Buddhist monks have also played a part in encouraging donations and teaching people to see them as an act of giving, or “dana”, that will help them to be reincarnated into a better life.

The venerable Kiribathgoda Gnanananda Thero, founder of the Mahamevnawa Buddhist Monastery in Sri Lanka, told me a story from the Jataka, an ancient book of poems about the Buddha’s earlier lives.

“In Buddha’s previous life, he became a king. A blind beggar came to the palace and met the king. And he requested, ‘Oh king, give me your eyes’. So he [Buddha] decided to give,” he said.

The Buddha’s surgeon then removed the Buddha’s eyes, and transferred them to the beggar, restoring his vision.

“Generation to generation, we are listening to those kind of stories. So we are very encouraged to give our body parts to others,” Thero says.

He himself has already donated a kidney to a woman with kidney disease.

The certificates handed out by the Eye Donation Society to those who pledge their corneas, explicitly allude to Buddhist teaching by carrying the words, “Let the donor have a good rebirth”, though people from other religions have both made donations and received donated corneas.

Quoted from >> www.bbc.com