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When I think about rich people (richer than me--after seeing some real poverty, I realize that by many standards I and most of you are very rich--and at this point I just mean $$$ or €€€ or QQQ or whatever), I usually think of all that's very wrong with the system that produces inequities and even more about how twisted and evil they are to benefit from it (and sometimes I do include me and all of us in those harsh judgments). This weekend, though, I had a momentary different thought.
I set off to a meeting with some other people from another part of the Buddhist group I belong to. We were going to spend a weekend discussing the retreat center we hope to build, and a member from the city on the coast had volunteered "a cabin her daughter's in-laws have, near a smaller town." I didn't think much about that until we got the directions just before we left. It's very near our house on the coast, and I knew only one place that it could be--part of a huge and very private estate that belongs to a woman who had inherited an immense fortune from a fairly famous family that made their money in the late 19th and early 20th century, and acquired five or six plantations that became a sort of little kingdom. Indeed, it turns out that we were using the hunting cabin that's part of that estate--the daughter of our Buddhist friend had indeed married the heir to all that.
About these rich people: first, the daughter (who'd met the rich guy while working with her father on historical restoration) and the heir himself were very sweet, unassuming, generous people, who spent several hours showing us around the old buildings and restored gardens. The son manages the gardens and in fact all of the land himself. The restored gardens are magnificent, and the rest of it is kept wild, but healthy (in that part of the county, means either controlled burns or bushhogging, or you get uncontrolled fires and choking jungle). Hundreds of acres are home to deer, turkey, huge old live oaks, wild hogs, egrets, bald eagles, bobcats, little orchids alligators, snakes, palmetto trees, hummingbirds, long-leaf pine, otter, ferns....paradise. And he's put it in a natural conservancy (Ducks Unlimited, but still, a conservancy), which means that his heirs won't be able to sell it to developers. The whole coast was like that when I was a child, but in the last half-century, most of the other land has been sold to developers and is now clear-cut and covered with little boxes made of ticky-tacky at best and mcmansions and golf courses at worst. As I was walking through the old rice fields this morning, watching the egrets in their rookery under the Spanish moss, I was so glad that this family had enough money to hold on to the beauty. Even if no other humans get to use it, it still exists.
Meanwhile, the Buddhist in the hunting lodge: The lodge was trophy central for several generations of guys who'd been able to hunt just about full time, and evidently spent most of the rest of the time taking their prey to the taxidermist. It was a pleasant rough-pine cabin with a fireplace and loft, and rafters of old cypress logs. On all the rafters and walls were heads of deer (at least four), wild boar (two), bobcats (the whole animal, lounging realistically on a rafter), ducks, pronghorns, and a whole fox. Each chair was draped with animal skin--bobcat, beaver, deer--sometimes complete with face and whiskers. We sat in the midst of all this, chanting our prayers, meditating, and making plans for a place of love and compassion (which will be elsewhere, on a much small piece of land, further inland).The big-tusked boar over the fireplace had his mouth wide open, laughing at us the whole time.
I'm not yet ready to be a vegetarian, but I really want to be a lot more conscious every time I do eat meat. I try to buy meat mostly from local farmers who raise animals in less-cruel ways, and I try to cut out meat more and more often. (I do recognize, thought, that hunting provides a much better life and death for animals than most animal farms and slaughter houses do.) This whole ironic circle closes with the fact that it's those rich guys with their love of hunting--which led them to buy the estate and keep it wild--who save the lives of many more animals than I ever will.
I set off to a meeting with some other people from another part of the Buddhist group I belong to. We were going to spend a weekend discussing the retreat center we hope to build, and a member from the city on the coast had volunteered "a cabin her daughter's in-laws have, near a smaller town." I didn't think much about that until we got the directions just before we left. It's very near our house on the coast, and I knew only one place that it could be--part of a huge and very private estate that belongs to a woman who had inherited an immense fortune from a fairly famous family that made their money in the late 19th and early 20th century, and acquired five or six plantations that became a sort of little kingdom. Indeed, it turns out that we were using the hunting cabin that's part of that estate--the daughter of our Buddhist friend had indeed married the heir to all that.
About these rich people: first, the daughter (who'd met the rich guy while working with her father on historical restoration) and the heir himself were very sweet, unassuming, generous people, who spent several hours showing us around the old buildings and restored gardens. The son manages the gardens and in fact all of the land himself. The restored gardens are magnificent, and the rest of it is kept wild, but healthy (in that part of the county, means either controlled burns or bushhogging, or you get uncontrolled fires and choking jungle). Hundreds of acres are home to deer, turkey, huge old live oaks, wild hogs, egrets, bald eagles, bobcats, little orchids alligators, snakes, palmetto trees, hummingbirds, long-leaf pine, otter, ferns....paradise. And he's put it in a natural conservancy (Ducks Unlimited, but still, a conservancy), which means that his heirs won't be able to sell it to developers. The whole coast was like that when I was a child, but in the last half-century, most of the other land has been sold to developers and is now clear-cut and covered with little boxes made of ticky-tacky at best and mcmansions and golf courses at worst. As I was walking through the old rice fields this morning, watching the egrets in their rookery under the Spanish moss, I was so glad that this family had enough money to hold on to the beauty. Even if no other humans get to use it, it still exists.
Meanwhile, the Buddhist in the hunting lodge: The lodge was trophy central for several generations of guys who'd been able to hunt just about full time, and evidently spent most of the rest of the time taking their prey to the taxidermist. It was a pleasant rough-pine cabin with a fireplace and loft, and rafters of old cypress logs. On all the rafters and walls were heads of deer (at least four), wild boar (two), bobcats (the whole animal, lounging realistically on a rafter), ducks, pronghorns, and a whole fox. Each chair was draped with animal skin--bobcat, beaver, deer--sometimes complete with face and whiskers. We sat in the midst of all this, chanting our prayers, meditating, and making plans for a place of love and compassion (which will be elsewhere, on a much small piece of land, further inland).The big-tusked boar over the fireplace had his mouth wide open, laughing at us the whole time.
I'm not yet ready to be a vegetarian, but I really want to be a lot more conscious every time I do eat meat. I try to buy meat mostly from local farmers who raise animals in less-cruel ways, and I try to cut out meat more and more often. (I do recognize, thought, that hunting provides a much better life and death for animals than most animal farms and slaughter houses do.) This whole ironic circle closes with the fact that it's those rich guys with their love of hunting--which led them to buy the estate and keep it wild--who save the lives of many more animals than I ever will.
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I was wondering how the prayers and chanting went amidst all the evidence of violence.
Does the heir have a brother (unmarried)? I could become accustomed to that sort of life.
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Tibetans have a tradition of meditating in the middle of the sky burial grounds, and even Tibetan monks aren't vegetarians ( you can't grow anything but yaks in Tibet), so they're fairly used to the paradoxes and problems, and we've been taught by them. It was a bit of a reminder of a lot of stuff, though.
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Meanwhile, Bill Gates has a ton of money, but he is also the health care system of the entire country of Zimbabwe. As I recall, that country has some of the most horrifying mortality numbers in the world -- people die in their 30's and 40's on the AVERAGE. It may be a teaspoon bailing the ocean, but at least he is doing something positive with all that loot.
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I hope there are some others following his lead.
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[hugs]
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