Blessing Life - The Power of the Generous Heart

Our capacity for generosity is one of the most beautiful of human capacities. This talk explores some of the profound and far-reaching possibilities of the practice of generosity - its power to open our hearts wide and to effect a deep and radical transformation in our lives.

The theme I would like to explore this evening is the practice of generosity and the power of the generous heart. Most of the discourses of the Buddha, the original discourses of the Buddha, are addressed either to his own sort of group of disciples, monastics, or to wandering ascetics and contemplatives who were living the homeless life. But occasionally there are a number of discourses that are addressed to lay people. And there are a couple of discourses that are actually sort of a collection of his financial and business advice to lay people. And it's pretty sensible stuff. It's what your father would tell you if he was that kind of guy, and it's what you read, what a financial advisor would say, etc.: reinvest in your business, portion allocated for your expenses. And he actually, you know, says percentages. I can't remember what they are. A percentage for your own enjoyment and the enjoyment of those who you love, and a percentage for savings, and a portion for dāna, for giving, either to spiritual seekers (at that time, they were like monastics now; they were the recipients of dāna), and also giving to the poor.

So clear, sensible, common-sense prudence. However, when we look back at the sort of social structure of India at that time, generally speaking, what you had was lay people who, on the whole, were not interested in awakening. And if you were interested in awakening, you pretty much gave up your lay life, on the whole. Nowadays, we have a very different scenario. We are all lay people in here, and yet there are people in here who are very serious about awakening. And that goes across the board for lay Dharma practitioners in the West. Does that affect how we relate to the teachings of generosity and all this? Now, I know some of you, and I know that you are, in fact, very generous, some of you. And I know some of you work in care, and that's your main sort of outpouring of effort in life.

What I kind of want to do in this talk, in a way, is talk about dimensions of generosity, or we could say dimensions of the practice of generosity. Because sometimes in the Dharma world, it's almost as if -- a person might even have been meditating for a little while, and they don't quite incorporate a sense of the place of generosity into their sense of the spiritual life. It's very much not really considered. Or, as I said, someone might be really quite generous, but yet it's rare for generosity to be considered as a really powerful avenue to liberation, for liberation, in its own right. That's quite rare. We tend to think of meditation, of course. And there's something that I kind of want to bring out in terms of a sense of possibility in and through generosity that goes really, really deep, really deep, and that, as I said, tends to seem to be overlooked, or at least not be given the same emphasis and weight in the culture, in the Dharma culture. There's something that has the possibility of opening a radically different sense of life, and a radically different sense of death. Radically different sense of freedom in life, and in between life and death. So in a way, I want to talk about all that. And going back to the opening talk, in a way, it's your aspiration and where you land with this. It's what's true for you.

Just very simply: it's pretty obvious what 'generosity' means. It's not a mystery what it means. Classically, it's sort of broken up into three portions, you could say, or three levels. (1) Talk about generosity with regard to material things -- so giving money, certainly, but also one's possessions or what one has. (2) There's what's called the gift of fearlessness. That's the sort of second level of generosity in the classical teachings -- beautiful. What is it to be living in the world, that others feel fearless around us? Or even more than that, that we're somehow aiding others to let go of fear. So the teachings on ethics, sīla, are part of that. They're part of allowing, radiating, encouraging a fearlessness in the world. (3) And then the third level is generosity in terms of the Dharma, the giving of the Dharma, of the teachings.

We could break it down, as well, to highlight different aspects. You know, there's material generosity. There's generosity with money. There's generosity with one's time. Sometimes it's interesting to see where I'm a little bit not generous. Is it perhaps with material things, or more with time, or the other way round? There's generosity with one's knowledge and the sharing of that. There's generosity with things like one's gratitude and one's forgiveness. It's quite broad in terms of where it reaches out to.

Generosity is in the service of love and goodness. So we could give a lot of money to something that's really not wholesome, or actually is creating harm in the world, with the intent of creating harm. Just to be clear, generosity is in the service of love and goodness, of wanting others to thrive, deeply wanting another being to grow, to open, to be deeply well. Wanting them to thrive. And like mettā, we're interested with the generosity, with the mettā, we're interested in widening the circle. So yes, we're kind, hopefully, to the people around us -- our family, our loved ones. But there's something about the aspiration of mettā that's actually widening it infinitely, without limit. We're interested in a really, really open circle, a boundless circle of generosity, of mettā. And the same is true for generosity -- it's without limits. And that's a little bit where the radicality begins to come in, beyond the close circle of those that I'm usually concerned with, that I usually extend my care and my generosity to.

A question, again, for all of us. Lots of questions. But am I, is it possible that I'm not seeing the immense power and possibility in the practice of generosity? As I said in the opening talk, the practice, the path, is not just about mindfulness. I want to put this in the context of balance, because it's also not just about generosity, of course. And we need to, going back to the opening talk, we need to develop the skills to work well with our inner experience, and particularly with what's difficult in our inner process. So I'm certainly not getting rid of that, but wanting to sort of emphasize aspects of the path that we don't often emphasize or we might overlook.

Again, insight meditation has strengths and pitfalls. Sometimes we come to this practice and we want emotional healing. A person wants a healing in their emotional life. And it's a lovely thing to seek through practice. But I don't know if a really deep emotional healing is actually possible without the heart opening in generosity. There was a study done for people suffering with depression. They found that one very significant quality that moved them out of the depression was actually helping other people -- actually doing something in the world to help other people. And that opened something and lightened something.

So somehow, it's very easy in this particular practice, insight meditation practice, to get into a belief, and again, it might not even be conscious, that a kind of self-preoccupation is going to bring healing. And it does to a certain degree. But I don't know if there can be a really significant spiritual transformation without giving, without service, without this real cracking open of something in generosity. Now, this is not simple. This is not simple at all, because sometimes in our life we're in a place where we need to do more inner work, we need to emphasize healing in an inner-looking kind of way. But there may be periods in life where that's actually not the case, and the most healing thing is actually the opposite, coming out of the self.

So again, we assume very often -- how easy it is to assume in these kind of practices (not just insight meditation; I mean lots of other related practices that even people in this room are doing), we assume that working on the self, on my relationship with experience and, as I said in the opening talk, especially difficult experience, my relationship with myself, assume that that's the most important thing, assume that being with my unfolding experience, being with the unfolding of experience is the most important thing. But it can be -- talk about strengths that can also be weaknesses -- can be that I may be, in that, just perpetuating at a certain level, perpetuating a kind of self-centredness, and a kind of self-preoccupation, and the whole sense of self itself.

It's funny on a meditation retreat. We come, and on a usual retreat, we close our eyes, and what happens? We're confronted -- generally; we're trying to emphasize a little bit different on this retreat -- but generally, we close our eyes and we're confronted with difficult, a difficult inner world and difficult experience with which we try and deal. We try and deal with it. Very understandable, normal. And maybe part of that inner difficulty, it's like we remember or we have memories or events from the outside. And either we think, "I need to fix that problem," or we think, "I need to learn how to be with my inner experience because it's difficult*."* Understandable. And when it's not difficult, we don't see a connection with the outer. Because things are simple and spacious, we don't make a connection with the outer and how maybe, often, something like generosity actually has a big place in allowing the inner experience to be easeful.

I want to talk at all these different levels tonight. It's a little bit -- it's challenging for me, but it's also maybe challenging for you. Deep Dharma teachings, any deep spiritual teachings, turn everything upside down, turn everything inside out and back to front, challenge our whole ways that we look at the world and our whole notion of things. Beautiful words of Jesus:

He who tries to keep his life will lose it. But he who loses his life, he who gives up his life for my sake, will find it.^[1]

What does that mean mystically? What does "for my sake" mean? We don't have to get into the whole Christianity thing, but what does that mean? For the sake of what? For the sake of love, of truth?

Something about deep teachings point at giving up everything, giving up one's life, throwing it away, giving it away. At one level of our being, that's very hard to hear, and there may be another level that it speaks to. But you know, words like that, those words of Jesus in this case, they're not going to go away. That was 2,000 years ago. They're not going to go away. Extremely challenging words. They will last, those words. If humanity is still around in 2,000 years, they'll still be there. And some of the other spiritual teachings that are around will not be there. They'll be replaced with something else or whatever. They're revolutionary words. They're really pointing to a revolution inside, and they will stay alive.

Some people react to the clear ringing of those words across millennia, across centuries, and it's calling us, it's beckoning us. Or it's a whisper, an invitation. And maybe as we listen -- and I'm also speaking to myself in this talk -- as we listen, it's like a part of the mind cannot cope. Another part might be on the fence. Another part, maybe a seed, can hear, wants to hear, cries out for hearing. I'm talking, I want to talk to all of that, all of that in us. And I go back to what I said before: sometimes a person has done this course and that course, and this mode of healing and this retreat and this workshop, and yet still, after years sometimes, something hasn't cracked open in the heart. Something hasn't broken open and melted. So I want to go into this at all these different levels.

Sometimes when we're looking at a beautiful, positive quality like generosity, it's helpful to look at how are the ways that we find ourselves not being generous fully, being stingy. 'Stingy' is a strong word, but limiting our generosity. And that doesn't just apply to money. Am I limiting my generosity to myself, even, and to others in terms of my kindness? Do I limit the expression of my kindness? Do I limit the expression of my appreciation to myself and to others? Am I limiting my wholeheartedness, in life and in practice? Am I holding something back -- something of my energy, something of my being? Do I hold it back? Am I limiting my generosity in terms of attentiveness, of energy? This is all very interesting. You can see it through the days here in your practice. Am I stingy a little bit with my intensity as a human being? You know, sometimes we just keep the radio on, or the TV is on in the background -- doesn't matter. But it's doing something to our ... it's kind of draining our intensity. It doesn't let an intensity of aliveness, of attention build. It doesn't let that flame build to become strong.

And in terms of money, it's a whole interesting area in terms of money. I lived in America for fifteen years, and I don't know how it is here, but before election time, there would be all these issues that people were talking about, this issue and that issue. And as it got closer and closer to the election, it would tend to narrow down the issues that would make the difference. And it seemed to me -- could be wrong, but it seemed to me that the issue that always would make the difference would be money, taxes; that when push came to shove, that's what people ended up, that's what sort of the electorate ended up voting for; that's what ended up being the most important thing. And sometimes it's like we live in a culture where everyone's agreeing on that. Everyone agrees on the limits of generosity. Everyone agrees on a certain stinginess, and a certain kind of elevation of money, and a certain relationship with money. And that can permeate the culture and permeate the government too.

I found some statistics. If you remember, there was a G8 meeting a while ago, I think it was 2007, pledging aid to the poor in the world, to alleviate poverty in the world. And aid to the developing world from the world's richest countries, the world's fifteen richest countries fell, actually, even after the G8 and the EU pledges. It fell to .28 per cent of the national income in 2007. The US came bottom with .16 per cent of its national income. So statistically, the US spends $73 per American per year on aid. And on defence, $1,763 per person, per year. And the UK, .36 per cent, $165 on aid per person; $984 per person per year on defence. The EU set a target of .7 per cent for each country, and only four EU countries and three non-EU countries even came close to that. These figures were all before the recession and the credit crunch.

Somehow it's like we've got a very strong cultural message that reinforces this too. This is not about pointing fingers, for us in here to point at anyone else; it's not about that. It's actually about us questioning what we take in from the culture and what's also coming from inside us, and questioning our whole relationship with generosity very deeply. So fear and limiting generosity go together like that; they're totally entwined. Non-generosity, limiting our generosity, stinginess with money, it's dependent on a whole way of seeing oneself and the world and time. It's totally wrapped up in that. And you know, Dharmically speaking, from the point of view of Dharma, we see the world wrongly. Just at the most fundamental level, our viewing, our seeing is mistaken. And then we act and we choose from that mistaken place. That acting and choosing from the mistaken place reinforces the wrong seeing, and so it goes. That's called saṃsāra.

And this fear that we have around generosity, that's limiting our generosity, is actually dependent, as I was saying, on this whole way of seeing the self and the world and time. It is fed by that way of seeing, and it feeds that way of seeing. And at its heart, there's a lack of trust. There's a lack of trust in something at a very deep level. And sometimes a person says, "I notice my fear around this, and it feels kind of primal. It feels like the way an infant would be afraid that it wasn't going to get enough milk." And that may be true, and it may go indeed to that deep, primal sort of biological level, but at another level, Dharma teaching would say, "Well, so what? That, too, needs to be addressed." Maybe we need to be gentle in how we approach it, but it too needs to be addressed. Just because it has that feeling of it's something very deeply ingrained doesn't mean we don't address it.

So generosity and happiness go together. Generosity brings happiness. It brings a sense of well-being. Someone was telling me about hearing a speaker from a sort of intentional community that had been together for forty-five years or something. And in that time -- of course, many intentional communities, they don't last; they're there for a while, and they kind of fall apart. There are internal conflicts, people move away, etc. And he was asked, "Well, what's kept yours together? What is it that allows yours to stay and stay thriving and stay vibrant and healthy?" And the answer was that right from the beginning there was this intention to serve that was at the heart of the community, that it wasn't a self-seeking and self-centred community. And they were always involved in helping others. And so when there were earthquakes in Guatemala, they sent a bunch of their community members over there and helped building houses. And they sent a team to work building and working in medical centres in the South Bronx, in New York -- in an area, at that time (I think this was in the seventies and eighties) no one would even want to go there, be afraid of going there. And at the same time they were sending out people to these places, they couldn't even, didn't even have the money to build themselves a nice place. They were living out of buses. But through that, in a community level, it brought a sense of deep well-being, which has actually lasted as a thread through forty-five years.

Thing about this is, we really need to cement in our consciousness the connection between generosity and happiness -- which we may know intellectually; we need to cement it. To notice, first of all, to really notice when I give and there's not a sense of 'should,' there's not a sense of pressure, can you notice the joy there, how lovely it is? I want to give you the opportunity to do something, I want to enable you to ... whatever it is. I want to give you this. I want to. And the joy of giving, the joy of even surprising someone, the joy of seeing a person receive something. We need to notice that and really make this connection very clear for ourselves over and over again: generosity brings happiness, generosity brings happiness.

The converse, the Buddha said in one sutta, without abandoning these five qualities one is incapable of entering and remaining in ... he's saying in the first jhāna, second jhāna, third jhāna, fourth jhāna; those are very deep states of meditative absorption in happiness and bliss and peace and well-being. He's saying without abandoning five qualities, that kind of deep inner happiness will not be possible.^[2] One will be incapable of it. Which five, he says? (1) Stinginess as to one's lodgings, (2) stinginess as to one's supporters (this is talking to monks and nuns, but we can translate it), (3) stinginess as to one's gains (in other words, what one gets), (4) stinginess as to one's status, how am I using the status that I have in the world, (5) and stinginess as to the Dharma, which means being unwilling to share one's knowledge of the Dharma. So these deep happinesses, he said, will be unavailable to us, and also any what he calls 'noble attainment,' which means any really deep liberating insight that really, really breaks something open, a really deep realization. All that will be unavailable to us if there's this holding back of generosity.

And it's interesting: oftentimes we don't kind of see this connection. And so often a person approaches life and oftentimes the realm of the spiritual with a wanting to get. So, you know, over years, I remember having friends in the States, years ago before I was teaching, and someone saying to me, "I really wish I had a guardian angel guiding me and telling me what to do." That's understandable, and it might be nice. Or, "I'm really wanting some kind of esoteric knowledge of the universe," or even in this practice, it's like wanting something, wanting to get something. And it was interesting because most of us have heard teachings on generosity, may be familiar with some of the teachings of Jesus or some of the Mahāyāna teachings on generosity, and something in the mind kind of ignores them or doesn't give them the significance. Or when we hear about a really deep level of giving, we balk at the idea -- just pfft! So there's the beautiful story again from the Gospels with Jesus and the rich young man. And this rich young man approaches Jesus, and he said, "Master, what do I need to do to enter the kingdom of heaven?" And Jesus, actually the first answer Jesus gives him is pretty much the five precepts; it's about the Commandments. And the young man says, "I already do that." And then there's a beautiful passage. It says, "Jesus looked at him and he loved him." And he said, "You're lacking one thing. Go, sell everything that you have, and give the money to the poor, and come and follow me." And he says, the young man, his face fell and he became sad and he walked away. Because he couldn't. Just felt like too much.

There was an experiment I read about a while ago. I think it was in The Guardian, and they had this gambling machine. What are they called, where you pull them? Slot machine, yeah. One-armed bandit, yeah. This gambling machine, and again, with electrodes on the brain, etc. But this gambling machine was quite interesting in that you would do it, pull the thingy, and either you would win a lot of money, or you would be given the option of giving away a lot of money that you had won. Okay? Every time, it would come up with something different. But it was a lot of money. And the people didn't know that it wasn't real. And what they found was that there was actually more happiness from giving. And the more one gave, the more happiness there was. The brain was just going kind of bonkers with happiness. [laughter] Much more, I've just won a million dollars, and to give a million dollars -- even as I say it, I can actually feel it. I don't know, can you feel it too? [laughs] It just feels different. Can you feel it?

The person who wrote the article said afterwards how quickly he forgot that; how quickly that insight just went. This is a general Dharma point now: why is it that insights don't get cemented? What goes on that we see something, and then we forget it? And it could be anything -- it's impermanence, it's whatever it is, this particular pattern, "Oh, I see that I'm doing that," and it goes. That's a really, really important question in the Dharma. Why is it that insights don't get cemented? And what is it that can help them get cemented? Well, partly, a big part is we need to recall insights, and we need to remind ourselves of insights, and we need to make choices in the world based on those insights. So even when we're perhaps not feeling them, we're not in touch with them, we actually re-instigate them, drag them up again, then make a choice on it. And that acting from it consolidates it, lets it deepen in the being.

Another part of this is that, you know, at some level as human beings, we don't fully understand happiness. We don't understand fully where happiness comes from, and how, what gives rise to happiness. So I remember -- I can't remember where it was; maybe it was a short TV interview or something, and a woman, they were interviewing people about what they ate, and this woman was saying that she didn't mind eating fish species that were impoverished, that were in danger of being endangered, of being put on the endangered species list. And the guy asked her why, and she just said, "It just tastes good." What's going on there? What's going on that that can happen for us? And that's quite an extreme example, but what goes on?

If I look at taste, or the experience -- maybe I'm having a lovely dinner with friends, and we spend an hour and a half, and we have a good time, and we have fantastic food. An hour and a half. And within that, if I really look, if there's really mindfulness there, how much of that time am I actually enjoying the taste of the endangered fish? And if I really look, even when it's in the mouth, how much of the time in the mouth am I even really enjoying -- even tasting it, let alone enjoying the taste of it? And yet, somehow (again, this dot-to-dot thing that we were talking about yesterday) we make something solid that's actually very insubstantial and ephemeral. And then we're willing to make all kinds of choices on it. And we assume there is a happiness there or a deep happiness there. And it's all kind of, Dharmically speaking, it's all barking up the wrong tree.

So we confuse sense pleasure with happiness. It's a very common confusion. Sense pleasure and joy, they're different things. Or we get into a kind of chasing of convenience. We were talking about in the opening talk how some intentions can kind of overshadow our deeper aspirations. If we really trace our intentions in our life, sometimes it's full of chasing sense pleasure and convenience and a little bit of comfort or security, and a whole life can be eaten away by those little creepers. And we feel somehow or we think at some level (so again, it's probably not even conscious) that we're in the pursuit of happiness, and that we're even getting happiness that way.

We all have what we basically need. If I ask -- it's a dumb question -- if I have twice what I basically need, am I twice as happy? If I have four times what are my basic needs, am I four times as happy? And we'll all say, "Of course not!" But somehow we get caught up in something. So it's really being clear about joy. And maybe generosity doesn't have that limit in the same way.

As I said at the beginning, we are generous. And I think everyone in this room is generous and acts with generosity at times. Definitely. What I want to bring out is two things. One is, acknowledge that. It's really important to acknowledge it and rejoice in it. This goes back to what we were saying yesterday. It's something about really rejoicing in our goodness that's crucial. So it's more than okay to feel good about it, to recall one's acts of generosity, and in fact the Buddha recommended, if you're struggling in meditation, to drop the meditation object and spend some time recalling your generosity. See what happens to the mind. It will open. It will soften. It will brighten. It will gladden. That's a deliberate meditation instruction: recall your generosity, dwell on it. This is not an ego thing.

So in a way, we need a kind of healthy level of self-respect, and it's based on things like generosity and ethics. And sometimes people say, "Well, that sounds like self, and I thought there is no self, and how am I supposed to let go of the self if we're supposed to remember all this that the self is doing, etc., and feel good about the self?" It's very difficult to jump completely to the level of the emptiness of everything. Most people go in stages, and the level of a stage of healthy self-respect is really, really foundational, important. From that, eventually the self-respect moves to a place where it's more free of conditions. It's actually not even dependent on that. There's a self-respect that's not dependent on conditions. And then from that place, it's a much smaller step into the emptiness of self and the letting go of self. It's based on self-respect. So it's a kind of foundation.

I want to draw that out, but the second thing is this kind of radical possibility. So yes, we are generous, but there's a possibility of something, a revolution inside. There's a very famous quote from Ajahn Chah, one of the foremost Thai meditation masters, Thai Forest meditation masters of the last century. And it says, he said:

If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have a lot of peace. [And] if you let go completely, you will have complete peace [the peace of a Buddha].^[3]

And actually, it's similar with generosity. If I give a little, I have a little happiness. If I give a lot, something else. If I really stretch myself, something else begins to happen, not just in terms of happiness. And if I -- what does it mean, even, to give completely? What would that be? And what might it open up?

So generosity is a practice. It's a practice, and we need to see it as a practice, and we need to practise it, and that's how, as I said before, the insights get reinforced. But one question: am I even seeing it as a practice in a way that's equal to meditation? So I see meditation practice. Am I seeing generosity practice that has as much juice in it and depth in it as anything else? Potowa, a great Tibetan teacher from (I think) the eleventh century says:

Through the habituation of training in giving away the trivial, such as a needle and thread, one will come to be able to give away anything without attachment.^[4]

So it's a practice. Like meditation, we start modestly, and we can build it. Little gestures, little gestures. Being aware of where we hold back. Someone was telling me a few weeks ago, you know, they think, "Oh, I have to travel. I want to go to the -- I travel a lot, so I have to save my money for the travelling." Then noticing that, and they're out somewhere with friends, or when they go out with friends they sort of hold back. So they notice it, and then they deliberately make themselves buy drinks for everyone. Just a little thing. But expecting it, looking out for it, and moving in the opposite direction.

When we talk about practice, all practice needs wisdom behind it and at its root. I read this recently:

There's a mosquito net maker in Africa. He manufactures about 500 nets a week. He employs ten people who (as with many African countries) each have to support upwards of fifteen relatives. However hard they work, they can't make enough nets to combat the malaria-carrying mosquito.

[This book has a certain tone, but I'll just read it:] Enter vociferous Hollywood movie star who rallies the masses, and goads Western governments to collect and send 100,000 mosquito nets to the afflicted region, at a cost of a million dollars. The nets arrive, the nets are distributed, and a 'good' deed is done.

With the market flooded with foreign nets, however, our mosquito net maker is promptly put out of business. His ten workers can no longer support their 150 dependents (who are now forced to depend on handouts), and one mustn't forget that in a maximum of five years the majority of the imported nets will be torn, damaged and of no further use.

This is the micro--macro paradox. A short-term efficacious intervention may have few discernible, sustainable long-term benefits. Worse still, it can unintentionally undermine whatever fragile chance for sustainable development may already be in play.

Certainly when viewed in close-up, aid appears to have worked. But viewed in its entirety it is obvious that the overall situation has not improved, and is indeed worse in the long run.^[5]

So this is complex. As we get into globalization, this is really complex. And it needs that wisdom. It's like, what does it mean to give in a way that's really going to help? It's not simple any more. But that also means in terms of our individual practice of giving. We need to bring wisdom in in all kinds of ways. One way wisdom comes into practice is I don't have to rely on feeling like being generous to be generous. I don't have to rely, and I shouldn't rely on feeling like it. I shouldn't rely on feeling like meditating to meditate, or feeling like being kind to be kind. So getting away from "I don't feel like it, therefore I shouldn't or I can't." And sometimes we kind of elevate the emotion. Just because I have an emotion of "I don't feel like," it becomes the central thing, becomes the dominant thing. Actually, you could say if I don't feel like it, the generosity is even greater. In terms of mettā, it's easy to feel love for a little, cute kitten, furry and cuddly. It's harder for, you know, a cod. [laughter] It's not so cuddly.

Another piece of wisdom is following through. Oftentimes, you may have noticed this, a letter comes through the door, "Can you give some money?", etc., or on a retreat at the end when there's the dāna talk, etc. And you think, and a figure comes into your head, and it just comes, and then afterwards, it's like, "Whoa! Whoa, hold on." [laughs] And a doubt comes in, a wobbly, a wobbliness comes in. Or we forget -- the letter, we just put it on the desk, and it gets covered with other stuff. And we forget. We don't follow through. Something, a wisdom that comes into practice, all practice, meditation, whatever, about following through on our deep intentions.

So none of this is about right and wrong. It's not about right and wrong. It's about exploring something -- all of us, all of us exploring something. When we explore it, we might see that we have particular patterns or tendencies. It exists that sometimes people find it very difficult to say no. Some people find it very difficult to say no. That pattern exists. And one needs to look: what's behind that? And often it's a fear of, "What will they think of me? Will they think I'm stingy? Will they think I'm tight-fisted?" And it might be that it's actually important to practise saying no for a while and get that strength inside, get that honesty inside. Much more common, there's the fear with giving that we won't have enough for ourselves, or for those around us. That's much more common. And then the practice needs to lean the other way: can I let go?

There's another way that wisdom comes into generosity practice. And this is from Ethan Nichtern, who's a teacher in New York. He says:

The first rule of offering is simple: Don't ever expect anyone else to notice. Of course, people will sometimes notice and thank us for our generosity, but not always at the time and place of our choosing, and almost never in the exact way we'd expect. [He adds this, which is interesting:] A life lived practicing offering will almost certainly result in a larger crowd at your funeral service, if that's any incentive.^[6]

[laughter] And why not, you know?

Something about generosity, and especially as we move into the deeper dimensions of generosity, a kind of radical generosity that has to do with abandon. To me, that's a beautiful word. What is it to live with abandon, a heart that is open to abandon? In our practice, I think it's important to associate ourselves, to stick around, to come close to, to put ourselves in contact [with] people whom we look at and we feel they are living with abandon. They're not living from fear. Somehow they're seeing things in a different way. Something is liberated. And you can see it. And to be around that person as much as you can -- it rubs off, it radiates out, and it starts to wash over us and influence us. And by 'abandon,' I mean wise abandon, not a kind of recklessness.

You know, everyday common sense, everyday prudence, from the point of view of awakening is actually crazy. Or rather, it's flimsy. It's a kind of madness. There's something even tragic in it. And from the point of view of everyday, normal prudence, the wisdom of someone awakened seems crazy. It seems it doesn't add up.

There's also a place in the practice for aspiring. So there's something about just, going back to the opening talk again, may I aspire to acts of generosity? That actually has an effect, a very deep effect on the being, just wanting to aspire. Or even just imagining. It's planting seeds, imagining oneself acting generously. Mindfulness is not everything.

So when we explore generosity, can I really include my edges, and see where I come up and it feels a little shaky? Can I really stretch myself? Am I willing to do that, and move into areas where it feels difficult -- I really feel like I'm challenging myself? What are the effects? And then in the exploration, to notice. Because noticing is part of it, inquiring is part of it. What are the effects of abandon and a kind of radical generosity, whatever that translates as for you right now, radical generosity? Doesn't mean this much or whatever. What are the effects when we do that, when we really play with our edges and stretch? And experiment, in the same way we were talking with meditation. Pay attention. And can it really be alive? Is our practice of generosity alive, as a practice? Are we generous in our explorations? Because again, it's very easy, we can not be that generous in the way we're exploring generosity, in our whole sense of exploring it.

How does being generous, especially stretching my generosity, stretching my edges, how does that affect my sense of having enough? How does it affect my sense of being loved in the world? The heart opens and the perception changes. I'll come back to this. Again, though, it's complicated. If my giving is coming out of what we might call co-dependent giving, in psychological terms (I'm giving because I want to be seen in a certain way or I want something from the other person), that actually just leads to burnout. But if it's not, something happens in our whole sense of resource. I'll come back to this.

The Buddha was asked one time, "What fetters beings that though they think, 'May we live free from hostility, violence, rivalry, ill-will,' that they nevertheless live in hostility, violence, rivalry, ill-will?" So we want something, and yet, somehow, we perpetuate something else. And the Buddha said it's because beings are fettered with envy and stinginess. That's interesting. That's blocking something at quite a deep level. And then he traces -- "And why is there envy and stinginess?" And he traces it back, and it comes down to the self-sense. It comes down to the very sense of self itself, and looking at the world in terms of self and from the point of view of self.^[7]

So the self-sense, the [sense] of 'me' as a separate, independent, real entity, solid entity, it leads to a limitation of our generosity. It leads to stinginess. But might there also be the opposite directionality in the causation? In other words, when I'm not so generous, it actually tightens, contracts, consolidates the tighter sense of self. Usually things work both ways in terms of causation. So there's something very deep here in our sense of ourselves as human beings. It's related to all this. And this is why, one of the reasons why, generosity is so radical as a practice.

I'll go into this in much more detail tomorrow night: self, the habitual sense of self, it's very difficult not to feel ourself in the world as a centre of acquisition. I'm a centre of getting. Things, sights, sounds -- everything, I get. That might not be conscious, but that's the normal, default human way of seeing the self, feeling the self, is as a centre of acquisition. Is it possible in practice to actually enter into times of not seeing it that way? Just not seeing the self as a centre of acquisition. When I practise generosity, what comes? Connectedness. A sense of connectedness. It brings a sense of connectedness. It brings a sense of spaciousness.

So again, to practise with generosity enough that we begin to notice this, and it becomes very, very clear there's a connection there. Connection comes, spaciousness comes. Our preoccupation with the story, our own story of ourself, begins to die down. And we get less preoccupied with our own personal story. The whole sense of self itself begins to die down, begins to open out, to lighten. Energy comes. All from the practice of generosity. A sense of resource comes. And one can practise -- again, if one's really stretching the generosity, or even sometimes just, again, aspiring and imagining, playing with it that way -- one can practise to the degree that the sense of self, just almost like it drops to zero. And feel how that feels. There's such an aspiration to give, that the sense of self almost goes to nothing. And what's there then? Joy. Freedom. Lightness, an immense lightness. Such beauty in that.

Again, those words of Jesus: "He who loses his life, he who gives up his life, will find it." It's like the Dharma, the deep Dharma is kind of knocking. You know, words like that, they're knocking on something in the being. And a part of us hears that, maybe.

Śāntideva, a great Mahāyāna teacher, from the eighth or ninth century:

Through giving, all sorrow is transcended, and I will reach the sorrowless state. As all must be given up at one time [meaning death], giving it to living beings is best.^[8]

In a way, seeing it's not mine anyway -- none of this is really mine anyway. And not, through non-generosity, reinforcing the view, the wrong view, that it is mine. It's not mine anyway.

So there's a letting go, a deep letting go that's woven into the practice of generosity. But it's not just the self-sense; it's almost like the whole sense of life begins to be transformed, opened up, permeated with a different sense -- whole sense of a life lived well, lived really well. What does it mean for a life to be deeply lived well? The whole sense of living lightly on earth, of being able to let go at death. Whole sense of the blessedness of life, the blessedness of things begins to come through.

I heard about Krishnamurti, very close to his death. He died of, I think, cancer, pancreatic cancer. And I think he was at least 90, maybe more than 90. And from a very early age, he had been actually kind of pulled into teaching and giving. And give, give, give, give -- and a whole life of giving. And the night before he died -- of course, he knew he was dying, and he knew he was dying that night, in fact. And he was in Ojai, in California, and they brought him down from his bed, and he asked to go outside in the night, late at night. And they brought him outside to the veranda. I've actually been there, and it's a beautiful place surrounded by woods and hills. They brought him out in the night, and very weak, very frail, very close to death. He just stayed there in the stillness, awake, looking, alive. And he bowed to the four directions, bowed once to each direction. Bowing -- the whole life becomes a bowing, a deep bowing. A life of giving turns into a life of bowing.

Are you still okay? Maybe you're all asleep! [laughter] A little bit more.

What happens? What happens as we practise generosity, and especially, as I say, as we stretch it? Something happens to our feeling of abundance. It's almost like when we're generous we're acting as if there is abundance, and that brings the perception of abundance. Our sense of resource, our sense of what we have in life is not an amount in a bank account. It's not a degree of accumulation of stuff, house or whatever it is. Like all things, our sense of resource is a dependent arising, dependent on the heart. It's dependent on how the heart is. Very dependent on how the heart is. Very dependent also on how we see ourselves, at a gross level and also at a very subtle level. That will affect our sense of abundance and resource. Our inner wealth affects our sense of abundance. Do we have a sense of inner resource? And that's why, in these practices that we're doing here, I'm putting so much emphasis on just gently encouraging that well-being, because that will deepen. And we talk about mettā, and we talk about other qualities, and compassion, and those become our inner resources, our store of inner resources -- we could say our real investment portfolio, you could say. A sense of abundance is also dependent on less sense of self. The less the sense of self, the more the sense of abundance. The quieter the self, the more the sense of abundance. The quieter the fear, the less entanglement in fear, the more the sense of abundance. The more the sense of emptiness, which I'll talk about more, the more the sense of abundance. All of that creates the sense of our resource, not an amount.

What's the implication of that? One of the implications is, when I feel like I don't have enough, give. Give when you feel you don't have enough. When I feel like I'm not getting enough money, when I feel like I'm not getting enough love, give. This has to do with karma. Karma is an extremely deep and complex subject, and I'm not going to go into the sort of whole future life thing at all. But we can see a level of karma in this life. In this life, it's actually clear if we look deeply and sensitively. And it's not about "If I give, then I'll get. Someone else will give to me," although that may well be true. But it's what I said before: when I give, the heart opens, and the perception of the world changes. And that's why we need to practise really stretching our edges with generosity, because if we only give a little bit, we won't see so much of that shift of perception. The very perception of the world changes when we stretch ourselves, when we practise a radical generosity.

Generosity shapes our perception of things at every level. And one might ask, then: what kind of world do I want to live in? And again, this is every level. When we see that, I see when I'm not generous, when I'm bound by my fear, when I'm constricted, when I'm a little bit tight, the world appears a certain way. To a person locked in fear, encircled by fear, the world is going to look a certain way. When I practise generosity, when I unbind from that, the world starts looking different. And the more I practise, the more the degree of generosity, the more the shift in the sense of self and the sense of the world. Which is the 'real' world? The world appears very different. Can appear solid and impinging and threatening and dark almost. It can appear radiant, beautiful, filled, permeated with love, light, spaciousness. Which is the real world?

When I really go into this, and I see it over and over through practising generosity and qualities like that, and I see the shift, which is the real world? There is no 'real' world. We say the world is empty, is empty of having any reality outside of what this heart and mind is giving it in the moment. That emptiness of the world -- because the world is empty, it means everything in the world is empty, that allows me to practise generosity even more deeply. Chandrakīrti, one of the great, great Mahāyāna sages, in the seventh or eighth century:

Giving void of giver, gift, receiver [meaning empty of giver, gift, receiver. Seeing that those three are empty] is called a perfection that transcends the world. But when attachment to these three occurs [in other words, when you haven't seen the emptiness of that] the teachings have defined it as the perfect act of worldly ones.^[9]

But we begin to see, as we practise generosity deeply, the emptiness. It leads to wisdom and the seeing of emptiness -- also the seeing of what leads to happiness and unhappiness. So wisdom brings generosity, wisdom leads to generosity, and generosity leads to wisdom. Sometimes I feel that the whole of the Dharma teachings are contained in generosity and the teachings on generosity. It's all right there. It's almost like we don't need -- if one practises deeply enough, don't need anything else.

And so, you know, we hear sometimes, or we read something that Jesus said, or we hear about the life of someone like Rumi or St Francis, or a Rumi poem, and there's this sense of them leaping, taking this sort of leap into the abyss out of faith and trust. And sometimes for us, or for some of us at times, we feel, "Yeah, I want to leap. I can leap." And we have that faith. And sometimes it just feels like, "I can't relate. It's too much." We hesitate. They had that faith in generosity, and they acted from that, and then they saw the results, and that gave them not just faith but knowledge, unshakeable knowledge.

If it's too much to leap, we can play our edges. We can really play our edges with this and take it as a practice still, and see, see what happens. See, as I say, how does it affect my joy? How does it affect my happiness? How does it affect the heart? How does it affect the openness of the heart? How does it affect my sense of freedom in life? What happens to my whole sense of self and this notion of the emptiness of things, the emptiness of the world?

You know, I, certainly in others, and when I teach, I see that there is a connection here. And I'm looking back on my practice, and I very much see a connection. And whatever openings, whatever humble openings there have been, or realizations, or depths or whatever, I really feel that generosity and the kind of willingness to stretch, has been ... I see that in myself; it's very much been a part of ... almost like I can't really, don't trust that what has come would have come without the generosity. And I see it in others too. There's this real correlation between opening, realization, and generosity. Huge part in it. And not to underestimate the power of it. Not to underestimate. To practise with it and see what opens. See what opens.

Okay. Let's have a minute of silence together.