I was on Purusha for years and received thousands of dollars of support from “sponsors,” as did most other Purusha guys. There were times when I and others on Purusha were really earning our keep, and other times when we probably weren’t. I really grew tired of the “taker” lifestyle. It polluted my psychology and tarnished my friendships. I couldn’t walk into a room of TM people without scanning it for potential sponsors. Over time, the attitude that the world owed me a living because I was doing something important became more and more deeply ingrained. After I left Purusha and got married, it took a few years to uproot that attitude. Doing so was very healthy. It may be the best thing for Dakota’s spiritual progress to get a job in the real world and stop depending on others. It may be hard for him to do that now, because he is older and probably doesn’t have marketable skills. So he may be a dharma bum for the rest of his life. I think you are justified in feeling reluctant to support him. If you do so, a realistic justification should probably be compassion for someone who is too flakey to support himself, rather than a sense that you are supporting some sort of spiritual warrior. I’d let him go to Thailand to teach English. He’d be doing seva and getting a taste of self-sufficiency, both of which might be more spiritually beneficial for him than hanging out in an ashram.
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