{"id":5162,"date":"2017-08-30T10:04:14","date_gmt":"2017-08-30T09:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/?p=5162"},"modified":"2017-08-30T10:04:14","modified_gmt":"2017-08-30T09:04:14","slug":"saturday-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bodhicharya.org\/manyroads\/saturday-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"SATURDAY MORNING"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On Saturday morning I was on the coach early to get to Brighton in time to hear Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche teach on Santideva\u2019s 9th<\/sup> chapter. It was just after 6am. I pulled out my new dharma book The 6 Perfections<\/em> by Dale Wright (an excellent book) and tried to read the section on tolerance. It was early and my eyes hadn\u2019t woken up. Blurry font. Unfocused mind. Easily distracted.<\/p>\n

About 10 minutes into the journey, we were at the last main coach stop before leaving Oxford for London. A young woman got on. She expected the driver to accept card payments \u2013 only had \u00a35 in cash. The nearest ATM was a long walk away. I asked if she was going to Victoria in which case she could withdraw \u00a310 when we got there. We sat down and out of nowhere out of my mouth said the words: Keep the money<\/em>. She wanted to repay me. All I thought was, I don\u2019t own the money, the Government does \u2013 all I\u2019m doing is moving it around<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The question of ownership shifted in a big way after reading a short excerpt by Daniel Dennett. It was from a philosophy text reader when I belatedly started university in my mid\u201130s. My take on Daniel Dennett\u2019s view on ownership is this: Your possessions stretch as far your mind. So, if you\u2019re at a friend\u2019s place and are handed a plate is the plate yours or your friend\u2019s? The pens at work where you sit each day, are they yours? Well, they\u2019re your employer\u2019s. So when I sat down on the bus and thought, It\u2019s not my money, it\u2019s the Government\u2019s,<\/em> that\u2019s where I was coming from.<\/p>\n

(As an aside, Daniel Dennett is an American philosopher with a strong interest in the Self, as in What is a self when you have multiple personalities? <\/em>That said, I could be really wrong about Daniel Dennett but I like the ideas and questions even if I\u2019m misremembering.)<\/p>\n

Then I recalled the chain of events leading up to the Saturday morning moment. On Thursday evening my boss and I were catching up for a drink at the pub to meet a former colleague. She lent me \u00a310 but then got a 2 for 1 deal and shouted me the cocktail. The next day before going home my boss said, About that \u00a310, don\u2019t worry about it. You buy flowers each week for the office, use the \u00a310 for the next few weeks\u2019 bunches<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The coach arrived at Victoria and the young woman said she really wanted to repay me. I replied, I\u2019m Buddhist and was reading a book on generosity. If I don\u2019t practice it, well, what\u2019s the point?<\/em> To which she replied, The reason I\u2019m in London is to complete a 25km charity run for a pre-school in South Africa<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The single \u00a310 note was lent, given, lent, given, given and given.<\/p>\n

Who owned the \u00a310?<\/p>\n

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About the author Wendy Nash.
\n<\/em>Wendy is Australian and has been living in Oxford, UK, for the past 3 years. She has been following Buddhism since 2003, took refuge with the Buddha in 2008 and in 2014 realised that although she had everything she wanted (good relationships, health and job) she was still unhappy \u2013 that\u2019s when her practice really came into its own. She has been dedicated to the White Tara group in Oxford since 2014.<\/em><\/h3>\n

She thinks that life is better with a vase of flowers nearby and mugs of teapot tea.\u00a0<\/em><\/h3>\n

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