What this shows to me is that a life can have a profound impact through long, careful and modest dedication; rhetoric of disruption and youthful riches can be profound too, but we shouldn’t lose sight of other possibilities.
> Just before she retired, Mr. Hyams said he saw the 96-year-old Ms. Bloom trudging out of the subway and headed to work in the middle of a fierce snowstorm. “I said, ‘What are you doing here?’ and she said, ‘Why, where should I be?’” he recalled.
It reminds me of a favorite bit from "Zen Flesh, Zen Bones":
> Hyakujo, the Chinese Zen master, used to labor with his pupils even at the age of eighty, trimming the gardens, cleaning the grounds, and pruning the trees.
> The pupils felt sorry to see the old teacher working so hard, but they knew he would not listen to their advice to stop, so they hid away his tools.
> That day the master did not eat. The next day he did not eat, nor the next. "He may be angry because we have hidden his tools," the pupils surmised. "We had better put them back."
> The day they did, the teacher worked and ate the same as before. In the evening he instructed them: "No work, no food."
As wpietri commented: The point is that the teacher refused to be put on a pedestal.
The teacher was referring to his position within the monastic community, not making a general rule of not feeding the hungry unless they work.
On the contrary, Zen (and Buddhism in general) always emphasized unconditional and selfless compassion.
Even in the same book, there are plenty of other stories that make different but complimentary points. E.g., "The Stingy Artist": http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/47thestingyartist.html
Or the one about the Zen master and a thief who tries to rob him: http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/44thethiefwhobecameadiscip...
This might not be the one you're looking for?
And if you want to use the bible as a justification for not feeding those who don't work... Matthew 6:36? Matthew 25:35? Isaiah 58:10?
Or let's go with the canoncial James 2:14-18, What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.
There is context for it, and I don't consider it an indictment of Christianity, but pretending it's not in there doesn't help your credibility.
If you know of an interpretation of this including the context you refer to, I'd appreciate a pointer very much.
Verse 15 hints at how you might want to interpret these verses as compared to the references you cited: "Do not regard them as enemies, but warn them as believers." You see, a Christian has rather different conduct when he is dealing with a believer or a non-believer. If someone is your brother in Christ, it's ok to be a little hard on him. Same way you have the right to be a little harder on your own family members than I would. It's all supposed to be done in love, of course.
Hope that helps.
Awesome old guy on youtube making old school italian pasta sauce.
Isn't this very contrary to the belief that people shouldn't have to work for their basic necessities?
There is also a long-running train of thought that work is essential to the human character and that without it we decay into aimlessness.
We can sort of see it with very rich people. They do stuff even though for many of them their activity adds peanuts to their existing fortune. I'm not talking about the hyper-active, super-ambitious types.
We have enough major world wide problems they could tackle. And I am not just talking about charity - that is just passing the buck at most.
Zen also has a long tradition of mendicants monks. E.g.: https://tricycle.org/magazine/zen-and-art-begging/
The Buddha himself spent time living as a beggar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha#Renunciation_an...
And of course there's a long tradition of charity and caring in Zen that runs to this day. For example, San Francisco's Zen Hospice: https://www.zenhospice.org/about/our-values
As he got older and was less able to work his ability would diminish and his need would remain static.
So his pupils would need to work to feed him, but he showed willing to do what little he could, thus fulfilling a social contract / fairness need.
Remember that Zen likes to confuse people with logic to achieve better understanding.
(It also attacks defining people by their occupation a few times.)
https://boingboing.net/2017/10/11/late-stage-sportsball.html