Abstract

We describe a donation-routing system for Buddhist monastic alms rounds in which a credential tag hung from a monk's alms bowl routes digital donations directly to a lay steward's account, so that money never enters monastic custody, as monastic rules require. The tag carries a revocable, time-limited credential issued by the monastic community and bound to the monk's ordination standing; a scan resolves the monk's name, monastery, current standing and the steward's account, resolves only in physical proximity to the tag (a copied image is inert), and stops resolving on loss of standing, giving donors a check against impostors when they give. Around the tag the system specifies: household-originated invitations routed to monks by rotation rather than by donor choice, with no rating of monks, unrecorded declines, and only coarse progress states shown (in the current form, the rotation order is a publicly recomputable shuffle seeded from a public randomness beacon over a committed roster); an interface that presents the physical food offering and the digital donation as one act with food primary; a real-time location broadcast that only the walking monk can switch on, per walk and revocably; and escrowed third-party sponsorship that releases to the steward only when monk and local householder are attested co-present, the householder performing the gift. No recording of the monk's blessing is ever a release condition. Three predictions are pre-registered. The system is unbuilt and unadopted; the proximity technique is unspecified; trust moves from monks to the steward rather than disappearing.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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