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alchemy dragons

Spirituality and money

To take or not money for teaching spiritual practices? This question in the other fields causes much less censure, than in connection with the spiritual practices. Although the dissatisfaction can be found there too (most often because of the size of the payment).

So let’s consider some examples.

Thus in art paying for training to play the piano does not mean that the student will never be able to perform highly spiritual compositions "with feelings".

In sports - paid training of tennis, for example, does not mean that the student will not be able to achieve good results. A paid learning of foreign language does not mean the further inability of the student to understanding of Shakespeare and Byron.

Now let’s consider the field of spirituality. I remember my first trips to China, when after reading western publications, I imagined that in China the spiritual training is free.

But in reality it was not so. It had become clear that in ancient times, a student must pay for training, or work for the Master after the initiation. Literally, like the servant.

I understand that our intellectuals will have grimaced face from the prospect of slave labor. But remember, that such service did not prevent the Yang Luchan or Ma Xueli to become outstanding masters. Where was their "pride"? This situation continued until the communists came. They were who first decided to fight against the "slavish way of life" by prohibiting to carry out the rituals of worship to the teachers, taking money and working for them as “feudal remnants”. Instead of the proven ancient system there had been proposed sports forms of Wushu and the health-improving Taijiquan.

This situation continued until the early 80's, when the reverse processes have taken place in the country after the end of cultural revolution. Nevertheless, the destruction of traditional relationships was disastrous, and out of the real masters. Only few people remained in many schools, there was confusion or degradation of techniques and practices.

Nowadays, teachers in China openly take money for education, charge students with different work and in country areas they still force to work the students in various fields. The period of imaginary freebies is over and that leads to strengthening schools and raising levels of students.

There are also the masters who do not take money or take a little bit. Here the question consists in the fame of the master. It is clear that the man practicing in the park by a book really cannot take a lot money.

However, it should be noted that often the situation takes place where people go to China and study there for free, but for some reason, after returning they gather money from students. Is not it more honest in this case to pay teachers for training, rather than rip them off, "for free" and then make money out of students?

In the consideration of our reality, you are involuntarily surprised why do we have such misrepresentations? So, if you go into a monastery, then the novice will have a lot of work for the monastery and has to serve it. If you go to church, the rituals are performed there have a fee. As you can see, all the institutions are known to use work or pay of novices in one way or another.

Let's try to examine the mechanism itself, human energetic in application to money and spirituality. Every day, people use house, clothes and other external necessary paid conditions for their existence. But most importantly, working for food (a post-heaven qi), a person spends the primordial pre-heaven qi, that is figuratively speaking people exchange gold (primordial qi) for the copper (food, etc.). This food, as well as other external conditions allows the average man to think, to fantasize, to develop intellectually, to discover, and so on. That is precisely the "spirituality", which is in fact in most cases the game of the mind, is based on "banal" food, drink, clothes, etc. Has it now become more understandable whether an expert should take money for teaching spiritual or other practices?

The author © Dmitry A. Artemyev