I have to earn money like everyone else, and I have to make some business – my own stuff, my own creations even, like jewelry, or clothing, paintings, and other stuff. And people also criticize me for making business. “As a spiritual Teacher or practitioner, I shouldn’t make business at all.” I should probably go on the street with a begging bowl, huh? In this modern time, it’s not favorable to live like that. […] My money is not “my” money. My charity is not my decision. I do everything according to God’s Will. That’s why I always thank God. And even if I can earn money at all, that’s also God’s Grace and Heaven’s support. […]
The physical problems sometimes are not as bad as the mental problems and psychological problems. All kinds of problems. Because they don’t know how to get out of the traps of maya, of badness, and of surrounding, unfavorable situations and bad energy. Humans are to be pitied, truly. That’s why God always sends Hiers Saints, Hiers Son to come down and help us. But not all of us listen. Most of us do not listen. That’s why the world continues to be like it is now, and it seems to get worse at times. So we have more disasters, more trouble nowadays, and war from one country to another. We don’t know what will happen next, even. Most of us don’t know. And even if the Saints, Sages and the clairvoyant beings keep telling us, “If you want to avoid more trouble, please do this, do that. Live rightly. Don’t kill, don’t steal,” most humans still cannot listen to that and practice those simple principles to keep themselves safe and healthy, normal, and a true human. On the contrary, they find all kinds of things to slander the Masters with or to make Them be harmed in any way possible. Since time immemorial, it has always been happening.
You see how many Masters, how many great philosophers, Saints and Sages, have been harmed in this world? You look at the list of history and you’ll know: none of Them had a good life at all. The real Masters didn’t have. The fake masters, yes, they have a lot of followers, a lot of wealth, a lot of people worshipping them and giving them all kinds of things they need. And they look good and healthy and happy. The real Masters suffer. Only real Masters really suffer.
But in this world, what do we expect? Just a simple example: You work very hard, sweat and tears every day – even when you’re sick, you can’t just always call in sick – to earn just some hundreds of dollars per week. And you still have to pay taxes out of that. And if you don’t pay taxes, then you might even go to jail or get your things confiscated, taken away from you. If you don’t have enough money to pay for your rent or your mortgage, then you’ll be out on the street sooner than you think. Things come unexpectedly and then you lose your job. You get sick. You don’t have enough money to pay for the hospital, then you’re out – out of your house. Once you don’t have a house, you can’t get another job. It’s so very difficult.
But then again, all this hard-earned money of people who obey the law, respect the rules and pay tax, all this money goes where? It goes to subsidize animal-people murdering – to eat, and to support war or go against war. You support war or you fight in war, all this needs money. And where is it from? Taxpayers. War and the animal-people industry cost billions of dollars, sometimes just in a week or in a month, not to talk about a year. You can read on the Internet; you’ll know how much war costs every day and how much subsidies for the animal-people industry cost you, cost your tax.
“Excerpt from ‘The Economics of Meat Production’ by Climate One – Mar. 25, 2014, David Simon, JD (vegan): Well, I calculate in my book the total subsidies that state governments and the federal government provide to animal agriculture each year in this country. And I calculate that number at about US$38 billion (2023: US$59 billion). To put that in perspective, that’s about half of what all states spent on unemployment benefits last year. That number is probably an order of magnitude higher than the number that people typically think about when they think about animal food production subsidies. But that’s because, as I mentioned, in this country we devote more than half of our land to raising feed crops and we subsidize those feed crops heavily so producers benefit from those subsidies. When we calculate subsidies to animal foods, we have to include subsidies to feed crops. That includes not just things like crop insurance, but irrigation subsidies as well that are provided at the state and federal level.”
But woe to you, if you forget to pay tax or you don’t know how to pay tax. Just for a few hundred dollars, you’ll be in jail, you’ll be in big trouble. But your money, your hard-earned money, doesn’t have much benefit for you, for your children, because it’s all burned in war, or flushed down into bloody rivers, bloody lakes of the animal-people raising industry.
There are many things unjustified in this world. Injustices are everywhere. We can’t even complain; no one will listen to us. And good persons like the Masters are more often than not, or almost always, in trouble. People will frame Them, will give Them bad reputation, will do anything to make Them fall any time possible, or try to kill Them or put bad names on Them. All kinds of things that they fabricate or they invent in order to make the Master die in agony or be in prison or all kinds of things that would happen, that are not good for the Masters. Not to talk about whether He/She will even have followers who 100% believe in Them.
That’s why (Lord) Jesus died so brutally. Buddha has been cut on His toe and avoided death many times. Many other Masters were not accepted by the normal system and died either quietly or publicly in such a way that you wouldn’t think that even a criminal would have to endure. They die in prison, by poison, or They die on the cross by crucifixion, or by assassination or They die by being accused wrongly. And even Their reputation also dies with Them. And then later on, people build temples, they build churches, they build ashrams to worship the Masters. But when They died in agony, no one could help Them. No one could rescue Them.
Not that the Masters care much about life and death, but if They are alive, They can teach us many more things. They can accompany us in our spiritual elevation and improvement, and thus make society more sane, more decent, more safe, more peaceful, for all the co-inhabitants in the world. But the humans just don’t leave Them alone, don’t give Them peace and comfort to do Their job.
If you are a normal teacher, you get paid, you have vacation time, and you have retirement money even. But if you’re a real Master, oh, oh! If they don’t kill you, you feel lucky already. If you accept offerings from the disciples, then they would say, “Oh, You just teach them so that You can fill Your stomach or have a good house.” And if you make money, you make business to earn money, to feed yourself and your dependents, or for doing your own preaching, paying the costs of all your teaching, then they will say, “Ah! You are not a real practitioner, because You’re greedy, You want to make money, that’s why You make business,” and all that. So the Master could never win in this world. Most of the Masters die in agony like that. You know it. You read all of the religious history and then you’ll know.
Even I have my own similar problems. I have to earn money like everyone else, and I have to make some business – my own stuff, my own creations even, like jewelry, or clothing, paintings, and other stuff. And people also criticize me for making business. “As a spiritual Teacher or practitioner, I shouldn’t make business at all.” I should probably go on the street with a begging bowl, huh? In this modern time, it’s not favorable to live like that. Even in Buddhist countries, people don’t do that. There’s still some tradition in some Asian countries. They go out and beg for food once a day, and the followers of Buddhism would give them food. And in India, the tradition is still very normal that the monks would have no money and go around and rely on food or clothing offerings from followers. But nowadays, people follow all kinds of faiths, and they don’t truly keep the tradition. So, I know many monks who are hungry for many days and don’t have food.
And even my own people, some of them criticize me to my face. Like, if I want to give for some disaster or some organization US$20,000, then they criticize me. They said, “You must give US$40,000.” First they said, “US$50,000.” Then I said, “No, cannot.” And they said, “40 (thousand).” Keep arguing back and forth like that. I said, “I don’t earn that much.” I dress well, I put jewelry on and all that like a rich person, but this is only because I create them, so they are cheap for me to wear, but they’re not for me to keep. It’s like advertisement, so people see what’s new so they can buy. Because if I don’t sell them clothes, if I don’t create these clothes or jewelry, then the people who need them would also buy outside anyway. They would spend their money to buy jewelry outside anyway. And I think my creations of jewelry and clothing are very beautiful. So if they like to buy it, it’s really worth it. They have to buy them anyway, either from me or from outsiders; it’s the same.
And all this money I use for Supreme Master Television or for disaster relief. I use what I have. I can’t use more than that because I don’t want to owe the bank anything. I use within my own means, but it doesn’t mean I have a lot. I do have a lot, but not like overly a lot. We have enough to spend – a little bit more than enough – but you never know. Like in a pandemic, I have to spend a lot without earning anything much because people don’t come and buy stuff. For example like that. It’s for rainy days. Everyone, not just myself, needs to save some money. We say, “Save it for rainy days.” We all know that. And I always have to take care so that our Supreme Master Television, for example, will continue. Our spreading of the Truth and Dharma will continue. And our charity, whenever people need some disaster relief, we contribute as much as we can – also, as much as Heavens allow. Because if I give more, that might not help them at all. They might have other karma, something like that.
My money is not “my” money. My charity is not my decision. I do everything according to God’s Will. That’s why I always thank God. And even if I can earn money at all, that’s also God’s Grace and Heaven’s support. Many people may have more talent than I do, they also make jewelry or clothing, but they don’t get that much money, or they may not succeed in making business. So everything is God’s Will, if I succeed in earning money or not. Everything is according to God’s Will whether we could continue Supreme Master Television or not.
I don’t like to take donations. I don’t like to ask my followers, my disciples, my believers, to give me anything, because they also have their hard lives. I never know how much any of my disciples make. I never ask them how much they make. I never ask what they do for a living. Nowadays, because we have Supreme Master Television, we also introduce what they do so that people don’t think that we’re all sitting there waiting for the government to supply us money, or eating your taxes, for example like that.
We do everything openly. That’s why we have to say what the hosts do and all that. Only if the hosts or the personnel, the team people permit. Otherwise, we don’t make them be hosts if they don’t want to. All of them, they personally want to do it. Also, we don’t give their information – not the whole, complete information – to protect their privacy. So, you see, if I earn money, people also criticize. If I give money, even my own people criticize, telling me why I give so little. I wish I could give more, truly like that. I am very shy and embarrassed that I can’t give much more. But we all do what we can, right? So they should not criticize me for giving little or earning money, or anything like that. We all have our own karma to fulfill, we all have our duty to do. That’s the way it is in this world.
Photo Caption: Raining Love? Oh Yeh!