Have You Eaten Yet?

Truc’s motorbike died at a stoplight in downtown Ho Chi Minh City. The nightlife carried on around us in a parade of crowded cafes, food carts, karaoke bars, neon lights, hawkers, beggars, children, engines, horns, laughter, toasts, and fights, all clamoring together over the beat of distant club music. 

The traffic light turned green. Motorbikes flooded around us. Truc’s moped remained as still as a rock in a stream. 

She planted her feet to steady the vehicle. I followed, careful to keep my toes out of traffic. Plastic bags—containing two dozen meals in Styrofoam boxes—swung precariously from a gear hook under her moped’s handlebars. The 24-year-old laughed as she steadied the sacks. Seated behind her, I rebalanced the bag of milk pouches wedged between us. 

For the past hour, we had been giving away hot meals to people living on the streets of the city’s central Phu Nhuan district. Truc drove while I scanned the sidewalks for people preparing to sleep outside. Every few minutes, we saw people laying out cardboard and bedding to rest on park benches or ATM kiosks. She instructed me to watch for elderly people, people with disabilities, or single mothers with children. Whenever I identified someone who met Truc’s criteria and approval, she pulled to the curb, idled the moped, and handed me a Styrofoam box. 

I dismounted, placed a milk pouch atop the box, and approached the recipient, asking, as she instructed, “Have you eaten yet?” The question is a commonly used greeting among family and friends. Asking was meant to establish a brief, “affectionate” connection with recipients by showing concern for their well- being. 

Most recipients accepted our meals with thanks, smiles, and waves over to Truc. A few had insisted that the meal, or at least the milk packet, go to someone in greater need. While we drove, Truc waxed poetic about the goodness of such people: they had nothing, yet still gave away anything they could. For her, this selflessness represented living “ethically”— a term more literally translated as living in the “way of virtue” (Vn.: dao duc). 

That night, we were volunteering along with six acquaintances that Truc knew. Everyone had gone to a different neighborhood to distribute meals in teams of two by motorbike. While the others typically finished their deliveries by 9 p.m., Truc always insisted that we start later. If we started after 9 or 10 p.m., she reasoned, anyone who was only “pretending to beg” would have already left the streets to sleep in the comfort of home. 

Our mission was to find recipients whom Truc believed were completely dependent on the kindness of others. She did not want our charity to enable cheating or lying, which would undermine the spiritual “blessings” of altruism for both ourselves and the recipients. 

Like most volunteers that I met, Truc used the word “blessings” interchangeably with the Buddhist term “merit.” She assessed philanthropy through a Buddhist understanding of the universe, often called a “cosmology.” She explained that altruism improved the quality of life for charity recipients at a basic level and “developed the heart” for everyone involved—hearts developed because caring affected karma. 

The word karma means “action” in Sanskrit. In most Buddhist cosmologies, all actions of “body, speech, and mind” cause material ramifications through karma. These consequences manifest the living conditions, appearances, feelings, environments, and relationships of “sentient beings.” Karma drives a cycle of reincarnation called samsara. Samsara means “wandering,” indicating that sentient beings wander through realms of incarnations. Our thoughts, words, and actions in the “present incarnation” have karmic consequences that actualize in both this lifetime and “future incarnations.” Doing a “right” or “good” action improves karma and generally leads to pleasant effects like greater health, wealth, happiness, beauty, and success. Conversely, committing a “bad” or “evil” action leads to unpleasant effects such as sickness, poverty, pain, ugliness, and misfortune. 

Elite monastics may focus on achieving nirvana to escape samsara altogether. However, non-monastic lay people and lower-ranking monastics (often women) have generally focused on making merit and improving karma for this and future incarnations. They may feel—or may have been told—that nirvana is unattainable in this lifetime, given the “heaviness” of their accumulated karma. Instead of aspiring to achieve nirvana immediately, most Buddhist followers work to “lighten” their heavy karma. Common practices to improve karma include chanting sutras, reciting the Buddha’s name, attending bi-monthly repentance rituals, and giving donations to temples. Increasingly, Buddhists view philanthropy in society as another form of dana, beyond ritualized donations to temples. 

Philanthropy was much more than it appeared: Giving could spark a cosmic revolution by improving karma for all sentient beings across lifetimes.

For volunteers like Truc, philanthropy created a positive feedback loop that improved karma not only for the donor but also for the recipient. The donor could gain merit by giving selflessly, while the recipient could gain merit by experiencing humble gratitude and happiness for the gift. Some volunteers maintained that recipients could even gain merit just by being near a spiritually advanced being. Philanthropy was much more than it appeared: Giving could spark a cosmic revolution by improving karma for all sentient beings across lifetimes. Buddhist charity could literally change the world. 

When Truc’s moped stalled during our meal distribution, I assumed we were done for the night. She futilely twisted her ignition key, then flung up her hands and exclaimed that we would just have to finish distributing the meals “on foot.” I laughed at her joke. 

A young man pulled up alongside us and offered to tow us home. Truc agreed. He balanced his shoe against the footrest of her vehicle and propelled us down the road. 

Once we arrived at the garage stall where Truc both lived and operated her milk tea business, she rolled the moped inside. We unloaded the meals. I pulled out my smartphone to hail a motorbike taxi back to my apartment. When I looked up, Trúc was standing at the door holding the sacks of food. 

“Let’s go!” she announced. 

She hadn’t been joking. I put my phone away and accepted the heavy milk bag. We were going to finish the charity drive on foot. 

We walked for over 10 km (roughly six miles) searching Truc’s neighborhood for appropriate recipients. I slowed as my feet grew sore in a pair of sturdy hiking boots, yet Truc charged ahead, scaling traffic barriers in her thin golden sandals. 

Around midnight, I pretended to collapse and suggested we keep the meals in my fridge to distribute after her engine was fixed. Truc ignored my performance and replied that this work wasn’t just about meals. Making each dinner cost only 10,000 to 20,000 Viet Nam Dong (VND)—less than a U.S. dollar (USD) at the time. The ingredients were cheap, even for someone who could not afford shelter. Anyone could beg for enough money to buy a dinner like ours every night. It would certainly be easier and more convenient for us to give out equivalent quantities of cash instead of food. (Truc hefted the bags to emphasize their heaviness.) However, the purpose of charity was not only to feed people. Our true intentions were to “comfort” people by sharing lovingly homemade meals. These meals showed that someone cared for recipients enough to cook their dinners by hand, using healthy ingredients. Offering food could not “solve all the societal problems” that caused unemployment, poverty, and homelessness, but it could “warm the hearts” of recipients for a night. 

Around one o’clock in the morning, we left our last container near an elderly man sleeping on a rickshaw. The meal was no longer warm, and the rickshaw driver was not awake to receive it. Truc mused that he would wake up at some point in the night and feel “moved” that someone had noticed him. 

For Truc, altruism worked best when it affected feelings. The act of giving was meant to create a ripple effect that spread “love” and “happiness” from donors through recipients, beyond individuals, across the city, and into the broader web of existence. When positive feelings were shared, then karma was affected, and when karma was affected, then society improved. 

Our work for the night was done, but the karmic transformation was only just beginning.

♦

From Near Light We Shine: Buddhist Charity in Urban Vietnam by Sara Ann Swenson. © Oxford University Press, 2025. Reprinted with permission.