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In Reply to: that's clever!! posted by MV on October 28, 2002 at 18:43:23:
MV,
The HK has changed since the late 60's & 70's. In the 80 and up until now, the vast majority of HK are householders, meaning they don't live in the temple commune. They usually live as individual family units, or in smaller groups. Although I was married while in, I usually was travelling and/or living with other people besides my wife and kid. Sad, but true.
Anyway, in the HK, one has to keep an occupation that follows the basic principles, namely: 1) no eating meat, 2) no gambling, 3) no illicit sex (which is sex outside of marriage, and then only for pro-creation) 4) no illicit drugs, alcohol or smoking. One cannot (or should not) hold a job that encourages any of these things. For instance, if you work in a restaurant, it would have to be a vegetarian restaurant. If you work in a grocery store, it would have to be a vegetarian grocery store. In other words, you can't promote or sell anything that goes agains the principles.
So, most devotees take jobs in the vegetarian food industry or else work for themselves in some way. It's very normal for devotees to open a restaurant or a shop that sells Eastern religious items. But, many also scam. There are a lot of scams that work too.
I was very 'honored,' because I was collecting for the temple within two weeks of joining. That was very uncommon for some one to be trusted so quickly. But I was also good at it. We would go downtown P_____ or take trips up to S____ (where we would often stay for days) and collect money from tourists, telling them that the money was going to a food project for the homeless and needy. People would usually just hand money over. The individual collector had a deal with the temple to turn over a minimum amount. Once you passed your minimum amount for the day, you would give a percentage of anything over that minimum amount, then the individual kept the remainder for themselves (wages so to speak). Now, this isn't necessarily wrong, in my opinion. But what WAS wrong with it is that the public had no idea where the money was really going. We lied to them. That was/is wrong.
After a while, we started going door-to-door asking for donations of non-perishable food, clothing, furniture, books, ANYTHING. We would put a slip out, using a charity name, and give a date when we would be by to pick the stuff up. It's amazing how many item we got. The food would go to 'devotees' as long as it was vegetarian, and if it wasn't vegetarian, it was tossed out or given to a charity organization. The furniture was sold in a thrift shop and the clothing was sold in a shop. If something was of little or no value, it was given to another charity or disposed of. Now, again, in general this practice was some-what OK, just a little shady I suppose, as SOME of the proceeds did go to legitimate charities, and some of the money was used to feed the hungry. But again, our true identities were concealed.
Now, with the above two practices of: 1) asking for cash on the streets & 2) asking for non-monetary items for resale or to feed people, there is nothing wrong with it IF your true identity is revealed, and IF you have a legitimate license.
What we now do is this: we sell used furniture and retro items, along with other things. But, we now go to auctions to get our items, and we don't do it in the name of charity, but we do it to make a legitimate living. However, it was in the HK that we learned what was worth taking and what was worthless.
We also do have a legitimate non-profit organization (not related to HK at all, but a Chrisitan group) that actually feed over 75 homeless a week. We don't scam to do anything anymore. It's just not right.
But, in the HK we justified it. We were told and we believed that ANYTHING that benefits Krishna Consciousness was OK. It was OK to lie. By deceiving people, and causing them to give to the movement, THEY were blessed, because they were giving to God whether they knew it or not. After all, why not take the money from them, they would just buy a hamburger with the money anyway, or buy cigarettes or booze with the money, so we were doing them a favor by cheating them!
