Expert: Bodhicitta - 12/3/2004

Question
a few months back a daily paper started an appeal for a child with a life threatening illness to which she needed an incredibly large amount of money to travel to america for a life saving operation. What made this appeal more poignant was that she only had four to five months to live. thinking about this girls predicament i wondred if i would be able to sell and trade my every belonging basicly sacrifice my quality of comfort to raise the money to save someones life. i have,nt done this as i realised the paper would,nt start an appeal without knowing it would be a success,cant help wondering what i would do if i ever came across someone else in the same situation without the backing of a national daily newspaper though. My question is this would buddhist teachings help me to have the moral courage to defeat my own selfishness and do the right thing?

Answer
hi keith
there are two vehicles the Hinayana and Mahayana.

The Hinayana teachings is the start of the path. In the Hinayana the student works with discipline and meditation to clear there only confused mind enough to get a glimpse of wisdom.

In the Mahayana stage the student works with compassion using the basis of the Hinayana to ground that compassion in wisdom. It is said in Buddhist stories that great practioners gave their lives out of genuine acts of compassion.

However all Buddhist teachers advise students to start with the Hinayana and gain enough wisdom in order to use compassion as a path.

Who can say conceptually whether an act will truly help someone? You could give 20£ to a man on the street and he might go and buy alcohol drink it and then fall in front of a car?  This would be idiot compassion.

This doesnt answer your question. But the only answer is that only you can judge. Even after practising the Buddhist path for a long time you will make mistakes. It is a path of training. You start with the Hinayana meditations with a qualified teacher of meditation and then move towards getting in touch with the true heart of compassion gradually and slowly.

I wish you well with yoru wisdom and compassion

Bodhicitta