Is It Reasonable for Monks to Charge Fees for Administering the Five Precepts and Bodhisattva Precepts?

From the perspective of monastics, it is their inherent duty and obligation to bestow the Three Refuges and Five Precepts upon lay practitioners, and even to confer the Bodhisattva Precepts. These are responsibilities that monastics must undertake. Moreover, when capable, universally liberating all sentient beings is also part of their inherent duty and responsibility. This is because monastics have resolved to leave the household life to cultivate the path, and having received the offerings of sentient beings, they are obligated to serve them.

However, the very act of serving sentient beings, bestowing the Three Refuges, Five Precepts, and Bodhisattva Precepts, involves bearing a certain amount of karmic obstacles for the lay practitioners. The cost of this can vary greatly. To put it starkly, if measured in monetary terms, no amount of wealth is of any use against karmic obstacles. Sentient beings, no matter how much money they spend in the world, cannot eliminate the burden and oppression of karmic obstacles, nor can they free themselves from the suffering of birth, death, and rebirth caused by karmic obstacles. When monastics serve sentient beings and universally liberate them, they inevitably, whether consciously or unconsciously, shoulder these karmic obstacles. These obstacles will create various hindrances in both worldly life and spiritual cultivation. Who would willingly create obstacles for their own cultivation and secular life? No one can truly understand the impact of bearing karmic obstacles for others or the magnitude of benefit sentient beings gain from it. While feeling it is only right and proper, how many among the sentient beings harbor a heart of gratitude and remorse? When demanding things from others, what demands does each person place upon themselves?

Consider the medical profession. Everyone feels that doctors healing and saving lives is simply their duty, because they receive employment and financial benefit in return – an equal transaction. But has anyone considered whether this transaction is truly equal? After saving a patient, how much karmic burden does the doctor bear for them? What are the effects and consequences of this karma on the doctor? Merely witnessing the patient's suffering imposes psychological pressure, and enduring the impact of an energy field saturated with sickness is enough to make one feel remorseful, heartbroken, and pitying. How much more so for those who face the suffering of numerous patients every day? Moreover, having to personally address these afflictions – the physical and mental impact and pressure – how much vexation does it add? How much sickly energy is brought back? How much is one's lifespan shortened? How many of the patient's karmic creditors are offended? No one thinks about these things, and thus, naturally, people do not hold gratitude or sympathy for doctors.

Now, from the patient's perspective, after their life is saved, what immense benefit do they gain? Has anyone calculated the value of a patient's health and life? This value is inestimable. Although many people live idle lives, achieving little, or even relying on others for support, every individual, within their limited lifespan, is imbued with human habits, learning to be human, and consciously or unconsciously accumulating merit and blessings to enhance the quality and grade of life.

From this viewpoint, all life, including the life of animals, holds immense value and is extremely precious. Regardless of status or rank, all sentient beings are in the process of progressing towards a higher form of life. This process is essential and cannot be discarded or bypassed. Without this process, one cannot accumulate the experiences and merits of life, nor can one ascend to a higher life community, allowing life to be sublimated and flourish. Hence the saying: "Better to live poorly than to die well." Sentient beings, lacking profound wisdom, only see the superficial monetary transaction but fail to perceive the actual gains and losses behind it. Respecting the service and contributions of all people, whether the contribution yields benefit or not, is a profound respect for one's own life and carries great significance.