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Comment by ceocoder | Hacker News Reader

It is really hard to feel happy when you are poor (first hand experience), Money can buy happiness[1][2]. Conversely we do feel much joy when we see someone we envy fail, more so if we feel (rightly or not) that their success was ill deserved[3].

[1] https://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/WE-AA766B_HAPPY_1... - from page 12 of [2]

[2] http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2013/...

[3] https://blogs.princeton.edu/research/tag/schadenfreude/

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I like Alain de Botton's take: money and status are essentially a proxies for love, in that people feel worthwhile if others "pay" attention/respect/cash to them. (Heavily paraphrased)

Now consider that Buddhist monks are forbidden from handling money, preparing their own food, and are willingly entirely dependent on the charity of others. It is a kind of self-imposed poverty that demonstrates how much a person can achieve without much more than the shirt on his back.

I'm having trouble following the jump from proxies for love to the practices of Buddhist monks. Monks don't own anything (except for their robes and alms bowl) and don't prepare their own food (and don't do many other things) in order to avoid attachments, which as we know is one of the fundamental causes of suffering and an obstacle to achieving enlightenment.

In bringing up the monks, I was trying (maybe unsuccessfully) to challenge the idea that "poverty" is, ipso facto, a miserable, unhappy existence. De Botton makes the point that soldiers often endure conditions that are far worse than abject poverty, but are not unhappy due to the sense of a noble status given to them by their countrymen. Likewise, I think, for the monks who have nothing to their name, but are respected and honored for their discipline, etc.

It's a bit off-topic, but in a way being a Buddhist monk is a very selfish lifestyle. You don't have to take care of yourself, society will take care of you. You don't contribute much to society apart from perhaps some religious services. In my opinion it's not a good way of life.

I've always understood the relationship between societies and monks (priests, ministers, nuns, etc.) to be one of "offset". Monks are taken care of so they can pursue the esoteric studies that the common person has no time for. In exchange, the common person's spiritual/religious/etc. enrichment is guided with assistance from the monk, similar to how patronage happens in the arts.

I'm sure this could be explained in an even more conduct way, but I'm having a hard time putting down in words how I see the relationship works in my mind.

Someone should build a Patreon for Monks.

"Monks" are not one, monolithic community, so it's hard to argue one way or another whether they contribute anything meaningful back to a community. Here in Japan, many Buddhist orders are downright wealthy (from donations), and use their considerable resources to preserve traditions and history. I doubt that you can put a dollar value on the benefits of keeping cultural history alive. In a sense, it's not too much different from the function of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Of course, Buddhism is a many-facted religion that manifests differently in different places.

Wrt money - I'm just pointing out that assuming someone is happy because they are rich is flawed.

3 is interesting, and backed up by what's happening in this thread. My question is really: is that the world we want to live in? Throughout human history we have gradually been curtailing our violence as a species, and I hope everyone here thinks that's been a good thing, and hopes it will continue. Wishing suffering on anyone for any reason is a form of violence.

It's not suffering in some abstract sense, it's accountability - in no small part for causing suffering and loss to others.

Talk is cheap. Most people won't actually do all that much to back up their big feels. I have a good sob story. I doubt you would do more for me than pat me on the head.

Mind you, I don't actually want pity. What I really want is respect for my competence and assistance in becoming successful in my own right. But I run into a lot of people who spend a lot of time on their high horse about wanting the world to be a better place. In most cases, these are the people who have treated me the worst -- who neither will give me genuine respect as a competent human being and a hand up nor so called compassion and a hand out.

I think if you really think that bad thoughts are a form of violence and you want this to be a nicer world, then arguing with people here and criticising them is a kind of violence as well, plus a form of hypocrisy. What are you doing to actually make the world a better place?

Yes, maybe I am being hypocritical.

Just my 2c but I really dont think wishing suffering on somebody is a form of violence. How can it be when they arent even aware of it. Wishing is something that just occurs in your own head and I think portraying this as violence would be insulting to people who have been the victim of real violence.

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