The Perfection Of Generosity - Dale S. Wright - The Six Perfections P2

(DANAPARAMITA)

Mahayana Buddhist sutras maintain that the most admirable human beings, bodhisattvas at the highest level, are characterized by a pro­found, universal compassion, compassion so far-reaching that their daily actions demonstrate as much concern for the well-being of others as for themselves. In order to pursue the Buddhist ideal of compassion at this exalted level, practitioners train themselves in the perfection of generosity. Generosity of spirit—the capacity to give of oneself in a wide range of creative ways—has been an important dimension of Buddhist self-cultivation throughout the long history of this tradition.

How, then, does generosity emerge as a topic of self-cultivation in early Mahayana sutras? Although in some sense the first step up a progressively more difficult ladder of Buddhist virtues, generosity is also closely tied to the ultimate goal—enlightenment. Buddhas and enlightened bodhisatt­vas are imagined to be generous above all else, practicing the broader virtue of compassion toward all sentient beings. The Perfection of Wisdom Sutras praise the virtue of generosity and challenge all prospective bo­dhisattvas to train relentlessly in this capacity as the all-important first step through the six perfections.

The Perfection of Wisdom Sutras divide the practice of giving into two types, following the lead of the earlier Buddhist tradition. At the most basic level is the gift of material goods of various kinds, especially those goods necessary for life itself, and at the higher level is the gift of the dharma, the teachings, the very possibility of a spiritually significant life. But the teachings are powerless if hunger and poverty stand in the way. So the sutras teach compassion for all levels of human suffering and demand that material generosity be the first order of business for an authentic Buddhist. Therefore the Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom asserts: “Do give gifts! For poverty is a painful thing. One is unable, when poor, to accomplish one’s own welfare, much less that of others!”¹

This sutra heads the list of material objects to be given by saying that the Buddha “gives food to the hungry.”² But food is just the beginning, and the list goes on to add drink, clothing, shelter, land—the most essential material conditions of life. Nor is that the end of giving. The sutra recommends giving a wide variety of gifts, including what we would consider luxury items such as gold, jewels, perfumes, and so on. Why are these gifts thought to be important in a religion of material renunciation? Two reasons. First, the division of two kinds of giving corresponded in the early Buddhist social world to a division between monks or nuns and lay people. Monks and nuns, because of their vows of poverty, had no material objects to give, not even food. So this list of material objects to give applied more to lay people than to monks, and precisely because Buddhism was a religion of renunciation, even for the laity, radical acts of giving were possible spiritual practices for a devout lay bodhisattva.

The second reason for the inclusion of these luxury gifts was that the sutras in which they are found were meditation manuals as much as they were instructions for actual living. In meditation, anyone, whether they owned material objects or not, could work through the imaginary mental exercises of giving. Visualizing and contemplating acts of giving in meditation, Buddhists hoped to inculcate profound feelings of generosity which in the future would give rise to compassionate, charitable acts on behalf of the well-being of others. Therefore, because it was a mental exercise, the list of items given goes even further, to what would seem to be outrageous extremes. A bodhisattva would meditate on the act of giving away (that is, renouncing) his own family members or, the final material object one could give, his or her own bodily life. These medita­tive extremes symbolized spiritual renunciation at the highest level, the final surrendering of the self. Thus the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras include admonitions like: “A Bodhisattva must cast away even his body, and he must renounce all that is necessary to life.”³

Meditating on the act of giving away even one’s own body, bodhisattvas cultivated what Buddhists considered the most noble motive for all gener- osity—that the welfare of others be placed on a par with one’s own. Recall that the bodhisattva vows compassion in the form of postponing his or her own enlightenment so that others might also have such an opportunity. The bodhisattva vows to achieve a selfless state of compassion in which the enlightenment of others is as important as his or her own and strives toward that goal by training the mind to respond to others in a spirit of open generosity. This training constitutes the early contemplative life of the bodhisattva, and its intention is to effect fundamental change in actual life attitude and behavior.

Beyond material gifts—the first level of generosity—is the gift of the dharma—teachings aimed at the elevation of human life to an enlightened level. This second type of giving was thought to be most appropriate for monks and nuns, whose very lifestyle prohibited material giving and who were therefore, by that very act of renunciation, fit to give teachings of spiritual renunciation. Ordinary people were most often pictured as donating the material livelihood of the monastery, while the monks reciprocated with spiritual gifts made possible by the generosity of the laity. But Mahayana Buddhists also realized that anyone—monk, nun, or layperson—might rise to the ideal level of compassion and wisdom pictured in the image of the perfected bodhisattva. Images of lay bodhi­sattvas, like the wealthy householder Vimalakĩrti, emphasized the value of enlightened generosity.

That material generosity, while important, is less exalted than spiritual generosity is a point made frequently in early Mahayana sutras. Picturing human life as most importantly a spiritual quest, the kind of generosity that the sutras most fervently proposed was the gift of visionary life and human excellence, not material objects, and it is in this vein that they were written. Thus the Sandhinirmocana Sũtra says: “When Bodhisattvas benefit sentient beings by means of the perfections, if they are satisfied merely by providing benefits to beings through giving material goods and do not establish them on virtuous states after having raised them up from non-virtuous states, this is not skillful.”⁴ The principal reason for giving material gifts is that human beings might be solidified in their lives and elevated to the point where a spiritual life of wisdom and compassion becomes possible. So, no matter how much material well-being is imag­ined, the possibility of an authentic spiritual practice goes far beyond it. Therefore the Diamond Sutra makes this point firmly: “If someone were to offer an immeasurable quantity of the seven treasures to fill the worlds as infinite as space as an act of generosity, the happiness resulting from that virtuous act would not equal the happiness resulting from a son or daughter of good family who gives rise to the awakened mind and reads, recites, accepts, and puts into practice the sutra, and explains it to others, even if only a gatha of four lines.”⁵

Upon whom should the bodhisattva bestow his or her generosity? Although answers to this question in the early Mahayana sutras occasion­ally vary, for the most part they prescribe universal giving. Although in practical circumstances it may be necessary to target those who are most needy, what the sutras want to cultivate is the desire to be generous with everyone. The virtues of nondiscrimination and impartiality are given high praise. Although there was a theory in circulation during the early years of Mahayana Buddhism that the value or merit of a gift is propor­tional to the worthiness or spiritual merit of the recipient, many texts speak directly against this idea. In this spirit, the Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom describes the true bodhisattva as “having given gifts without differentiating. . . . But if a Bodhisattva, when faced with a living being . . . who does not seem worthy of gifts, should produce a thought to the effect that ‘a fully enlightened Buddha is worthy of my gifts, but not this [one],’ then he does not have the dharma of a Bodhisattva.”⁶

Furthermore, the attitude of the giver and the spirit of the gift are essential to the practice of generosity. Calm and even-minded, the enlightened donor is not moved by anything but the welfare of human beings and the openness of heart entailed in noble giving. Therefore, no thought is given to the rewards or “fruit” that inevitably flow back to the donor from a genuine act of generosity. Although there will be rewards that are a natural consequence of an act of giving, focus on those “fruits” demean and undercut the act. The higher and more selfless the concep­tion of the gift, the greater is the perfection of giving. Thus the Large Sutra ends a section on the perfection of generosity by warning that the bodhisattva “does not aspire for any fruit of his giving which he could enjoy in Samsara, and it is only for the purpose of protecting beings, of liberating them, that he courses [i.e., trains] in the perfection of giving.”⁷

Indeed, any attitude of self-congratulation on the part of the practi­tioner of giving is disdained. Self-satisfaction in a good deed displays the weakness of that act of generosity; it demonstrates that the motive and self-conception behind it are still immature. Coveting neither reward nor honor nor gratitude, the bodhisattva gives simply because a need exists. He gives anything, including himself, for the sake of others and in so doing meditates on the idea that “what is my very own this is yours.”⁸ The difference between generosity grounded in an ingrained sense of ownership and giving that is free of any claim about what is “mine” is developed very clearly into a conception of two distinct kinds of giving. Although both kinds of generosity are beneficial and therefore worthy of cultivation, nevertheless, the “perfection of generosity” is fully defined only in one of these practices.

The first of these two kinds of generosity is “worldly giving.” Worldly giving encompasses a wide range of generous acts, from a grudging, stingy gift given for essentially selfish motives all the way to magnani­mous gifts of enormous generosity. In fact, one may give everything away, including one’s life, and still be within the domain of worldly giving. So what constitutes its worldliness? The answer is: the conception that structures the act itself. Worldly generosity occurs when, having given, the bodhisattva thinks: “I give, that one receives, this is the gift.”⁹ Even if the bodhisattva also goes so far as to think: “I renounce all that I have without any niggardliness; I act as the Buddha commands. I practice the perfection of giving. I, having made this gift into the common property of all beings, dedicate it to supreme enlightenment, and that without basing myself on anything. By means of this gift and its fruit, may all beings in this very life be at their ease, and may they without any further clinging enter final Nirvana.”¹⁰

Even that is still worldly giving, due to the character of the under­standing out of which it arises. According to the Large Sutra, the problem with this way of being generous is: “The notion of self, the notion of others, the notion of a gift. To give a gift tied by these three ties, that is called worldly giving.”ii By contrast, the sutra describes the perfection of an act of generosity by way of a “threefold purity”: “Here a Bodhisattva gives a gift, and he does not apprehend a self, a recipient, or a gift; also no reward of his giving. He surrenders that gift to all beings, but does not apprehend those beings, or himself either. And, although he dedicates that gift to supreme enlightenment, he does not apprehend any enlight­enment. This is called the supermundane perfection of giving.”i2

The distinction between these two levels of the practice of generosity is essential to the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, even though both levels are admired and advocated. On the worldly level we find bodhisattvas giving generously, acting out of a highly cultivated compassion on behalf of all suffering beings without discrimination. The benefits of this kind of giving are described in detail. Bodhisattvas who practice in this way really do help people, suffering is alleviated to some extent, and the teachings of enlightenment are perpetuated. Moreover, bodhisattvas achieve a higher state of enlightenment—they overcome greed and insecurity, the fear of losing possessions. They become more unselfish than they were before and attain a significant peace of mind and happi­ness. These results are far from inconsequential. Therefore, even though there is a greater perfection of generosity to be taught, all genuine acts of giving are applauded.

The question remains, though: How should we understand the higher form of generosity—“perfect giving”? The answer can be found through­out the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, because wisdom is precisely what is needed to perfect generosity. Wisdom is the sixth perfection, the most perfect of the perfections, and the essential ingredient in all the others. Therefore it will need to be considered here in order to complete our understanding of the ideal of perfect generosity.

Perfect wisdom, whether related to generosity or any other dimension of life, consists in the realization of “emptiness,” and it is this teaching that the sutras promulgate from beginning to end. Although emptiness (sun- yata) was an infrequently used word in the earliest layers of Buddhist literature, when it did make its appearance as the central concept in Mahayana sutras, it was defined in terms that were already familiar in the Pali sutras. To say that something is “empty” is to say that it is subject to continual change, that its existence is wholly dependent on factors outside of itself, and that it has no unchanging core or permanent essence. Making that claim, Mahayana Buddhists invoked the basic Buddhist teachings of impermanence, dependent arising, and no-self. All things are “empty” of their own self-established permanent essence because they are always subject to alteration and revision and because they are com­posed and defined in terms of what lies outside of them.

The “perfection” of giving incorporates the wisdom of “emptiness” to transform the perspective from which acts of giving occur. When the impermanence, dependence, and insubstantiality of all things are absorbed into one’s worldview down to the level of daily comportment, everything changes. A new, nonself-centered identity gradually emerges, one that entails reciprocity with everything that previously seemed to be other than oneself. This identity dissolves previous habits of self-protection and self­aggrandizement, opening the “self” to others in a connection of compas­sionate identification. To see how the vision of “emptiness” transforms thinking about generosity or giving, we look closely at passages in the sutras.

Instructing his disciple, Subhuti, in the perfection of generosity, the Large Sutra has the Buddha say: “Do not imagine that the gift is one thing, its fruit another, the donor another, and the recipient another.. . . And why? Because this gift is empty of a gift, its fruit empty of a fruit, and also the donor is empty of a donor and the recipient empty of a recipient. For in emptiness no gift can be apprehended nor its fruit, no donor, and no recipient. And why? Because absolutely those dharmas are empty in their own-being.”¹³

The Buddha says, “Do not imagine.” Imagine what? Do not imagine that the world is divided up into separate self-subsistent entities, the way we ordinarily assume it to be. Do not imagine yourself as one of these isolated entities. Why not? Because all of these seemingly separate “things” are what they are only in connection to other things that make them what they are. Nothing stands on its own, and that is what it means to be “empty” of “own-being.” Applied to the act of giving, we see that the gift is not a gift without a donor and a recipient. Likewise, without the gift, there is no donor, no recipient. Each depends on the others, and when one changes, so do the others.

Moreover, when “I” give, there is far more than me making this possible. My giving depends on many factors behind and beyond me. It depends on my having something to give as well as the capacity to do that. To a great extent that depends on my parents, my family, my friends, my teachers, my upbringing, my employers, and much, much more. Without my parents shaping me the way they did, without my family providing so well for me, without teachers preparing me, employers paying me, farm­ers and grocers feeding me, and a broader culture teaching me to value generosity, “I” would not be giving. And that is just the beginning of the analysis of dependency. Without oxygen, gravity, sunshine, and an end­less list of other essentials, there would certainly be no gift, because no donor and no recipient. Because my generosity is made possible by this enormous background of interdependent factors, it’s not simply my generosity. Understanding that truth transforms and opens up the act of giving. Now consider the recipient of the gift. How many factors have come to shape this particular person to be exactly who he or she is? Billions—everything that has ever shaped his or her life. Everything depends, and the scope of this basic interdependency is enormous.

Why does this matter when it comes to giving? Because, as everyone already knows, both giving and receiving vary greatly in quality, and this variation in quality depends on the level of understanding from which it has derived. Although all forms of generosity are good in some sense, rarely do acts of giving reveal ideal levels of generosity because they are limited by the boundaries of the donor’s self-understanding. Those who give are most often still encircled by themselves. Although able to give, self-concern retains its primacy, and this is evidenced in the way giving occurs. When first learning to give, it is hard not to give for self-centered reasons, because those are the only kinds of reasons we have. Enveloped in limited self-understanding, it is perfectly natural to give for ulterior motives and to be proud of one’s generosity. It is inevitable that, at least to some extent, we are condescending toward those who are receiving rather than giving, and that we selfishly hold back much more than is given.

Therefore, over and over, the sutras recommend that “when the Bodhisattva is faced with a beggar, he should produce a thought thus: he who gives, he to whom he gives, what he gives,” in all of these “the own-being cannot be apprehended.”¹⁴ The Bodhisattvas’ “own-being” “cannot be apprehended” because they have no “own-being.” Their being—what they are—depends to a great extent on other beings, and they change over time. Nothing is self-established; nothing stands on its own. All of us who fail to understand this will, as donors, tend to be more self-concerned in giving than concerned about the other. Understanding ourselves and others as isolated entities, each on our own, in the act of giving we will likely be as much or more self-promoting as truly generous.

The gift may still be a good thing. The beggar will, for example, still get the food he so desperately needs. But he will not get the sense of human dignity and equality that he may need to recover his standing in the world, nor a glimpse of the open-hearted human love and concern that we all need to live well. Moreover, the one who gives will not get these either, and the deep sense of well-being that might have come in the act of giving is stifled, replaced tragically by more isolation, pride, and arrogance, and hence more future suffering for both the giver and others.

Unless we as donors can see clearly and unflinchingly that who we are as donors—secure in wealth and health—is completely dependent on numerous turns of good fortune, on the care and help of others, and on opportunities not available to everyone, our acts of giving will be less than fully generous. These acts will therefore not have the liberating effects that they might otherwise have had. When we are able to see that the homeless person’s parents did not do for him what ours did for us, that his teachers did not do for him what ours did for us, then we begin to understand the contingency of our fortune, and, looking more deeply, the thorough interdependency of all reality.

Recall that Buddhist teachings from the very beginning suggest that practitioners meditate on the idea that there is “no-self,” that there is no permanent essential core that is “me.” Contemplating all of the elements that have come together in the creation of each person, all the influen­ces that have shaped us to make us exactly who we are, Buddhists hoped to mitigate distortions of perspective that give rise to relentless acts of self­promotion and self-securing. From this Buddhist point of view, our “normal” self-absorption ends up looking like a harmful consequence of shallow misunderstanding. One later version of this early Buddhist teaching is the Mahayana realization that we are collectively interdepen­dent, that we are all in this life together rather than struggling along on our own. This, in fact, is what “Mahayana” means: that the “vehicle” (yana) on which we progress in life—Buddhism—is “large” (maha) because it always includes everyone from the most enlightened donor to the most dependent recipients. Therefore, when the sutras teach gener­osity, they seek a variety of ways to convince us that our sense of isolation is an illusion and that we will not be truly generous until we see that truth.

Thus, a sutra has the Buddha say: “When the Bodhisattva, who courses [i.e., trains] in perfect wisdom, gives gifts, then, taken hold of by perfect wisdom, he is not one who perceives duality in that.”¹⁵ Free from the false image of independence, the bodhisattva does not dwell on the “duality” between himself as generous donor and the other as unwor­thy beggar, and, on account of that, is “free of craving and ignorance.” 16 Overcoming negative consequences of any “duality” between them­selves and others, donors and recipients, bodhisattvas are empowered to give and to be generous in an attitude and a spirit previously impossible. Therefore, the Large Sutra claims, the bodhisattva “should give gifts after he has reflected that ‘what is my very own that is yours.’”i7 Thinking that thought, we are more able to give, and the mental state out of which we give becomes less hesitant, less self-absorbed, and less condescending. But nonduality works both ways. So the sutra instructs the bodhisattva to realize that the welfare of a gift is for both donor and recipient to share—“do not think that this benefit is theirs and not ours.” 18 The gift is for everyone, because everyone is enveloped within the interdependent whole, whether they can see that truth or not.

Exactly how a gift benefits the donor can be considered from a number of perspectives, but the most common treatment in the history of Bud­dhism employs the image of spiritual “merit” (punya). When a donor gives or performs any kind of moral act, that act merits a reward of a spiritual kind. The reward can be conceived very generally as a share in the well-being of the society as a whole, or as our slightly enhanced personal capacity to give in the future. Or it can be conceived through imagery much like a savings account in the bank, where positive merit-flows are stored for personal uses in the future, including a better rebirth in the next life.

No matter what the form of the conception, though, the bodhisattva is taught to “dedicate” that merit to the enlightenment of all beings, to “turn it over” to others for their spiritual use. The concept of “dedication” or “turning over” (parinamana) is one of the cornerstones of Mahayana practice, in that bodhisattvas have vowed to seek enlightenment not simply for themselves but on behalf of all beings equally. This idea works forcefully against the practice of spiritual selfishness, a form of religious self-absorption. Whatever the bodhisattva is able to accomplish in the realm of generosity and compassion is “turned over” to others so that pride and arrogance do not undercut the good that was generated in giving. The bodhisattva is to give all the way and not stop short by hoarding the good that follows from it. “Stopping short” of complete generosity, bodhisattvas would limit the extent to which acts of generosity could be enlightening, for themselves and for others.

One interesting facet of the picture of the perfection of generosity developed in early Mahayana texts is that they tend to treat “giving” primarily as meditation, as a mental exercise more than directly as an act in the world. The bodhisattva who “courses” in the perfection of gener­osity is undergoing a process of mental training through which views and sentiments conducive to generosity are being cultivated. Thus Santideva claims that “perfection” resides in “the mental attitude itself.”¹⁹

Bodhisattvas were thus envisioned as “in training,” and the discussion seems to have focused primarily on this preparatory dimension of practice. The operative theory of training seems to have been that habituation to certain ways of viewing life situations establishes the basis on which spontaneous acts of generosity would one day unfold. Self-centeredness was thought to be pervasive initially, even within spiritual practice, and very difficult to root out. The bodhisattva could do this, however, by daily meditation through which new ways to conceiving of “self and others” would gradually replace earlier tendencies to exclusive self-concern.

So, if we ask how the Buddhist ideal of generosity is presented to practitioners in the sutras, we find that it is not in the form of a set of rules to follow when giving. It is not a demand placed on what one must do or how one must do it, because it is assumed that if the ideal is exalted at all, this is precisely what most of us cannot do. We cannot do it because the contours and shape of our current character do not allow us to identify with and to understand such an ideal, much less to practice it. Therefore, in place of a set of rules or demands placed on people’s actual behavior, the ideal of generosity is given in the form of mediations or trainings through which practitioners might gradually transform themselves into kinds of people who would both understand why this ideal is truly ideal, and be able to act in accordance with it. One’s character, Buddhists claimed, is not fixed or static. It is always malleable, always in motion, and always in a position to admire and strive for some higher ideal than it currently follows.

One of the best ways to do this, according to early Mahayana Bud­dhists, is to place the ideal—the image of perfection itself—out before the practitioner’s mind so that it would gradually take root there. Conse­quently, we find the sutras featuring meditations on how to picture purified forms of generosity, both as conceptual training practices and as descriptive images of ideal bodhisattvas in the act of giving. Selecting one of these, we conclude this description of the way early Mahayana texts have imagined “perfect” generosity with a summary of that ideal from the Vimalakirti Sutra: “Vimalakĩrti said, ‘The giver who makes gifts to the lowliest poor of the city, considering them as worthy of offering as the Tathagata himself, the giver who gives without any discrimination, impartially, with no expectation of reward, and with great love—this giver, I say, totally fulfills’” the perfection of generosity.²⁰

CRITICAL ASSESSMENT:

A CONTEMPORARY PERFECTION OF GENEROSITY

Our goal now is to assess this traditional Buddhist account of generosity for current plausibility. If the perfection of generosity is still an admirable ideal today, what would that look like for us in our current circum­stances? What would a contemporary practice of generosity entail, and how might we understand the place of that practice within the overarch­ing framework of our lives? To take the challenge of these questions, we will need to go beyond our sources, raising specific issues that have not been addressed in traditional Buddhist texts. We will want to ask critical questions and to frame these matters in somewhat different terms. But if we do this with rigor, we will begin to discover the wealth of insight suggested by these extraordinary Buddhist resources and begin the pro­cess of putting them to contemporary use.

The Foundations of Generosity

One thing that Mahayana Buddhist authors realized, and that is worth our recognizing, is that generosity is best understood as an achievement of a whole society and not simply of individuals within that society, even though it is most often within the lives of admirable individuals that the culture’s achievement can be seen. Individuals are enabled to prize generosity, to admire it, to cultivate and practice it, only to the extent that the society’s history and language have made that possible. A pro­foundly generous person does not simply emerge in a culture suddenly and without preparatory historical development. Human beings refined to this extent are the outcome of lengthy social development, the forma­tion of a culture through many generations, and are therefore treasured historical products, people of whom the entire culture can be genuinely proud.

Mahayana Buddhists allude to this communal realization in the image of the “Mahayana” as the “large vehicle,” the vehicle on which all members of the society move toward some form of enlightenment togeth­er, even when the disparity between the most highly developed and the least capable is immense. The achievement of individuals always requires this larger cultural framework as a foundation that makes their particular excellence possible. Truly generous people, like Buddhist bodhisattvas, elevate and ennoble the society through their extraordinary acts of giving, but both they and their generous acts have been made possible by the development of a culture of generosity. For this reason, failure to recog­nize that “my” achievements are grounded in the achievements of others in my society—and failure to acknowledge that dependence widely—is a sign of considerable shortsightedness, an indication that the spirit of generosity and the vision that must accompany it are still in early stages of development.

It is important to note, as well, that among both individuals and societies the distinction between those who are generous and those who do not give is not at all a distinction between rich and poor. It is entirely a matter of the development of generosity of character, whether among the wealthy or least privileged. Profound generosity of spirit is rare, but when we do see it, it is at least as likely to be found among the poor as it is among those blessed with substantial resources. Both history and com­mon experience attest to this egalitarian fact.

The culmination of Buddhist practices of generosity can be seen in their ideal form, the bodhisattva who gives unselfishly out of a deep compassion for all living beings. Compassion is the ultimate aim of these practices. But that culmination is the result of a long process of self-cultivation. For the most part, compassion is something we learn to feel. It is not innate, not a “natural” feeling. For these reasons, we cannot feel compassion simply by deciding to feel it, or by telling ourselves that it is our responsibility to feel it. We do, however, have the capacity to develop compassion by cultivating our thoughts and emotions in ways that enable it. This is the function of the “practice” of giving. Making generosity of character an explicit aim of self­cultivation, we sculpt our thoughts, emotions, and dispositions in the direction of a particular form of human excellence.

Most of us, most of the time, have a weak capacity for generosity. Admiring this element of character and deciding to emulate it does not make us able to give. But it does initiate momentum in the direction of generosity and gets us moving. At first, our motivations to give are not primarily compassion for those we want to help. More frequent, and a motivation more in correspondence with our initial state of character, is the desire to be a certain sort of person, someone who is magnanimous and compassionate. Self-concern, in other words, is what we practice overall, so it is not surprising that motivations toward generosity are initially constructed out of that inclination of character. When we give, we do so for reasons, and these tend to be reasons related to our own self­enhancement in one form or another. We give so that we may receive in exchange. We give in order to be accepted in a community, to be admired, to be honored or praised. We give in order to think well of ourselves, to actually be good and therefore deserving. Except at relatively high levels of generosity, the motivation for giving tends to be the good that it will return to us more than or as much as the good of the other. But this inauthenticity at the outset need not be condemned. It need not be criticized, because the movement from selfishness to selfless generosity is less a leap than a gradual movement and maturation. It takes time, and everyone begins wherever they happen to be.

The long-term point of this first perfection, the practice of generosity, is the cultivation of compassion and the ability to be guided by its power. Therefore, beginning at whatever level is appropriate, the practices of generosity train us to reach out to others and away from ourselves. We all give according to our understanding of the separation between ourselves and others, our sense of connection to or isolation from others. The extent to which that line of separation is firm and definitive is the extent to which generosity may make little sense to us. The more an understanding of community and interdepen­dence dissolve that line of separation, the more capable we will be of giving. Buddhists define enlightened beings in terms of depth of self-understanding, a state in which hard barriers of separation between ourselves and others have been softened. As we develop deeper and more nuanced understanding of who we are and how we fit into the larger world, generosity becomes a more natural act, eventually one that requires little motivation beyond the fact that others are in need or there is good to be accomplished.

This realization directs us to the connection between the ideal of generosity and the Buddhist concept of “no-self.” The most radical forms of generosity are closely linked to the most radical forms of selflessness in the same way that lack of generosity is correlated to selfishness. The practices of generosity produce feelings of compassion precisely insofar as they are able to transform the kinds of self-under­standing and self-concern that structure our lives. The new sense of self gradually generated is based on a recognition that my own good as a person is closely bound up with the good of others. From this perspective, egocentric people are always those whose lives are based on a misconcep­tion, a mistaken or immature understanding about how the world of human beings is structured. Living in that state of human character, we tragically see ourselves as independent and alone in the world, and our actions, therefore, as isolating, protecting, and securing ourselves.

The practices of generosity—acts of giving, whether in meditation or in the social world—function to develop a more mature and expansive sense of self, one that naturally gives rise to a greater capacity for opening ourselves to others. Indeed, the kind of transformation that Buddhists envision—the movement from ignorance to enlightenment—requires an understanding of the “self” that is to some extent malleable or flexible, capable of becoming something different from what it used to be. Such a change in human lives happens gradually through purposeful effort— the result of practices, meditations of various kinds—upon which enlightened life depends.

All practices of giving take place in view of an ideal, a mental model of admirable beings who demonstrate what a life of generosity would be like. Buddhists call this mental model the “thought of enlightenment” (bodhicitta\ In the most general sense, this is an initial idea, hope, or sense that superior forms of human life are possible and that “I” can gradually transform myself toward these freer forms of life. As soon as this ideal is firmly in mind to the point that it begins to influence and change what one desires, then the discipline is already under way. To begin the process, one works toward habituating oneself in the performance of certain actions, both mental and physical. Images of the goal—generosity at the most mature level imaginable—serve to provide reasons to act and motivation to undergo the discipline of practice.

In the process of explicit practice, we construct a character capable of authentic giving. Because we are self-consciously pursuing a more generous, magnanimous way of living, the variety of practices that we perform—the occasions in which we “practice” generosity—are not seen as isolated, separate acts, but rather as acts that form a larger pattern of behavior that permeates our whole life. They are acts of self-sculpting through which we strive to enlighten both ourselves and others, hoping ultimately to fulfill a version of the bodhisattva’s vow to live as though others are just as important and valuable as we are. Slowly constructing a certain quality of selfless character through practices of giving, we refash­ion our very desires, and out of transformed desires new habits of daily life begin to emerge. To have engaged the “thought of enlightenment” in the first place was to have taken responsibility for our actions, for the desires and images that motivate those actions, and for the kind of person we become as a result of them.

One significant consequence of this transformation is an exhilarating experience of freedom. To act generously is to awaken a certain kind of freedom, freedom from the stranglehold of self-concern, and freedom to choose a level of responsibility beyond the minimal charge most of us have for ourselves. To give and be generous is, momentarily, to be free of ourselves, free of greed and attachments, resentments and hatreds, habit­ual and isolating acts of self-protection. A generous person is on that occasion not a prisoner of self-imposed boundaries and insecurities. This momentary experience is exhilarating because it entails an expansion out beyond the compulsive anxieties of self-protection. In this sense, the practices of generosity are among the practices of freedom, and they carry with them all the joy and pleasure that are associated with libera­tion. This is one good reason for placing the perfection of generosity first on the Buddhist list of virtues—its pleasures and joys are both attractive and energizing. They fill us with the will to explore further, a sense that if one “perfection” provides this much exhilaration, how much more might be in store.

Effective Generosity: Skill-in-Means

If, engulfed in our own world of concerns, we do not even notice when someone near us needs help, we will not be able to practice generosity. Similarly, if we maintain a distant posture toward others that, in effect, prevents them from appealing to us for help, we will rarely find ourselves in a position to give. The first skill that is vital to an effective practice of generosity is receptivity, a sensitive openness to others that enables both our noting their need and our receptivity to their requests. Our physical and psychological presence sets this stage and communicates clearly the kind of relation to others that we maintain.

The traditional Mahayana image of perfection in the capacity for recep­tivity is the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara (Guanyin), whose multiple arms are always extended in the gesture of generous outreach. The bodhisattva of compassion welcomes and invites all pleas for help. Other familiar forms of presence, other gestures, restrict the field of asking and giving; they are more or less closed rather than open to others. Arms folded tightly around ourselves communicate that we are self-contained, not open outwardly; arms raised in gestures of anger say even more about our relations to others. The extent to which we are sensitively open to others and the way in which we communicate that openness determine to a great extent what level of generosity we will be able to manifest. In sensitivity we open our minds to the very possibility that someone may need our assistance, and welcome their gestures toward us. Skillful generosity is attentive to these two basic conditions.

Furthermore, if we are both open to help and notice when help is needed, but are mistaken and ineffectual in how we go about it, then what we intend as an act of generosity may in fact just compound the difficulties. The feeling of generosity itself is not enough to make some­one effectively generous. The skills required in the ideal of generosity are complex and varied; they cover a broad range of abilities from initial perception to effective follow-through, including the skill to know when to stop giving.

These skills are not as simple and straightforward as they may seem at first glance. Without practical skill and wisdom, giving may be counter­productive. Generosity can be misguided in a number of ways. For one, it can be based on a superficial understanding of the overall situation. Wisdom is the guide in the exercise of all virtues, but this is especially true of generosity. It is essential to understand who might benefit from your giving and how that giving might affect others beside the recipient. It is essential to know when to give, how much to give, and how to do it with integrity, for the well-being of both the recipient and others, including yourself. Wisdom is involved in knowing how different ways of giving might be received by others, and to what effect. There is also wisdom involved in asking how often to give and at what intervals. Intelligent giving is learned through practice, both as a meditation when we reflect on possible giving and as an activity in the world. But in practice it is crucial that we learn from our mistakes, which requires that we notice them, assess them, and consider what can be learned from them. Moreover, wisdom includes an attentiveness that is watchful for our deepest and most ingrained habits, most especially the intrusions of self-concern and the always-present manipulations of self-interest.

The “enlightened being” envisioned by Buddhists pursues complex practices of generosity in the spirit of wisdom motivated by compassion­ate concern for the well-being of others. In every setting, however, there are specific complications and complexities that need to be interpreted skillfully. As an example, consider one difficult bind faced by teachers. How is it possible for a teacher to be generous to students while being truthful and just at the same time? Honest appraisal of students’ work may disappoint, deflate, and discourage some; such criticism can some­times be deeply counterproductive. On the other hand, undeserved praise, generously allotted “good grades,” and other welcome gestures on the part of the compassionate teacher may be notoriously bad teaching practice. Generous gestures of that kind may have the effect of telling some students that their practices of learning are good enough as they are, when in fact they are not. In this respect, a teacher’s generosity may deter learning as much as provide it.

Skillful teachers are always aware of straddling this balance; they continuously strive to readjust their practices to suit the particular circum­stances. This requires knowing something about the minds, talents, and backgrounds of each student, knowing when to apply pressure and just how much, knowing when to criticize and when to praise, knowing how much advice and correction a student can effectively accommodate, and which among the various ways of giving them will most likely improve learning. Skillfully applied, criticism is direction and encouragement, a gift of enormous importance. Ineffectively applied, criticism is destructive; it deflates and discourages. When wisely presented, criticism demonstrates without doubt the teacher’s care and concern for the students’ success; it tells them convincingly that they can succeed and that further self-disci­pline is all that is required to reach the highest level of understanding possible for them. Skillfully communicated criticism is received as if it were more like planning for the future, and the teacher who is both compassionate and wise knows how to present it so that students receive it in this light. Teaching, like any other sufficiently complex undertaking, involves facing new circumstances insightfully, while making adjustments to deal with them effectively. Generosity in every sphere of life is always to be balanced against other concerns and made perfectly appropriate to the configuration of each case.

Imperfections in the Practices of Generosity

Although one important effect of the practices of generosity is a trans­formation in the giver’s self-understanding, as with everything else, there is a danger of going too far. “Servility” is the name for a kind of generosity that has become a vice rather than a virtue. It is based on an unenlightened form of “selflessness.” Servile people serve others gener­ously, but never expect anything in return. They view themselves as inferior and therefore undeserving of just or fair treatment from others. At first glance, this kind of selflessness may seem to be an appropriate description of the Buddhist goal of “no-self”—having so much concern for others that no self-concern remains. On closer examination, however, we can see how servility becomes destructive, not just to oneself but to others as well, because it upends the balance of communal relations. It is very important to sort out which forms of selflessness are admirable and which are not.

Servility, the habit of unrelenting service, fails to take reciprocity into account as an essential ingredient of enlightened social relations. Expect­ing nothing, servile people fail to understand that every person in a community needs to be treated with respect and equal rights—even themselves. Always to set one’s own rights aside and thus to dismiss issues of self-respect allows others to proceed as though equality and respect are not important. Under certain circumstances, denying oneself may set the stage for the denial of others. Most important, it gives the impression that injustice is acceptable. Although admirable people will certainly on occasion ignore or suspend their own rights out of generosity to the community as a whole, always to do so even when good reasons to do it are lacking is clearly a weakness in generosity, indicating perhaps a lack of courage or self-respect. Not expecting justice for oneself is a form of not expecting justice at all, and on that account, servility constitutes imperfect generosity and a weakness of character.

The dangers of servility—a kind of contempt for oneself—are perhaps not as great as contempt for those to whom we are being generous. Such contempt can take a variety of forms or levels of severity: pity, blame, judgment, and disdain. Skillful giving is not contemptuous; it is compas­sionate precisely in that it is based on an understanding of the equality of human beings and the contingency of the differences that separate us. The compassion behind authentic generosity is fueled by a profound sense that, although responsibility for the quality of one’s own life is an essential ingredient of a mature human life, all of us need some assistance to get ourselves there. Many of us have had that assistance in childhood and beyond, without our even knowing or acknowledging it. Others who have not had that kind of support are less to blame for their situation in life than, in our pride, we generally concede. They need exactly what we got—thoughtful, nurturing care, not our condescension or contempt. One way to begin to do that is, instead of pitying their weakness, bolster their strength. Find ways to show them powers they already possess.

Even when we do not indulge in servility, it is still possible that we might give too much, or give ineffectually, if within our daily practice we focus more on the good of our generosity than on the well-being of the one to whom we give. Our acts of generosity, while perhaps being good for our character, may not be good for the other. Our giving may, for example, weaken others’ capacity to provide for themselves. We can all recognize how the parent of a disabled child may generously act on behalf of the child to such an extent that the child never learns to be independent, never acquires the skills in life through struggle and effort that we all need. Although this scenario is most visible in the case of a disabled child, it is also a danger for all children, or anyone in a position of substantial dependency. When we give too much we teach total dependence and fail to communicate the interde­pendence that helps liberate us all.

That realization leads us to see that the question of how much to give should be answered primarily in relation to its effects on the well-being of the recipient. How will further gifts aid or obstruct his or her life, in the short and long term? Specific prescriptions about generosity will never be codifiable. Each situation is complex and needs to be judged on its own terms. Seeing which factors are relevant in each specific situation takes wisdom, the skill to understand how best to proceed under current circumstances in order to contribute to the well-being of the other and not undermine it. Wisdom is also needed to see when generosity requires that giving cease, so that the benefit of the relationship not be undermined by a devastating paternalism.

The foregoing three dangers inherent in the practices of giving— servility, contempt, and poor judgment about the effects of giving—show us something important: they make clear that, although vital, “selfless­ness” is not all there is to the perfection of generosity. Being unselfish is certainly the most important condition for admirable forms of generosity; we should not underestimate its centrality. But beyond selflessness, there are other essential conditions that are not generally recognized in tradi­tional Buddhist texts. Perhaps this is understandable. Self-centeredness is so pervasive and so powerful an illusion that most energy and ethical strategy has gone into overcoming it. But if it is not the only illusion, then the possibility remains that, in the effort to overcome the pervasive illusions of selfishness, we fail to recognize other imperfections that stand in the way of authentic generosity.

In order to delve more deeply into the role of selflessness in ideal forms of generosity, it will be helpful to reflect on a famous Buddhist story about generosity. This story is found among the Jataka Tales, ancient Indian folk tales about the former lives of the Buddha. In the final chapter of this composite text, the Vessantara Jataka, which recounts the Buddha’s last life before attaining enlightenment, the Buddha is a certain Prince Vessan- tara, heir of the Sanjaya kingdom, who lives in the palace with his wife Maddi and their two children. The prince, the future Buddha, is of course the paragon of virtue; his generosity and compassion for the people of the kingdom are renowned. The prince’s beneficence is epitomized in his generous use of a magical elephant on behalf of the people, an act that virtually guarantees the well-being of the realm by ensuring that rainfall in the kingdom is perfect for agriculture. But the prince is so generous that when an emissary from another land asks to be given the magic elephant, the prince does so in a spontaneous gesture of selfless giving.

Things begin to go badly. The people in the prince’s kingdom, fright­ened by the prospects of their lives and furious at this act of outrageous generosity, force the king to banish Prince Vessantara. In one last gesture of generosity, the banished prince gives away all his possessions and leaves penniless with his family. On the journey, when asked by a despicable old couple who desire servants for themselves, the prince gives them his children to serve in this capacity. Fearing that Vessantara might give away even his wife and be utterly alone, the gods descend disguised as a brahmin and ask for his wife. When the prince concedes, the gods immediately give her back. According to the rules of gift-giving at that time, now that she is his as a gift, he is no longer entitled to give her away. Meanwhile, the king, remorseful for having banished his beloved son, gets Vessantara’s children back and invites the prince and princess to return. All of the royal family comes together in blissful reunion, and Vessantara eventually becomes the king who rules most compassionately.

This is an ancient story—even pre-Buddhist in origins—and in it we cannot help but notice many things, including that the position of “wife” and “children” are regarded as property in the social customs of ancient Indian patriarchy. Although these customs dissolved in the Buddhist era in India, the story remained intact, becoming the best known of the Jaitaka Tales and serving as the ultimate standard for the development of the virtue of generosity, even if no longer interpreted literally.²¹ This story, among others, led early Mahayana Buddhists in their choice of generosity as one of the cardinal virtues of the bodhisattva. It was clear to them that the practice and development of this virtue was the first step toward enlightenment.

But ancient patriarchal customs should not be the only difficulty we notice in the story. If we look more closely, we realize that, although all of the acts of generosity in the story are profoundly selfless, not all of them are admirable, nor constructive for the good of everyone affected by them. In fact, some of them evoke our criticism because they appear to cause serious injustice. Why, for example, did the prince give his children to the greedy couple who wanted servants? Because they asked, we are told, and being unselfish and profoundly generous, the prince holds nothing back. But what if this gift is bad for the kids, bad for the parents, even bad in cultivating the greed of the selfish couple? What if this act of unselfish generosity is bad for the society as a whole? Then we would conclude that, in this case, the perfection of generosity requires not-giving, and that the greatest gift that can be given is wise judgment and forbearance. Even better than open, selfless giving is discriminating giving empowered by compassion—generosity that asks critical questions about the overall long- and short-run wisdom of the proposed gift. Selflessness directed by wisdom is greater than selflessness alone.

As we saw in the early Mahayana sutras, virtuous giving was required to be “impartial” and “nondiscriminating.” We can now see, however, that this criterion needs a more comprehensive definition. Had the prince been more discriminating and less impartial, thinking about the welfare of everyone affected by his gift before acting, his generosity would have been considerably more effective in advancing the well-being of all the people under his care. His generosity would, in other words, have been more beneficial and more enlightening.

What the sutras ought to mean by these two important criteria—impar­tiality and nondiscrimination—is that in giving we should not discriminate between recipients on the grounds of who among them will most likely benefit us in return. We should be impartial and nondiscriminating about everything that might otherwise serve our own egos and desires, but not about the need and the situation of the prospective recipients, nor about our capacity to be generous and helpful in the future. We notice, therefore, that authors of the sutras have been especially concerned to work against ever­present self-interest in the practices of generosity, for very good reasons. But in doing so, they have neglected to consider the kinds of discrimination and judgment that will be required for the gift to be truly beneficial to the recipient and others involved.

The other criterion of perfect giving that we saw featured frequently in the sutras was that the giver must not dwell on the “fruits” of the act of giving. But once again, because the authors’ concern was so heavily focused on the intrusions of the self in giving, they have not seen how concern for the consequences of our actions is often crucial in determin­ing whether giving is the right thing to do. Had the prince in the story thought about the long-term effects of these gifts, he would have ab­stained from giving some of them. So although it is indeed important not to dwell on the “fruits” of our actions, this concern is limited to the “fruits” for us, and cannot mean that we do not attend to the probable repercussions of our actions overall. If we want our gifts to bear fruit for those to whom we have given and to be fruitful for the society overall, then caring about possible outcomes will be a significant dimension in our choice of actions.

In the Vessantara Jataka, therefore, the moral dimension of the concept of generosity is limited to the virtue of selflessness. It suggests that less self is all there is to the practice of generosity as an ideal. In truth, however, the ethical dimension of the practice of generosity is more comprehensive than that—concern for the unselfishness of the giver’s self is one dimen­sion of the practice, and concern for the other’s well-being is another. They fit together in a well-balanced ethic, but one is not the same as the other. No doubt many Buddhists have, in fact, taken this into account in their ethical activities, even when their conceptual articulation of the matter did not. As Buddhist metaphysics developed in time, especially in the Mahayana tradition, awareness of the interdependence of all components of reality provided a conceptual image of self and other in correlation that grounds a more balanced and comprehensive account of moral relations.

We have just considered how generosity may be misguided when focus on one’s own unselfishness results in insufficient concern for the effec­tiveness of the gift on the well-being of the other. Is it possible that there are dangers on the other side, when too much concern for the other leads to insufficient self-concern? Yes, and we have already considered one situation in which such problems arise—the condition of servility in which lack of self-respect gives rise to indiscriminate giving. But there is another interesting issue to ponder here. What if, without being servile at all, generous people give so selflessly and so compassionately that they seriously harm themselves? Are there limits to unselfishness when others really do need our help? An example will help us get this difficult question in view, this one another story from the Jal taka Tales that goes to an ethical extreme in attempting to make its point.

Many versions of The Hungry Tigress tale have circulated throughout Asian Buddhism, but here is a summarized version sufficient for the purposes of our question: When, in a former life, the Buddha, then a Brahmin of great religious distinction, wandered into the forest to engage in spiritual practice, he encountered a tigress with a litter of cubs, all on the verge of starvation. Deeply affected by the suffering of this family and supremely compassionate, the future Buddha freely gave his own body to feed the tigress and cubs. Unwilling to preserve his own life at the expense of others, the Buddha sacrificed himself so that they might live.

This story has been told countless times throughout Asia to illustrate the truth that generosity is grounded in the achievement of “no-self,” although it is usually told with the added proviso that it is not necessary for others to go to the extremes of self-sacrifice exemplified by the Buddha. But why not? Once you have seen that generosity is authentic to the extent that it is unselfish, what would justify stopping short of full giving to preserve yourself when others are in dire need? Avoiding the force of this question on the grounds that the story’s sacrifice was limited to the act of saving tigers rather than human beings is too easy an escape from its central issue. This is a folk tale, potent in its point if we are willing to improvise. At least some people somewhere will starve today, while you and I have food in the kitchen and money in the bank. Although we do give to charitable organizations that seek to address this global problem, why shouldn’t we give everything, offering to sacrifice our lives so that others might live? I imagine that all of us have found ourselves asking this moral question at some point in our lives. But I suspect that, like me, you avoid it whenever possible in order not to risk the conclusion that you cannot in fact justify your continued existence, or your bank account.

We are all aware of stories in which sacrificing oneself on behalf of others is clearly, at least in retrospect, the right or most admirable thing to do. Mahatma Gandhi nearly died in fasts of protest on behalf of the liberation of the people of India and in opposition to violence, and in the end he did die in the service of others. The soldier who leaps upon the live hand grenade in order to save the lives of his fellow soldiers is a hero of mythic proportions, as admirable in the human excellence of selfless generosity as we can imagine. But both of these examples feature specific and highly unusual situations in which self-sacrifice emerges as a moral possibility where greater good might come from someone’s dying than from their living.

Few exemplars of generosity follow this pattern, however. Historical accounts tell us that the actual historical Buddha lived a very long life, and that whatever starvation he encountered among humans or animals while wandering around northern India did not prevent him from eating in order to sustain himself. Clearly, his self-conception focused on the task of human enlightenment, which could not be advanced without his own health and well-being. His primary gift to us was not food but rather the possibility of awakening to a level of profundity in our lives that would not have been possible without his life’s work. Mother Teresa, the modern paragon of generosity, also lived a long life, and we are thankful that she did. Had she sacrificed herself early in life in order to save a starving family, tens of thousands of others would not have been fed through her lifelong efforts to overcome hunger and starvation in India and elsewhere.

In both of these cases, the generous concern that the Buddha and Mother Teresa had for others was made possible by an appropriate amount of self-concern. How can we know how much that is? In these two cases, the self-concern at stake is far more than the food that sustained them physically. It included, in both cases, an enormous amount of time spent in meditative self-cultivation and other forms of spiritual practice. The ability to give, as we have seen, does not come from nowhere; it arises dependent upon the achievement of excellence in character—the perfections. In his public talks, the Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh is very clear about the life he lives. Although he offers himself to us for instruction, he says quite plainly that the only reason he is able to do that is that he knows when to retreat into meditation in order to maintain himself in a position where he will have something worth­while to give. Without wise self-concern, our powers of concern for others are diminished. Without that kind of wisdom, giving is embedded in irony; it becomes part of a pattern of life that destroys one’s future capacity for generosity.

Moreover, the magnanimous giver must always know when to stop, when to pull back in the present for the sake of the future. Having exhausted your resources, you will be in no position to be generous another day, when what is perhaps a more important occasion arises. To be truly effective in giving, you must realize your own limitations and the limitations of your resources. This is true whether the resources are your money or your time and energy. Going too far, you diminish the extent of giving that will be possible for you in the future, when needs may be great. Timing is crucial, knowing when to advance and when to rest in order to prepare yourself for a long succession of challenges. A subtle balance between helping others and maintaining or cultivating your capacity to help is a high-level skill of great significance. Other forms of balance are also important. The moral dimension of our responsibility for others, while basic, is just one dimension of our lives. We are fortunate to have many other reasons to live and many forms of engagement. Similarly, generosity is only one of the perfections. Admirable people often understand the art of balance with uncanny perceptiveness.

The question—how much should I give, or at what point in the diminishment of my own resources should I stop giving?—is a theoretical question for most of us that has little bearing on our life practice. This is so because we have not yet engaged in the practices of generosity to an extent that selfless over-generosity might endanger us. But two things have become clear—that generosity is an excellence of character that all of us would benefit from cultivating, and that thoughtfulness as well as selflessness are essential to that excellence.

These subtleties in the practice of generosity are not the most obvious dimensions in the practice of giving. But they can be learned from a variety of sources. More often than not, we come to understand them through our admiration of others, from role models who set the standard for generosity of character. Precisely at the point where we are able to notice strength of character in someone else and see the corresponding weakness in our own character, we are in a position to learn. This kind of learning is most direct and effective when guided by teachers in our own social world, but there are certainly other ways to get it. In traditional Buddhist societies, this most often took the form of stories circulating through Buddhist storytellers. But it can also be readily found in books, narratives about lives lived by people, whether fictional or historical, who represent the ideal or the anti-ideal of generosity.

Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa are noteworthy twentieth-centu­ry exemplars of generosity, but we have many more, some created in novels and others told in historical narratives. From these we get a concrete glimpse of the ideal, and through creative analysis we can begin to determine what would be entailed in seeking greater generosity in our own lives. We study the great musicians in learning music, the great athletes in our own athletic pursuits, and there is every reason to do the same in our own quest to construct a character that best suits our ideals and our situation in life. Although we can see that the great saints are sponta­neously moved to generosity simply by seeing the suffering of the world, we realize that they were not born with that compassion, and set out to establish a discipline that might move us toward a similarly enlightened capacity for giving.

Perhaps even more important than teachers are friends. Those seeking enlightenment do not undertake the practices of generosity alone. They always seek and make good friends to accompany them on the way. The ethical importance of friendship is well known to the Mahayana sutra writers, and they develop this theme skillfully. The bond of friendship is a bond among equals, where, at least in principle, all share and share alike. They construct a network of support and encouragement in traversing the difficulties of an arduous discipline, the discipline of questioning one’s own standpoint in the pursuit of various forms of excellence. As Aristotle knew, too, friendship entails a shared recognition of and pursuit of an “idea of the good,” a “thought of enlightenment,” however skillfully the friends in any particular case are able to conceptualize that. They travel a path together and seek the well-being and success of the others along with their own. To make generosity in life a goal, part of a larger goal of enlightened character, is to set out on a path that has numerous destina­tions but no final end. On such a path, companionship and fellow travelers are absolutely essential.

The Gift: What Can Be Given?

No definitive rule or code for giving can be provided. Generosity is a creative act of freedom that is bound only by the ideals of wisdom and compassion and the cultural shape of the world it seeks to benefit. Therefore, the “what” of giving is always open in every situation. Stretch­ing our minds to see the good that generosity might accomplish in any particular setting requires insightful freedom, or creativity. Only in this open light can we adequately ask: What can be given?

Money is the easiest and most effective commodity for giving, because recipients can cash it to pay for whatever is truly needed, relieving the donor of the responsibility to understand fully the complex and always changing needs that the gift hopes to address. Money is not just another thing; it is our symbol of things, and in that capacity has extraordinary contemporary prominence. Money symbolizes the power of abundance and the security of our relations to the larger world. To give it requires a clear sacrifice on our part. Giving money so that others might procure what they need, we sacrifice some of our capacity to have what we want. In holding our money, we possess power; in giving our money, we exercise that power.

But giving is not simply a practice for the wealthy; it is a practice in which anyone can engage. Giving is closely linked to our freedom and is a fundamental dimension of being human, a possibility we all share. We can only give to the extent that we are truly free, that is, not possessed by our possessions, or our money, or ourselves.

So what can be given by those who do not possess an abundance of material resources? Clearly, we can give of ourselves—our labor, our time, our concern. In fact, in our own economic world, when we give money, it is often labor, time, and concern that it buys, and it is in our power to give these directly by offering what we can of our own involve­ment. The gift of volunteer labor is an act of extraordinary generosity, and when we witness someone able to give this gift freely, we cannot help but admire it. When we give of ourselves in this way, we set self-concern aside in order to identify with some concern beyond the ordinary boundaries of our own lives. The corresponding feeling associated with this act of generosity is exhilaration, a sense, however large or small, of expansion out beyond ourselves. In giving we experience directly the feeling of unselfishness implied in the Buddhist idea of “no-self” in which the borders that conventionally define us are erased.

Some gifts are so light and insubstantial that they can be given to others on a daily basis. One such gift is simple recognition, an affirmation in speech, gesture, or action that someone else exists, and that they matter. Often we fail to grant this simple gift of recognition, and the more often we fail in that the more alienating our social world becomes. We all know, for example, what it feels like to be in a room where those who have not been introduced to each other avoid eye contact, awkwardly trying to carry on as though the others are not there. Worse, we have all experienced powerfully self-possessed people who take over a room of people without ever acknowledging the presence of someone in the room. When recognition is withheld from anyone by anyone, the bond of care and generosity that holds a community or a family together is under­mined in some small way. That is why this gift is so significant—when we give the simple affirmation of others present, we act to create a certain kind of community, and in so doing we make it more possible for others to do the same.

There are times, moreover, when this gift of recognition is crucial. These are occasions of suffering when someone is overwhelmed by the pain of their own existence. Sometimes this pain has an overt cause—the death of a family member, a personal failure or disappointment, for example—and at other times the cause is latent or hidden, the raw pain of anxiety. In either case, the ability to register the other’s pain and to communicate a sense of understanding and care, whether through providing personal contact or appropriate distance, is an important skill in the perfection of generosity. Those who are able to do this with sensitivity possess an excellence that we can emulate with transformative effect.

There are times when all we experience is someone’s distance, their utter alienation, without seeing the suffering at its roots. In these cases, we often mistake the symptoms. We interpret someone’s distance—their rude behavior, their inability to communicate or to participate—as dis­dain or lack of care, and in response we shun or secretly condemn them. Frequently, however, these and other forms of alienation are masked signs of suffering, hidden pain with an enormous range of causes, con­ditions, and manifestations. The ability not to react to another’s distance with a natural corresponding distance is a mark of extraordinary percep­tion and will; it shows someone’s freedom not to have one’s own response predetermined, the freedom not to be forced to reciprocate with a similarly alienated reply. Few people possess the personal power to give such a gift, but when this rare act does occur, its effects are extraordinary in reversing the tide of alienation or suffering.

In all of these situations, the skill of generosity is the ability to communicate courage, the power to stand up to and to address whatever is painful in life. Courage, in the form of encouragement, is a gift always potentially in our possession but actualizable only if we have cultivated it, only if we have developed our powers of compassionate, sensitive giving in other circumstances. The perfection of generosity consists primarily, therefore, in a system of practices aimed at the development of these capacities and these skills.

Personal acts of giving to those who suffer, whether in the form of money or assistance or sympathetic concern, are always limited in their capacity to solve the overall problem of suffering, which is monumental in proportions. Helping one hungry or under-privileged child is a won­derful achievement, but it still leaves the overall problem of suffering largely as it was—everywhere to be found. For every child in pain, we can hear thousands of others crying out for similar attention. Therefore, authentic generosity requires more than our individual acts on behalf of those in pain. It requires, very clearly, that we give attention to the political world in which such suffering continues to grow.

Although we must feed the poor, doing so may do nothing to alter the injustices and systems of power that have given rise to the problems of unemployment, deprivation, and hunger in the first place. Therefore, in addition to our practices of aiding those who need our help, authentic generosity requires the practice of politics. Indeed, there are times and situations in which political acts are more efficacious in bringing an end to suffering than acts of charitable giving. Communities can practice generosity just as individuals can, and the effort to persuade one’s society to engage in appropriate forms of giving is a gift of great consequence. This is a dimension of the perfection of giving that we are in a position to cultivate even if traditional Buddhists were not.

This is not to say, of course, that collective generosity—giving on the part of communities or governments—is always the most effective politi­cal course. There are lessons to be learned from those who instruct about the dangers of institutionalized giving, the possibility that our acts of generosity and care might undermine self-respect and individual capa­cities. But those dangers are present, as we have seen, in any act of giving. Thoughtfulness, an attentiveness to how to give, when to give, how much to give, and how all these will affect the recipient and the society are always important. So that caution about collective attention to the welfare of others should not be used as an excuse selfishly or self-righteously to terminate collective care for those among us who are in need. The perfection of generosity and the health of any society require that we selflessly seek an end to pointless suffering, to undeserved suffering, and to suffering that does nothing but destroy human beings. And in many circumstances, it will be communities that have the power to do this rather than individuals within those communities.

There are some in any society who will need assistance, but they do not necessarily need your assistance, or mine, except insofar as we do our share to support public service institutions. Volunteer giving is to be greatly admired and very important, but communities should not rely too heavily on it because that allows others, those who are not generous, to ignore their responsibility and the plight of the less fortunate. Everyone in a society should be expected to acknowledge their own dependence on the society as a whole, especially those who benefit most from current arrangements of power and distribution. Everyone benefits when ex­treme poverty is eliminated in a community, when those who are living in pain and hopeless conditions are offered some degree of communal care. Everyone should be expected to participate in this effort, therefore, even those who, due to lack of understanding, are unable to acknowledge the responsibility of all citizens to do their share for the common good. Much of the pointless suffering in the world can be alleviated through intelligent political action, and any contemporary account of the perfec­tion of generosity will need to acknowledge this.

To alleviate suffering among one’s own family and friends while leaving untouched the larger world of suffering is to have fallen short in one’s quest for authentic generosity. The “perfection of generosity” demands that we give our attention and our labor toward the creation of a human world in which compassion and kindness are the human norm, a world in which the diminishment of suffering and the extension of opportunities to everyone are among our foremost goals. Practices of generosity, therefore, include efforts to enhance human equality, efforts toward guaranteeing through social and political action that all children begin their lives with an equal chance for happiness and well-being and end it with some share of peace and dignity. Those who give of themselves through personal and political means toward these ends are in this respect admirable exemplars of the perfection of generosity. Although traditional Buddhists were content to recommend that we avoid doing injustice ourselves, a contemporary perfec­tion of generosity would need to go beyond this. It would suggest that we give our time and energy in a thoughtful effort to minimize the society’s collective injustice in as many forms as it can be found.

To understand in more concrete terms the significance of this dimen­sion, imagine three different compassionate benefactors, three profoundly admirable people, each with distinct characteristics. The first is deeply compassionate, generous always in giving to those who need help. An uncommon degree of unselfishness gives this person saintly, distinguish­ing characteristics. But this person, like Prince Vessantara, is sometimes effective in giving and sometimes not, even though always unselfish. This person has not cultivated the ability to articulate thoughtful ends—both short- and long-term—to pursue in the spirit of selflessness, nor effective means. There are stories about saints of this sort in all of the world’s religions. They are extraordinary in their compassion and selflessness but lack some degree of worldly skill.

Second, imagine someone of equal compassion, someone just as gener­ous. This person, however, has the skill to give not just selflessly but to give effectively as well. Like Mother Teresa, this person sees that only well-honed institutions of generosity can dent the magnitude of the problem of hunger and poverty and sets out diligently to construct such an organization. This second donor’s generosity yields liberating results that extend far out into the world.

Finally, picture a third benefactor, one with both deep feelings of compassion and the wisdom to give effectively. In addition, however, this person asks what gives rise to poverty and desperate human condi­tions in the first place. While continuing to treat the symptoms of the problem—feeding the starving, for example—such a person also seeks to understand and treat the cause of scarcity. Recognizing that certain governments and certain socioeconomic conditions will produce starving people as fast or faster than any one person can remedy, this benefactor pursues political change. With both long- and short-term political goals in mind, such a person wants to provide society with the ideal and a concrete plan for a morally coherent community that truly leaves no one behind.

The point of describing these three is not to suggest that selflessness is not important. Truly, nothing is more important, and practices aimed at cultivating selfless openness to others are fundamental to any authentic ethics. Nevertheless, descriptions of these three help us see that, although essential, selflessness is not enough, and that if we are honestly attempting to conceptualize ideal forms of generosity, we will need to recognize that there are dimensions of this virtue beyond selflessness that are also important ingredients of the ideal. Insightful understanding of the social circumstances in which we live and the courage to act on behalf of a more elevated vision of human culture are among these additional conditions for the perfection of generosity.

What other gifts might be included in our understanding of generosi­ty? Some of the foregoing claims will at some point strike us as stern and joyless, and it would be a mistake not to include the gift of lightness and laughter that some among us are so gifted at giving. These people teach us irony; they make us laugh at ourselves and release our strained serious­ness for just a moment. The freedom provided by humor is among our most cherished experiences, and some have cultivated their capacity to give it with magnificent skill. The momentary release of self-seriousness that suddenly emerges in laughter borders on the ecstatic and provides us with some of our most exhilarating moments. The generous freedom of laugher, and those skilled at providing it when we most need it, are known and appreciated by all of us.

Another of the most difficult gifts to give is admiration, a gift ground­ed in the freedom of selfless humility. When we become aware of someone who has the powers of generosity, or wisdom, or any truly excellent trait that we may lack, it is difficult not to respond in envy or jealousy—that is what we would like to be. What we ought to give in response to such people is admiration, the most honest, forthright, and nonalienating reaction to excellence. Only in our rare and best moments do we break free of ourselves enough to admire and to open our minds in praise of something truly excellent. This gift of admiration is important for three reasons. First, strong and admirable people occasionally need our acknowledgment and recognition, too. Giving it, we empower them to extend their skill further, to everyone’s benefit. Second, acts of admira­tion force us honestly to assess our own capacities and to ask ourselves where and how we have failed to live up to our own ideals. Third, an act of open admiration affects everyone who witnesses it. In an honest and effective gesture of admiration, we place what we value out in the open for others to see; we make a public statement about what we find to be truly excellent and admirable. In doing so, we place our “thought of enlightenment” out into view for critical scrutiny by others, making it available to them in refining their own sense of human excellence.

Apologies are also gifts of great significance, but in this case, gifts demanded by a sense of reciprocity. When we have been unjust, only very specific words of apology will overcome the rift that separates us from someone who we have harmed. An authentic apology is not a way to release ourselves from what we owe, or from guilt. On the contrary, sincere apologies are accompanied by a pledge to rebuild justice in the relationship; they must show a commitment on our part to do whatever is needed over time, so that in the long run the wrong we have done costs us and not the person we have wronged. When we give a true apology, we give justice by backing our words with actions aimed at correcting the imbalance we have caused. A true apology is not a way to get out of what we owe; on the contrary, an apology is a pledge to set things straight again. When we give it, we give much more than words; we give our word and back it with justice.

Sincere apologies given set the stage for possible gifts of forgiveness. The word “give” within the larger compound word “forgiveness” shows us that forgiveness is also something that we are capable of giving. But forgiveness is a very specific kind of gift, based on rather precise condi­tions. Forgiveness is possible only when a wrongdoing has been admitted, and when the one who has done it admits what true reciprocity would require. Forgiveness can only be given by the one against whom the wrong was committed, not by anyone else, even a judge. In that, forgive­ness differs from what a judge or jury can give—leniency or clemency.

Moreover, forgiveness does not erase the wrong; it does not change the fact that an injustice has been done. Forgiveness is neither denying nor forgetting. The injustice done remains, as does the memory of the wrong. What is given in forgiveness is an end to the grudge we “hold,” an end to antipathy, especially hatred. It entails a decision to let go of one’s own resentment. Only the offended party holds this resentment in full pro­portion, and therefore only that party can surrender it in a gesture of forgiveness. In that respect, like generosity more broadly, forgiveness shows us our own human freedom. To give someone forgiveness is to express our freedom in a remarkable way. It demonstrates to ourselves and to others that we are not bound to resentment or possessed by hatred. It also shows others around us that they too need not be bound in this way, and that the community as a whole is free either to hold or to let go of what might otherwise compel our resentment or force our retaliation.

When freely and skillfully given, forgiveness demonstrates the perfection of generosity.

Compassion and the Depth of Generosity

To understand the relationship between generosity and compassion, it is helpful to examine their place in Mahayana Buddhist thought. Generosity is the first of six perfections, six dimensions of character that are amenable to development and that must be cultivated in order to begin to awaken from a life of self-centered delusion. Compassion is not one of the six because it stands at the end of the path as a fundamental dimension of the goal. In Mahayana Buddhism, the two most essential characteristics of enlightened character are wisdom and compassion, each partially defined in terms of the other and each requiring the other for full actualization. Generosity, therefore, is preparatory for wisdom and compassion, even though it, too, is a component of enlightened character.

The primary reason for generosity’s subordination to compassion in the Buddhist hierarchy of values is that when compassion is fully present, a separate concern for generosity is unnecessary. We require the effort of generosity only when we lack the compassion to live the bodhisattva’s vow—to live on behalf of others as much as we do on behalf of ourselves. When compassion is complete, we do not hesitate to give; it comes forth quite naturally. Only when our feelings toward others assume a substan­tial separation do we need the guidance of generosity. When we simply do not feel compassion for others, the teachings and practices of generosity are available to help inaugurate those feelings. Bodhisattvas work on behalf of the enlightenment of the world out of compassion when it is deeply felt, and out of generosity when that feeling is still in rudimentary stages. The role of generosity, therefore, as the first of the perfections, is to inaugurate the movement toward compassion, to begin to plant and cultivate its seeds in our minds and character.

Generous, compassionate treatment of others is an exalted injunction found in segments of all major religions, even if, for the vast majority of practitioners, it is far out of reach. We find it, for example, in the Christian Gospel of Matthew (7:12): “Always treat others as you would like them to treat you.” In its more compassionate form, we find: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39; Leviticus 19). Nowhere in those scriptures, however, does it tell us how to do that—how can you love your neighbor as yourself when in truth you just do not? From the Buddhist perspective sketched out here, actually to experience that level of love in your daily life would require a major transformation in the under­standing that you have of yourself and others. The implication of the Buddhist position is that unless there is a profound congruence between the demands of the injunction to love others as yourself and the deepest understanding that you have of yourself, then the standpoint required for carrying out that demand is unavailable. We do not, in our current state, love others as we love ourselves, given how we understand ourselves and others. That level of love would only be possible through a radical transformation of self-understanding, and that transformation is the ideal aim of Buddhist practice.

In Buddhism, the primary category of practice responsible for this transformation is, of course, meditation. In meditative exercises, the basis for compassion can gradually be constructed. Compassion originates in acts of imagination. In order to feel for or along with someone else, you must be able to imagine their suffering, both as it actually is in their lives and as it would be in yours if it were you in that condition. Empathy and compassion are correlative. You cannot have one without the other. Meditation expands the powers of imagination and empathy, and in so doing, it expands our capacity for giving and for compassion.

Meditations meant to develop compassion ask the practitioner to work through a situation of suffering in detail. Beyond the fact that someone is homeless and without work or resources to take care of himself, the meditator looks into the specific experiences and repercus­sions of the situation. What is it like to live without a home, sleeping out on the street; what are the dangers that someone in that situation must face—the threat of violence, the physical pain and discomfort, the humil­iation, the decline of mental and physical capacities? What does it mean to be without possibilities, without hope, and how will these mental conditions lead to further suffering? Meditators give contemplative thought to what might be done to alleviate this condition and ask themselves how assistance could be generated. They imagine a variety of conditions in which a solution might be constructed and picture themselves setting these in motion. Throughout, meditators work through the emotional reactions that might be occurring in the homeless person, the dangers that whatever process they might undertake may seem degrading and demeaning. Finally, they imagine themselves in exactly the same condition and situation, considering how they might respond to the efforts of others to help. Meditation begins to make generosity possible through the imaginative extension of oneself into the position of the other.

This is just one form that meditation can take in the development of compassionate generosity. Many others are also effective. At the other end of the spectrum from meditating on the suffering of others are medita­tions focused on their joy, well-being, and good fortune. Early Buddhists prized feelings of “sympathetic joy” (mudita) that could be cultivated in meditation by practicing responses to the happiness and success of others. They sought the mental capacity to share in the joy of others, and in so doing, to extend and to radiate that feeling of well-being so that it could be felt by everyone. The capacity of character to share the joy experienced by others is grounded in specific mental and social conditions, and Buddhist meditation is structured to cultivate those conditions. The same is true of compassion and the response of generosity to the deeply felt needs of others. It “arises dependent” upon particular conditions, and in spiritual practice anyone can cultivate those conditions. Without the development of the conditions on which it is based, compassion is not possible.

“Emptiness,” understood as the interdependence of all things, func­tions in meditation to provide the requisite conditions for compassionate generosity. Meditating on interdependence, we develop the realization that we share a collective destiny with others, especially those in our immediate community but ultimately all living beings. The more we contemplate it, the more we realize in a functional sense that we are in solidarity with others. Understanding all of the ways in which we share the same global reality provides grounds for sharing; understanding tends to make generosity possible. Contemplating this, I understand ever more profoundly that what is good for me cannot be antagonistic to the good of others. What is best for me must be something that is good for others as well, because the goodness that is at stake here is neither mine nor theirs—it is ours, a shared possibility for enhanced life. Realizing this, the grounds have been laid to share the gifts that we have received. Understanding our interdependence with others and the debt we inevi­tably owe to others, we are empowered to respond generously to others and to make better lives possible for them whenever we can. The extent of our generosity is always in congruence with the understanding we have of ourselves. When this understanding is weak and self-centered, so is our capacity to give. When this understanding is broad and profound, so are our acts of generosity on behalf of others and human community as a whole.

Finally, it is helpful to reflect on the connection between generosity, the ability to give gifts, and gratitude, the ability to give thanks. Gift-giving and thanks-giving are tightly linked together, and that is the way we find them in the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras. There even the mythological Buddhas offer thanks for what came before them and what made their liberation possible, the perfection of wisdom in which they trained and through which they came to enlightenment.²² There and elsewhere we see that one’s inability to give and to be generous is linked to an inability to thank and to be grateful. If you cannot see your own dependence and do not acknowl­edge the gifts that have sustained you, you will be less able to tolerate the dependence of others, and therefore less able to help them get what they need. People trapped within themselves enjoy receiving, certainly, but it is their enjoyment alone. None of the joy is returned or disseminated in the form of gratitude, and thus the circle of communal connection is broken.

Of all the religious realizations possible, none may be as transformative as the ability to see that your own life has come to you as a gift. Contemplating this insight gives rise to a profound gratitude, a deep appreciation for the very fact of life, no matter to whom or what the thankfulness is conceived to be due. It is clearly one of the strengths of theism, the religious acknowledg­ment of a creator god, that at some point this mode of understanding gives rise to the feeling of gratitude and the sense of one’s life as a gift.

In nontheistic forms of Buddhism, however, this gratitude is no less important, even if more difficult to conceive. At its basis is the Buddhist concept of “dependent arising.” Everything that comes to be does so dependent on what came before. Nothing gives rise to itself; nothing exists on its own through its own act of will or cause. Every coming to be is a gift from what came before, and every passing away gives the gift of openness on which the future depends. Such conditionality entails in­debtedness. My life is possible only through forces and conditions not of my own making or determination. To live is therefore to owe one’s life, to be in debt. Although common modes of thinking, even religious ones, tend to obscure this realization and its far-reaching implications, even one steady glimpse into its truth evokes profound gratitude and the joy that accompanies it. Enlightened beings are those who are able and willing to acknowledge everything they have, including their lives, as a gift that is ultimately undeserved. Empowered by that profound and life­changing realization, these magnanimous ones are able to give generous­ly, and it is in the spirit of that giving and that realization that they practice the perfection of generosity.