The begging bowl has come to symbolise monks, especially in the Buddhist tradition. Perhaps the association finds its origin in the bowl of milk and rice that the kind Sujata offered to an emaciated Gautama, shortly before he achieved enlightenment. In the early days, monks exclusively ate the food that they begged from villages or towns around their monasteries.
It does offer a rather interesting metaphor, one that affords us a rather dispassionate lens in the way we approach material trappings. The marketing machine preys on our desire for aesthetics and luxury, be it food or clothing, with the packaging enamouring us more than the contents! In the last couple of weeks, fashionistas would have been horrified to learn how little it cost to make the designer handbags that they splashed out hundreds of thousands on. Effectively, more than 90% of the cost went towards the brand, which creates the apparent hierarchy in the market.
Which goes to show, that even for something as frivolous as handbags, if we were able to strip out the labels, we would be able to approach a more egalitarian society. Food, of course, is a basic necessity, and with trendy restaurants and extravagant menus, one can spend anything from a few hundred to literally hundreds of thousands. The price one pays isn’t just to cover the cost of the ingredients and the chef, but also the whole experience.
Enter the humble bowl, where food from a 5-star restaurant mingles with leftovers from a humble middle-class.