Dana

The Power of Half: One Family's Decision to Stop Taking and Start Giving Back

I got a review copy of a above book where a family starts giving away their wealth and working with poverty issues. They sell their big house and move into a smaller one and then give the money away for poverty problems. Occasional volunteerism wasn't enough for them, and part of the journey is what is the most effective way to give. Philanthropy is not easy. They were leading a yuppy lifestyle, and then decided to address problems. The book has sections with the teenage daughter writing her perspective. The book seems to be sincere--the author talks about losing friends, and admitting he might have gotten a little self righteous at times about what he was doing. But he did it anyway and he provides a honest account of a incredible journey of upper middle class generosity.

I think giving more than money, like energy, time, an ear. To not rush a friend who wants to get something off their chest, and who has called at an inconvenient time, but you decide, what the heck, I'll drop everything and listen with my whole being. You don't have to hit a home run all the time you can bunt the runner over sometimes.

I have a friend who has devoted spare time to doing a prison ministry. Amazing. Another who donated time raising money and fixing up Aryaloka, which used to be a sad building until came along. Another takes photos for the amazing work in India with the ex-Dalits. Another works to build a sangha in New York City. Another is making a retreat center for his sangha, and runs that sangha. Another learned to teach yoga so he could bring it back to the sangha. I know a few people who raise money for the Dalits in India--amazing work.

Giving in general is good, but giving the gift of the Dharma is seen as best. Spending a weekend with the poor is great, but a weekend leading a retreat is great because it deepens people's spiritual practice. I don't think work for others is diminished by saying working for the good for the Dharma is better. If you truly believe in the project of enlightenment, then helping others on the way is the best thing you can do. (OK, so maybe that's a bold statement that I can't justify right now.)

The spiritual life is a balance between going for your own spiritual development and trying to help others. It's no good just working on yourself. And it's no good just throwing yourself into others problems--that can lead to idiot compassion. Everyone has to find their own balance. Some people are better in the world. Some people need more alone time and alone work to build them up to be int he world. Everyone is different.

With children, I'm mostly devoted to my children and working for them, and working to help my patients. I'm a worldling, who often gets swept up in the tide of events, and yet I feel my life is infused with the Dharma. I see my life through the terms of the Dharma. I've not renounced the world yet. But I go on retreat to deepen my practice and I hope some day to turn more towards working for the good of the Dharma more directly.

I find it courageous when someone comes through New York and they've quit their job and they're on a Dharma tour and they don't know what they're going to do when they get back. Amazing. I know a few people who have spent their life in the TBC movement. Amazing. I don't know if you literally have to go forth, like Sangharakshita did, and just have a few possessions, and wonder all over India, begging for his meals. Amazing stuff. But when I challenge the way I see the world, when I challenge myself to walk into scary grounds and challenge myself in other ways, I metaphorically go forth.

There's a great talk a friend gave, I hope they can get it up on FBA some day. Maybe I need to volunteer to go up there and get some talks off the hard drive. Sometimes you can see other's projects, things you wish others would do, but alas, what I do is the most important thing.

So Dana is one of the 6 perfections. I work to cultivate a generous spirit by meditation, noble friendships, reflection and appreciating the exemplification of my fine Dharma brothers and sisters.

Dana

So I went on a retreat at Aryaloka a few weeks ago on the 6 paramitas, and we reflected on what we think was generous in others and what we had done that was generous.

I got Endless Path in the mail the other day and have enjoyed the introduction. I could tell I would like this student, friend and editor of Philip Kapleau. Full disclosure, I haven't finished his classic text The Three Pillars of Zen.



I like Zen, but sometimes I feel like it's too ethnic and sometimes it can be a kind of willfully aped style, that just isn't natural to me. I am meaning to go to the local Ch'an center just to learn about another sangha and to supplement things when my fledgling sangha doesn't have any program and I want something. My home sangha is the TBC, and I've explored outside it very little, but I want to being out more in the world of Buddhism. If I lived in England I could live in the heart of the TBC. In many places you can really get involved. San Fransisco has a booming TBC center. They might be starting a retreat center too, soon, I think they just bought a place outside SF. (And of course Manjuvajra founded Boston, Aryaloka and SF in his time in America, check out his deep video.)

Anyway, back to Dana, or generosity. In the first chapter of the Endless Path by Rafe Martin, he talks about generosity, and the example is sacrificing oneself to a tiger so the tiger can feed herself and their cubs. It's a pretty steep expectation.

I have blown myself out for my boys, for family, friends and patients, and in a way I get the feel of this. I was thinking about the stress parenting causes, and how it feels to literally shorten one's life due to stress, and to not be bitter about that or complain. You know the parents who blame their children for heart attacks or their own problems with life (literally true, I have a patient who's father blames her for a heart attack he had). Open handed generosity is a gift without strings. So much of what we give is in the hopes of return or because we can't get out of it. But to be really generous and not expect anything from it, that is even more generous.

To give, and allow people to be themselves, not to give to try to modify someone. A woman on retreat said she gave a single mother money to buy her children clothes and the woman went off to California for a week. She shrugged her shoulders, and said, "that's probably what she needed more than clothes for her children." To trust other people in their own autonomy and self determination. It's so easy to think we know better. I had a patient who was very upset talking about a friend who was a high powered business woman, and gave it all up to be a clown. She did not trust her friend to follow her heart, she could not imagine that being a clown could in any way be being true to oneself.

The desire to have other people not be other than who they are, is a kind of generosity. I struggle with someone who I want to have different thoughts and feelings, because they impinge on me.

There's also the question of idiot compassion. Sometimes help can be enabling, or not even useful. I can't tell you how many times people have given me things I don't actually want, that is a burden to take, not just an inconvenience. So we have to be in tune with people, though to be sure, mistakes in trying to be generous are probably less worse than mistakes in selfishness, we probably make those more often.

One of the reasons I'm so burnt out after a day of work is that I give myself, give who and what I am. But mostly it's about my patients, so I really have to be careful when I'm talking about myself, I have some narcissism, and I really want the sessions to be about my patients. Giving my attention, really trying to listen deeply and compassionately takes a lot of energy. I sometimes feel like I'm just an energy philanthropist. I give my energy to my kids, to my clients, to my friends and family. When I do things for myself, it's so that I can give some more. Compensatory indulgences are just emotional soothing, trying to repair myself to get back into the game, even if some of them are not as nourishing as I think they are.

When we break down the barriers between self an other, we can give more openhandedly. When the container is bigger, it's just a natural thing. I think in Manjuvajra's video, in my previous post, he's grown up, renunciation for him isn't a painful giving up. Similarly generosity is a kind of growing up that sees our inter-being and just does what mindfulness makes obvious when you are closer to reality and not all up in your mind.