How Can I Effectively Help Others in Need?
Notes de l’épisode
🔹Ven Pomnyun’s Dharma Q&A
2023.09. 22
🔹Question : During COVID, during the time of loneliness your teachings have helped me a lot. So today I’m actually here as a volunteer to show you my gratitude, and I’d also like to extend my thank you for all the positive things you’ve done for the world. It’s very inspiring for me. My question is this. If I want to help those people who have very hard time trying to help themselves, how should I go about that? Here is my specific example. Where I currently live, there are a lot of homelesspeople, a lot of people who are suffering from drug addiction. During the time of COVID, I decided to help them out by prepare little bags with snacks in them, put them in the back of my car. And whenever I drive around and see them, I would give it to them. One day, I had a friend sitting in the same car who knew about the things that I did for these people. And she saw that I only had one bag left. There was a homeless person in front of us and she goes, “You have one bag left. That person obviously is a drug addict, so you probably should save that for somebody else.” When I first heard that, I thought thatwas a bit harsh. But when I went back home, and started really thinking about it, I thought to myself that her logic does make sense in a way because what if by giving our these goody bags, these people are not really pushing themselves toearn money, try to get a job, to try to get out of the addiction? Instead, ones they get money, since they already have food, maybe they’ll get drugs. So, I got into this whole thinking process and started catching myself, noticing myself that every time I’m running out of bags, I would see homeless people and don’t know how to detect if this person is addicted to drugs or not. Apparently, it shows on their face. I had a really hard time trying to make that decision everytime. So, my question is how should go about in situations like this.
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