Seva and daan
Seva and daan
Giving is old in this tradition and it is well understood. What a website can usefully add is a way to find the institution — and then get out of the way.
We do not collect donations
Jain Waves has no donation button, takes no payments, holds no funds for anyone and takes no commission on anything given. If you want to give to a tirth, a bhojanshala, a pathshala or a sangh, give to them directly. Any page anywhere asking for money in the name of Jain Waves is not ours.
What the tradition means by it
Daan is one of the four dharmas of a householder, and the Jain accounts of it are specific rather than general. The story the tradition tells about the first proper alms-giving is Shreyams Kumar pouring sugar-cane juice into Rishabhdev’s cupped hands — the merit is in the fitness of the gift and the receiver, not in the size of it. The classical fourfold division is ahara-daan, aushadha-daan, abhaya-daan and shastra-daan: food, medicine, freedom from fear, and knowledge.
Seva is the other half of it, and it is the half that costs no money: an hour at the bhojanshala, a lift for someone going to pratikraman, sitting with a family after a death, teaching at the pathshala. Every one of those is work a website cannot do and should not pretend to organise.
Why we stay out of it
An intermediary that collects daan takes on three things it cannot discharge: it must verify that every appeal is genuine, it must account for money that is not its own, and it becomes the party a giver blames when something goes wrong at the far end. A pedhi has trustees, accounts and a hundred years of standing in its town. We have a website. The right thing for the website to do is give you the pedhi’s telephone number.
