Mongolian Connections: Money Talks, and People Listen

This connection isn’t exclusively Mongolian, because it’s just related to Buddhism in general, but if it weren’t for Mongolia, I wouldn’t have learned about the life of Buddha, and thus wouldn’t be able to make this connection…

For those of you who haven’t been to Mongolia and thus haven’t read the Shakyamuni Buddha’s biography, Buddha was the prince whose father did his best to keep him isolated from the world in order to keep him from becoming a holy man instead of a king. (This is related to a prediction made on the day of Buddha’s birth.) Buddha was raised in incredible luxury, with several palaces, no work to do, and eventually, with a royal wife and child. Despite his father’s efforts, Buddha decided that material wealth was not enough and wanted to meet some of his subjects. When he left the palace confines, he encountered an old man and was so horrified, he decided to become an ascetic to avoid becoming old himself. (And I thought modern America had a problem with aging!) I’m simplifying a lot here, as other subjects came into play, but the gist of the story is that Buddha decided to renounce his royal power, his wealth, and his family in order to live as a beggar. After escaping the palace, Buddha became a mendicant, then a hermit, and finally, after adopting a lifestyle of moderation and meditation, he achieved Nirvana under the Bodhi tree.

Nothing about this story struck me as too remarkable, but as I continued to read about Buddha’s life, a pattern emerged. Another character in the story had a similar tale: Yasa, “the son of a millionaire,” was brought up in the most luxurious of lifestyles, but one day became so repulsed by the excess of his world that he ran away from his home and came upon Buddha teaching. When Buddha preached to him, Yasa became his disciple and eventually achieved enlightenment.

This story—the renunciation of wealth in pursuit of higher ideals—is a pretty common one, not only in Buddhism, but also in other ideologies. Probably the most famous Christian example is St. Francis, the son of a wealthy merchant who decided that charity and poverty were more fulfilling than his friends’ and family’s lives of luxury. He left behind his father (and his father’s wealth), first living as a mendicant, and then founding his own mendicant order. On the political scene, Engels was the son of a textile manufacturer, and if I remember the movies correctly, Che and Castro were both pretty upper-middle class. Though I’m not sure if these guys renounced their wealth exactly, they at least had to put down that sort of lifestyle a bit in order to lead their revolutions, I think. (I am not a historian, so the communism part could be grossly inaccurate, and Wikipedia is being less than helpful. Corrections welcome.) A google search on “renounced his wealth” doesn’t quite know which religion it wants to choose, so common is that theme. (Interestingly, “renounced her wealth” reveals mostly Christian saints, and I’m sure someone who knows better than I could analyze that.)

Buddha and St. Francis were both charismatic leaders who led by example when it came to worldly renunciation. They each gained a cult following and founded pretty influential and enduring movements… So what about this theme is so convincing? Is it just that seeing an example of renunciation leading to spiritual fulfillment makes others more likely to make the leap? (Clare of Assisi, one of Francis’s first and most devoted followers, was a common result for “renounced her wealth.”) Did Buddha and Francis serve as before/after pictures for adopting poverty as a lifestyle? Is this made more convincing because renunciation of property is seen as such a drastic action that it makes people take notice and makes people think, “If he gives up wealth for this cause, it must be a big deal”? I’m not sure, but rich people who choose to become poor seem to have quite a presence, and this theme endures across cultures and centuries.

At first, it may seem like a great thing that these religions glorify figures who give up the material joys that our society so values. They’re sticking it to the capitalist system, right? Except, as your own foray into hagiography may have shown you, (everyone makes a foray into hagiography at some point, right?), this has a major flaw: Only the wealthy have wealth to renounce. The poor that Buddha encountered in his journey? They don’t make much of a statement when they give up their BC equivalent of a cardboard box. In the medieval Christian world, the Church made a big deal about the wealthy devoting so much time and money to charity; this actually gave the upper class a spiritual leg up over the poor, because they had time and money to give. It may be harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but with enough money, all things are possible, and this was especially true if one aspired to sainthood. A boy who was born a beggar would probably be too busy trying not to starve to strive for spiritual enlightenment, and if he started preaching about the beauty of his lifestyle, I don’t think anyone would have cared. This is a complicated issue, and one that’s worth a bit of examination. (Keep in mind that not all grand religious figures follow this pattern; it’s significant that Jesus was born in the humblest of circumstances, and if I recall correctly, neither Mohammed nor Joseph Smith, both also from humble beginnings, took vows of poverty.)

That idea carries over into modern times; we value philanthropy on a grand scale, but you can’t be a philanthropist without being pretty rich first. Warren Buffet gives so much money to charity that his net worth dwindles into single-digit-billions, and he’s a hero. Brangelina adopt more foreign babies for their nannies to raise, and they start a trend. But the everyday families who can’t afford vacations, much less yachts, and still scrape enough out of their pockets to pay their taxes and give to their local shelter? They don’t usually get news stories. In fact, some of them sort of get a lot of flak, on a cultural level, because they aren’t necessarily educated, and they probably aren’t ambitious. And couples that give up their time and freedom to give foster kids an extra chance? Sure, our country values them in theory, but it doesn’t necessarily offer them too much support or encouragement. 

Imagine if People Magazine did a celebrity-free issue, where instead of covering the latest cheating husbands or movie-star elopements, they covered the guy who walks two miles in the rain to help his daughter change her flat tire, or a low-budget wedding only made possible by the help of friends and family. (Though good fathers and happy families are probably harder to come by than gross celebrity antics.) But of course, that’s not what people want to read about. And that is part of the problem; probably it’s not so much that the system values the rich better, it’s that the people in the system (and that means you and me) value the rich better. Once we start paying to hear good news about good people, the media would start covering it… But I guess if we want to read about that, we’re just going to have to wait until Madonna gives up her career and starts working at a homeless shelter.