfortunate people living on a dollar a day, what we can do now is to educate our children. Every things starts from young , teach them to appreciate and grateful for what we have and to understand poverty in general. Tell and showed them pictures of children suffering in poverty. The children will learn some knowledge from there.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing those pictures to bring awareness , how fortunate we are . Be generous and compassion to help those who needed our help. We should life our life by helping others.
The Kayayo Girls of Accra, Ana-Marie Tudor in the Bucharest, Romania, and the old woman in Bolivia were some of the many unfortunate people living on a dollar a day.Looking at photos of the poverty conditions ,i feel sorry for them ,we are lucky, grateful and happy for what we have and to perhaps do something more for those less fortunate people.
As parents we should educate our children from young to really appreciate what we have and to understand poverty in rural areas. And where living conditions are bad enough ,as children there were not able to go to school and they got to search in the thrush for foods and if they are lucky, they found some scavenges scrap metal for sales.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing these article and photos….to reach out to those who are need a lot more than us.Be kind,generous and care for them, help them in whatever where we could.Its more of a reminder for us to do Dharma work to help the sufferings.
My heart goes out to all of these people, mostly children and women. They are the most vulnerable and helpless people in the world. Just thinking of children like 8 year-old Fati, always in pain from malaria, having to carry the scrap metal from the E-waste dump, or Hunupa and Sheikh, one blind and the other suffering from fluid build-up in his head, is enough to overwhelm you with a sense of the great suffering they are experiencing. As Rinpoche says, looking at these pictures of our fellow beings in poverty-stricken parts of the world should make us feel grateful for what we have, and should make us want to be kind. We should at least begin to show we care by reaching out to help the poor and disadvantaged around us.
尊贵的詹仁波切, 您好!
谢谢您分享这篇文章。现在的人,有些活在美好的家庭,受保护的生活,但有些生活在贫穷,恶劣,受恐吓等等,天天都在担惊受怕的生活,无人知道 !
在生活受保护的人,好多他们正在享受的,父母给他们的,朋友和身边的人给他们的,他们总觉得是应该和应分得到的,从来没有那份感恩和感谢的心!
(见苦惜福)这道理,应该让他们知道,让他们看看,还有让他们去体会,从中学习,肯定事半功倍 !
祝您快乐,安康!
These pictures really sadden me, it’s not easy at all to live on with only a dollar a day. People who have what they want are tend to be less appreciative than people who don’t just get what they want, Karma catches up in any form, anytime and anywhere, you don’t know what happens next. Sometimes we have to be grateful of what we have today and be more appreciative of it, not everyone has such a beautiful opportunity like us….
It is true if everyone can show the care to others who in need, less focus on self,we can made the world a better place.
Since we have so much and we still really dont feel satisfied, we should really do dharma, as Rinpoche has said. Its human to never feel its enough! This post makes a very inportant lesson for us to ponder in, with the sufferings of these people, a lesson for us – “to do something more with our lives and not to be lazy, feeling hopeless or complacent. We must try to do more with our lives while we still can!” Therefore as said, doing Dharma is th best way for all young and old, male and female, and the best purification for all root causes of sufferings both within and without us! Thanks to Rinpoche whose compassion of which is universial, be it for animals or humans as he has a very deep concern for all.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing all these pictures with us. As I go through all these picture I feel myself so lucky because we do not need worry to worry about our basic need, is good to share all these picture with the younger generation because a lot of them like waste their resources they do not know how to appreciate what they have .
It wasn’t too long ago, when I was a young kid, that these sort of living conditions were evident in Malaysia. The newer generations of Malaysians have seen less of this and must be reminded that the current “good” life will not last if the country, and earth, is not taken care of. They must be taught about what is right and what is wrong, what is true and what is false, before it is too late.
Thank you, Rinpoche, for showing us in this post that there are fellow beings in this vast earth who are suffering so much pain and misery, yet there is no strong voice, except for single solitary ones, like the author of this book, to speak up for them.
The faces here will continue to haunt me for a long time, much like some of the homeless whom I encounter in a Kechara Soup Kitchen round, who sleep in the darkness in pain and misery, suffering from some debilitating illness. Particularly haunting is the image of 8 year-old Fali of Accra, Ghana, who is carrying a basket on her head, filled with scrap metal that she has collected from an e-waste dump. She suffers pain all the time until tears roll down her face. She has malaria which is causing her excruciating pain. Poor girl, carrying the weight of pain and misery on such young shoulders.
We must always reflect on such unbearable pain and misery of mainly women and children in poverty. In comparison, whatever problems we are suffering from pales into insignificance.
The main reason why people are suffering from poverty is due to selfishness. The rich with their money, keep taking resources away; the poor do not have enough to eat let alone sending the children to school for education. While they are many who live their lives on one dollar, we are complaining about not having enough.
In most of the countries, people are focusing in making more wealth, no many really looks at how to help the poor when they. Looking at how a child is raised in a fortunate country like Malaysia and many other countries, we are taught to be competitive, to study well so we can get a good job with good money, buy big car and big house. Humanity to us is “as long as we do not kill people”. It is only after I study Dharma that I understand humanity is more than that, it is about being grateful, appreciative and GIVING!
By giving, we can make someone’s life better. This is what Rinpoche is teaching us all the time.
There are few problems Thomas raised here that we should also be aware of:
1. Lack of education
2. Inequality of man and woman in labour force market and how women are discriminated
3. How one country’s crave for wealth creates problem in someone’s life
This is a great article to show our children what tough life really is. In fact, in Malaysia, they can join our Kechara Soup Kitchen to see in their own eyes the living conditions of the less fortunate ones.
Wealth is an interesting resource that somehow defines who we are inside. These children seem to grow up from within various levels of poverty and spartan living conditions. They may come from there but may rise to live in much better conditions or they may remain in poverty for the rest of their lives. Some who live in luxury and wealth may loose their wealth and eventually live in abject poverty. Nothing is permanent.
On the other hand, poverty or wealth can be used as a convenient excuse not to be spiritual or selfish. However, this is more common amongst the very wealthy who are just too comfortable with what they have got. Some are too arrogant to even consider listening to a lama or a preacher. There are also some who have extremely rich but live in spartan conditions because they are just too miserly to live or use their wealth.
The lesson I draw from this series of pictures is to be grateful with what we have and never to allow our wealth or the lack of it be a stumbling block for our own self-development and spiritual well being.
When i read things like this and see picture like this i consider myself very lucky. Everything is provided for me and i have everything i need. I even have people to care for me and love me. I know some people around the world don’t even have that. Which makes me treasure my wealth. I hope when i am older and when i have my own family, i bring joy to them and support them through the long journey of life.
We are so fortunate in Malaysia free of disaster, have a better environment resources hence able to meet Dharma at Kechara.
But normally we are always greed to have a better life style, just like to compare with the upper class peoples instead of look back to the peoples that we are more fortunate than them.
By applying Dharma in our life, we can lesser down our ignorance hence know more about Law of Karma. If we still cant look back to the peoples that less fortunate than us but wish to climb higher then we should create the Better Causes to have a better life style. But the most important thing is being grateful to our Guru that 24/7/365 bring Dharma to us and show us the ways to collect More Merits skillfully…
May Rinpoche stable health, long life and continue to turn the wheel of Dharma with folded hands…
Dear Rinpoche,
I agree with Rinpoche that schools and parents should play a part to educate our children how rich and fortunate we are now as compared to those people featured in the book.
I remembered a classic post on Facebook about a young girl who wanted a iPhone 5S [or maybe something else, I forgot], and instead gotten a iPhone 5, and she threw a huge fit about not getting what she want. In another situation, a young, poverish boy was given a fruit as a present and he was brimming with smiles. Talk about the difference in culture and life.
I also saw a link online [by Rinpoche] showing the homes of some children in less developed nations, and their rooms, brought tears to my eyes. One even had no roof over his head and had a broken sofa as bed, while we enjoy the comfort of big houses and big mattresses, yet we whine about how lousy our lives are.
As the author mention, it is not just for the millionaires or billionaires to help, middle class people are also able to help if all of us contribute a little for them.
While some may say it was their previous karma, but in this live, if we can help change their lives or their karma, why not? Collect some good merits on our part.
Thank you for the wonderful “wake up” call to our lazy life, Rinpoche.
Love,
Edwin
Thank you Rinpoche for your sharing.I am indeed sad to know that there is so much poverty and suffering in the world.After seeing those touching photos of the least fortunate.
We should count our blessing for what we have at the moment. So fortunate to be able to live in Malaysia with the opportunity to have free primary and secondary education in order for every citizen of Malaysia to have a good start in their lives.
Education is most crucial for anyone to live in any society.Even to learn Dharma ,is most essential we need to learn how to read the scriptures .As not everyone could memorize it by hearing it once.
As for those that is fortunate to blessed with material wealth,they should not forget the plight of the less fortunate and practice generosity and compassion to other fellow beings.
We do understand that the law of karma is a circle.Where by, what goes around comes around. Why not fill the merit bank with generosity and kindness now in order for us to benefit from it in the future.
We should sincerely consider whether we would like to live like them or give them a tool and sustenance to change their dilemma.
Dear Rinpoche,
Thank you for sharing the stories of poverty that is happening all over the world. After reading the stories I feel very angry and sad for them. Knowing that this is the suffering due to individual and even collective Karma. By being reborn as human I must say that we do have hope and one day they may come out from there and have a choice to change their life even in that situation because I believe in impermanence. It doesn’t mean we sit and do nothing about it.
We learned from Rinpoche that we can help to cut down the sufferings of ourselves and others by practicing Dharma, doing pujas, making offerings, working in Dharma, building institutions, building stupa, prayer hall, giving teachings, creating conscious minds, protecting the nature, planting trees, recycle, planting our own organic veggies, stop killing, become a vegetarian, building KECHARA FOREST RETREAT in Malaysia and all over the world and etc. All our litlle little conscious considerations do help to create a better place for us to live. Charity starts from home, from where we are, from people that we close to. If we cannot do it alone, join others, join Kechara to create a conscious community, to create love and care among and between human and animals.
Since everything starts from our own karma hence create a good merit field now for our future and for our future generations. Stop looking around and waiting for miracles to happen, why not look at ourselves and be grateful that we are so fortunate due to our good karma and merits that we collected from the pass. We can definitely do more than what we can think of if we stop focusing on our own petty little problems that will only drag us down to a deeper suffering level.
Thank you Rinpoche for sharing all the news and teachings to the world via Rinpoche’s blog continuously and tirelessly. Rinpoche created Kechara as a plat form for us to reach out to those that needed help, a plat form for us to generate merits, it’s all up to us and waiting for us now to go all the way.
Life happiness abundance .Some one to love. Something to do. Something to look forward to. Safe place to sleep. Clean water to drink. Food
I actually consider myself as very very lucky because I do not have to worry about not getting any food, shelter, clothes etc, and that’s all because I have two very loving parents and I’m very grateful of that. I used to not be able to understand clearly that money doesn’t just drops from the sky, and also it’s not easy to make money. But as time passes by, I began to understand my parents condition. They work very hard to raise my family, they have been working their whole life to give us a better life. We have to be grateful of our parents because without them, we could be starving as well.
看到这篇文章心有点悲伤，感恩我现在拥有的一切。记得我读过爱因斯坦故事中，他是一位在生活上衣食住行简朴的人。在他还没成名之前，推导和演讲公式时都是穿凉鞋与云运动服登上大学讲坛。一天爱因斯坦到达纽约时，身穿破旧大衣，一个熟人劝他换件新的。他十分坦然说“【这又何必呢】？在纽约没有一个人认识我。” 几年后，爱因斯坦成了无人不晓的大名人时，这位熟人又遇到了爱因斯坦，发现他身上还是穿着件旧大衣，又在劝他换件好的。但爱因斯坦却说到“【这又何必呢？】在纽约，反正大家都认识我”。 从爱因斯坦的故事中，我们因刻明白一个名誊，不是穿件漂亮的衣服就可以得来的，只要你为社会，为人民作出贡献而不去过多地追求什么，就会赢得众人的爱戴。
我们应用理性的节制才是真正享受
It’s very difficult to live on little money but it can be done.
We are always so carried away with our lives and caught up with our issues that we tend to forget how fortunate we are compared to billions of people in the world. Many of us spend so much energy getting stressed, depressed and angry over things that do not turn out OUR way. Now that I think back, we are very spoiled. We are like spoiled brats throwing tantrums.
It’s time to cherish what we have because what we have is not permanent. At the point of death we will leave behind EVERYTHING we have, including our body.
We need to be appreciative and grateful for everything we have or are going to receive.If we all stopped for a moment and look around us,we will find endless things we have that others are not fortunate to have. The things.we take for granted are the things others are praying for.What we get out of life depends entirely on our attitude.
In Malaysia, we are not normally exposed to such a sad lifestyle as we live in working or upper classes. The closest we have in Malaysia are the homeless but they are not this extreme. I think that we should all be grateful for what we have and we should support causes that help these people
Here in America we have too much of the WRONG THINGS, such as entitlement, the where’s mine, what about me generation of young people; Way too little time with family,lots of substance abuse that causes suffering that goes around the whole world from here in America. Older people abusing prescription drugs. There is little compassion for people in other parts of the world, most people are very miserable here and do not seem to know what to do about it. And kids go to school here hate it and do not learn anything!! America is in big trouble, if it does not change its ways, may end up like all these people, its called Kharma.
Such a humbling post. Everyone should see this and realize what true hardships mean. Thank you for sharing this post with us Rinpoche.
I count myself as more fortunate compared to those much less fortunate people than I am. I am in my early sixties, in okay physical health, with my five senses intact; my limbs and present mobility let me do what I want to and where I want to go. In short, I am a normal person. My mind is much happier now since I met Rinpoche who taught me the Dharma which I can practice with a healthy body. However I have read of and met people who were less able bodied than me but who have a strong mind and they were happy too. Happiness, joy is a state of the mind and heaven is also a state of the mind. Sadness, suffering is also a state of the mind and hell is also a state of the mind. These I learned from Rinpoche. But an ordinary person like me has not yet experienced what other great spiritual masters have, that is, both extremes of the state of my mind is actually non existence because they are just temporarily. I have heard of great meditational masters who meditated for years, some decades, in tiny caves with just very basic necessities similar to the living conditions of those less fortunate people. Yet after they emerged from their retreats, they were calm and seem to remain in a state of bliss. An example is Tenzin Palmo who authored Snow In The Cave.
Since schools do not emphasize teaching school children on poverty, suffering, wealth disparity etc then parents like me who is learning and practicing Dharma must educate our children ourselves. Education begins at home.
There are so many causes for poverty and sufferings and with the progress of the world and nations, the divide between the poor and rich is getting wider and wider. This is due to the fact that the poor are looked on without dignity and help is given per the givers fancy or what they think is correct.
It is good from the answers of Thomas Nazario what should be done for these poor people of the world. For them to even make a living is so difficult, and they work so hard. This is just the physical survival aspect of their lives.
Is there help for them spiritually? I remember the days when the missionaries will go all over the world to establish schools and hospitals to attend to the poor, giving them the basic chance to be in a better place. What happened to them?
Yes, from this learning I will make it a point to give up something every week and give to a organisation that will make the lives of these poor people better.
I had goosebumps while reading this article, and goosebumps while writing this comments.. I live in Malaysia, a place there are plenty of natural resources, and most of us grow up without much hardship, and when we face little obstacles, we (me include of course) made the obstacles sound so big like Mars..
while we complain about breaking of relationship, computer is not fast enough, they are fighting for their daily survival everyday. It reminds me that in Malaysia, people would like to say “Just surviving” when they are asked “how are you?”, but in fact, they have big houses, few big cars.. these stories tell us what real surviving means.
the very least, we must be grateful to what we already have and have gratitude. and start giving or doing to help benefit others. after all, we can’t take our money away when we move to our next life..
Dear Lew,
Very good thinking. I like what you wrote. When we have too much it’s not good as well as too little. When life is easy many of us will not do more and become complacent. In fact so many people around the world suffer tremendously on a daily basis and they do not have the life opportunities like us. They do not have options. They do not have any hope. Since we have so much and we still really don’t feel satisfied, we should really do dharma. How much we have is human nature to never feel it’s enough. That is why articles/pictures like on this post is very important. The sufferings of these people should not be used as a ‘lesson’ for people like us who have so much but for people like us to do something more with our lives. Not to feel lazy, hopeless or complacent.
The fact of the matter is no matter what we do, there will be people who really suffer, but we must do more with our lives. Doing dharma is the best remedy for everyone. It is the best way for us to develop ‘tools’ within us to make a difference.
We have the perfect opportunity to do dharma practice and dharma work. We actually have very little obstacles. With dharma we purify the root causes for all sufferings both within us and environmentally outside of us.
Tsem Rinpoche
I still remember vividly some 2 years plus ago when Rinpoche told me how my life is somehow empty when I was working purely for the money. It touched my heart deeply because I always felt there are more than just making money, but at that time, I didn’t have a solution.
As Rinpoche said, too much or too little is both not conducive. I felt myself so lucky because I have (more than) enough for living, and I don’t get too much to indulge myself into something unnecessary. Furthermore, I now have a very conducive environment to exploit my skill and practice Dharma at the same time. I am learning Tibetan now and starting to learn how to enter Tibetan text into computer.. again, I get to exploit my skills 🙂
What is left for me is to work hard and really should not waste this precious life because I really don’t know if I still have the chance to practice next life. (reminds me of day 1 of Lamrim teaching).