If you want to save religion, donate less

If you think political reform is tough, try asking a relative, a friend, your boss or your subordinate to minimise the money in the envelope or discard the envelope tradition entirely. Everyone has been doing it the wrong way, but the wrong way has been there so long that not doing it doesn’t feel right.
It’s too late to nip it in the bud, but we must try throwing water on the raging fire. We don’t have any choice. Religion does not need money. In fact, religion is corrupted by money. What we are doing, however, is showering religion with cash, and spoiling it in the process.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve been hearing the same old story – about monks giving in to temptation that only money can create. Again, the monks implicated in the scandals were respectable once. Again, it involved donated money. Again, some monks have fled overseas. And again, people are talking about monastic reform.
It’s not just Buddhism, mind you. When it comes to corrupting religion, there is nowhere money can’t go. Religious organisations have to be wealthy and look luxuriously grand. Ironically, if they look otherwise, it’s difficult to attract donations.
In a way, money is an effective “equaliser”.
For all the fundamental differences between, say, the Buddhist and Catholic faiths, they need the same thing – money. Somehow, those who run major religious organisations have been sharing the unspoken idea that, to teach people to stop being materialistic, you need a lot of cash.
But to put all the blame on the organisations and subject them to “reform” can’t change anything now. Of course, they were the ones who started it, by wrongly encouraging big donations.
But the problem is they’ve done such a good job that their lamentable approach regarding money has ingrained a widespread and misled attitude among the public.
Instead of considering money its No 1 enemy, religion embraces it dearly. And the embrace is anything but a “drawing fire” strategy. No religious leader today has come out to say something like, “We know money is evil, so we are drawing it away from you.” The apparent message is “We need money, so keep it coming.”
Religious reform, therefore, should start with re-educating the potential donors. There are sporadic attempts to do that, but sporadic is simply not enough.
The donation culture needs a drastic and complete overhaul. The public must have the revolutionary awareness that giving too much money to monks or temples carries the same risks as giving money to “crippled” child beggars.
You perhaps could unknowingly be encouraging gangsters to maim children and put them on the street.
The question is how much money is “too much”. Every faith has its own fundamental ceiling, but let’s stick with Buddhism. Lord Buddha preached that, to live, you don’t need much, and monks need even less. 

Rich donors
This means if we decide that workers can live on a minimum wage of Bt300 per day, putting Bt500 in the envelope is against the religion’s core teaching.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped paying monks their minimum wage. The food we offer must be delicious and come from the best chefs in the neighbourhood, if not in town. We see to it that the living quarters of the monks we revere is air-conditioned. Rich donors gave Mercedes cars to abbots, while the poor ones never frown on seeing the monks riding on them.
Some have gone as far as slamming critics who deplore monks living a swanky life and demanding big donations. “It’s religious freedom” is the usual argument. This is a strange logic, but it nonetheless reinforces the idea that reform must be focused on those on the giving end, the ones who enjoy the freedom to donate.
No one has done a research on how many hungry stomachs in this world can be filled if all religious donations are put together and used to feed them specifically.
 There’s one big reason why such a study was never carried out: Religion is supposed to be more about spirituality than physicality. In other words, it’s all right to be starved of food as long as your mind is fed.
That’s probably sound reasoning, but it makes the whole donation thing all the more incomprehensible.