Moralizing vs. Compassion

[bennyboy]

So even though it was YOUR brains and the enormous risks YOU took and the sacrifices YOU made
to make YOUR idea a huge success....

...you keep no significant rewards for yourself...you give EVERYTHING back,
because to do otherwise would be unethical.


Can you imagine anyone doing anything like that?

I can imagine someone doing that, because it's the essential message of the Christian religion: absolute dedication to the idea of God, with no concern for the needs of the self.

Of course, there are very, very few Christians who live that way, but the number is non-zero. And there are people of other religions or philosophical persuasions who live that way as well-- asceticism with a goal, basically.

I'd argue that Buddhism, in its pure form, is necessarily ascetic, though this is founded more in the idea of lifting illusion than in a moral compunction about having stuff others don't.