My soon to be 4 yrs old son asked me yesterday, "What happens if I donated huge amount of money to the (Buddist) temple with fake money?" And my mind went blank and I couldn't think of an appropriate answer for that... until now, which is 12 hours later. Now I have a pretty good idea what to tell him once I get home this evening. I just wanted to know what you guys think is the appropriate answer for the above question. Anyone want to give it a try?
Fake money presumably is useless, so it would be like you donated nothing, right? Better to bring them something like food or some other supplies they can use.
For your information, temples need a lot of money to build and run. And a lot of people donate money to temples because they believe it has positive effect on their karma. It's called 'Merit making'. You could donate food or clothes, but in today's world, money can represent all that. Instead of donating actual food, you donated money for food. And temples need money to pay for various stuff, like electricity... maintenance... building new Budda status... etc, etc. And the money that is donated to the temple are used to help poor people around the temple, so money is a good thing to donate if you want to donate anything. Convenient too.
It's not about the amount of money that you give, but the amount that you give from your heart. If you give all that you can give, then you are giving more than someone who has made a donation ten times bigger than yours but still has much money to spare.
May be you guys haven't fully understood the question. The main question is, what happens if you donate FAKE MONEY?
Presumably that help to the poor is in the form of food and supplies, but that follows my point. If you want to give something of little general value, give something small of specific value. Fake money is of no value, and if you have insufficient real money but want to be helpful, maybe fast for a day or two and give your meals instead. At least there is a specific value in the food, or even general value in the money saved by getting a free meal. ^ Okay, you may have to be more clear. What happens if you donate fake money is that the temple receives fake money.
That's right. FAKE MONEY is the key here. What happens if you donated huge amount of fake money to temples? That was my kid's question. And as for carving the statues, the monks rarely do it, they hire carpenters and masons to do that. And they need to buy the materials with which they're making the statue with. Stone... Bronze... or even gold.
[quote name='"GGrass"']May be you guys haven't fully understood the question. The main question is, what happens if you donate FAKE MONEY?[/quote] The Buddhists kill your family. What the fuck do you think happens? Nothing.
When I first heard the question, I was thinking something in line of 'bad karma' and 'going to hell'. But that will lead to even MORE question, such as, "What is karma? And where is hell?" And to try to answer those, would be like... really tiring. Try explaining karma to a 4 years old. It's just impossible... The best answer I could think of as of now is, "Lord Budda can tell the difference between fake money and real money, and he will tell the monks to call the police and the police will come and arrest you. So don't you even think about using fake money."
You would be giving nothing of value. It would be worse than giving nothing. I thought this was most obvious.
it seems harsh to get someone in trouble for passing fake money when they get nothing in return for it. i suppose it depends on your intent. if you're trying to buy karma, then perhaps you should get negative karma. if you're just being kind and don't know it's fake money, i don't see why you should get any karma at all. although, your kid probably should learn not to try and scam people so your answer is probably best.
Yes... It's such a common sense. Who would even THINK of donating fake money? Grown ups wouldn't even THINK of doing such thing. But the children... they can think of ANYTHING.
To help you to relate better, think of going to a church on Sunday and giving fake 100 dollar bill in the alms bowl.