{"id":784,"date":"2009-09-03T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-09-03T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/09\/zen-and-the-art-of-the-scam.html"},"modified":"2009-09-03T08:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-03T08:00:00","slug":"zen-and-the-art-of-the-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/zen-and-the-art-of-the-scam.html","title":{"rendered":"Zen and the Art of the Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Saturday, I fell victim to one of the oldest scams in
\nthe book.  A young man came to my door
\nworking on a “contest” and looking for my help. 
\nHe said that in order for him to gain points to win the competition for a
\n$5000 scholarship, all I had to do was order a magazine subscription<\/span> that would
\nbe donated to the active military armed forces branch of my choice.  I must have talked to him on the doorstop for
\nover 20 minutes before I decided, “hey, this is just a donation for the
\ntroops, I’ll go ahead and help him out.” 
\nI wrote out a check for $60 and he went on his
\nway.  When I got inside I looked up the
\ncompany on the receipt (Editor and Chief Review Inc.<\/a>)
\nand instantly found out that this was a scam.  A string of thoughts
\nflashed in my mind
\nalmost at once, “how’d I get hoodwinked so easily?” “why didn’t I look
\nthis up before I wrote the check?” “can I stop him?” 
\nI immediately called my bank and set to work trying to make this
\nsituation right and minimize its financial impact.  What I didn’t
\nrealize was what this scam would teach me about myself and the
\npractice.<\/p>\n


\nOnce the initial shock of what happened began to
\nfade I was
\nleft with a terrible feeling that he’d gotten me because of my Buddhist
\npractice.  I remember being approached by
\nthese types before I learned anything about Buddhism and I never gave
\nthem the
\ntime of day, let alone a check.  At this
\npoint in my life, I consider generosity to be a major part of my
\npractice.  I have a good job, I bring down a decent
\nsalary and I feel that it’s part of my practice as a Buddhist to volunteer and give
\nto
\ncharity when I can.  What snagged me in
\nthis situation was the fact that he made clear that this would be
\npurely a
\ndonation that would also help him with his scholarship competition.  I
\nwasn’t buying a magazine subscription and
\nthe money would go to a good cause.  Of
\ncourse, being scammed had nothing to do with my Buddhist practice. 
\nI understood that these people prey on the
\nnatural generosity of all good, kind-hearted folks out there, but that
\ndidn’t
\nmake me feel any better about falling into his trap.  <\/p>\n

I went to bed Saturday night with a gnawing feeling
\nthat I’d made a huge mistake and I would surely regret it for a long
\ntime. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The next morning, before heading to the zendo for Sunday morning zazen, I
\npicked up Suzuki Roshi’s Zen Mind, Beginners Mind<\/i><\/a>
\nand opened it to a random
\nchapter.  By some sort of auspicious
\nquirk, I turned to the chapter titled, “God-Giving” in which Suzuki
\nlays out
\nthe teaching of generosity from the Zen perspective. 
\nIn Zen, generosity is known as dana prajna paramita<\/i><\/a>.  As Suzuki Roshi defines the term, praja paramita<\/i>
\nis the “true wisdom of living”
\nand the six prajna paramitas<\/i> are known as the six ways of true living.  The concept of dana<\/i> goes beyond
\nsimply giving monetary donations and deals more fully with how we
\napproach all
\naspects of our lives – from material objects to zazen itself.  As I understand it, what the practice of dana <\/i>truly boils down to is a practice of letting go.  This does not simply mean letting go of money or clothes for the poor.  It also means a deep non-attachment to any and everything we label as “mine,” including our past actions.  This brings me back to Suzuki Roshi’s teaching on “God-giving” and how it relates to my Saturday afternoon chat with a guy trying to rip me off.  Dogen-zenji
\nsaid, “to give is non-attachment”
\nand Suzuki Roshi goes on to say: <\/p>\n

And we should forget, day-by-day, what we have done; this
\nis true non-attachment.  And we should do
\nsomething new.  To do something new, of
\ncourse we must know our past, and this is all right.  But we should not keep holding onto anything
\nwe have done; we should only reflect on it. 
\nAnd we must have some idea of what we should do in the future.<\/p>\n

As I sat there reading on Sunday morning, I struggled with this passage for a few moments. 
\nI didn’t particularly like the idea of
\n“forgetting” what I have done.  I made a
\nmistake that afternoon that I certainly did not want to forget or
\nrepeat.  But when I read the passage more closely I understood
\nthe teaching clearly.  What happened is
\ndone, the mistake was made and the scammer left my apartment with one
\nof my checks in his pocket.  Still, despite that, I don’t need to beat
\nmyself up about
\nit and get bogged down with regret.  Instead, I can practice dana prajna paramita<\/i> by simply reflecting on the situation and taking steps to avoid this in the future.  In the end, the experience of being scammed inspired me to look more deeply at a teaching that I haven’t thought about in a long time.  As a result, my understanding of the practice has deepened and I feel like I’ve grown a little bit because of it.  At this point, now that all is said and done, I’m actually grateful to the scammer for
\nhelping
\nme look at my practice more closely.  It just goes to show: you
\nnever know who your next teacher will be.  <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Saturday, I fell victim to one of the oldest scams in the book.  A young man came to my door working on a “contest” and looking for my help.  He said that in order for him to gain points to win the competition for a $5000 scholarship, all I had to do was order…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":205,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-buddhism","category-everybody-hurts"],"yoast_head":"\nZen and the Art of the Scam - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/09\/zen-and-the-art-of-the-scam.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Zen and the Art of the Scam - 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