This happiness too can be surpassed by the nourishment of deep contentment and serenity and finally the sublime state of nibbana where the mind becomes unshakeable and never strays from perfect peace.
Chapter 3 – Generosity
Buddhist teachings place generosity at the very beginning. Learning how to give things is essential.
Why would we bother to learn how to give? Giving appears to be simple enough. We have been giving all sorts of things to others many times a day for most of our adult life. If we are a parent, that is all about giving, as our children are dependent on us to use our skills and resources to support them. It seems like simple stuff.
There is a Buddhist book about giving called "Dana" which is the Pali word for generosity. The book is 778 pages long. That means there is a lot about giving we have not learned yet!
This is not just information about what we could refer to as conventional giving, this about the Buddhist practice of giving. The practice of giving called "dana" in the Pali language, is placed first in the order of things, as a foundation for the process of us becoming free from suffering.
Let us imagine ourselves to be a farmer for a moment. Suppose we have a large field in which we wish to sow our crop. What would happen if the soil in our field is of poor quality? It may lack nutrients, it may be dry, it may be too acidic, the good top soil may have blown away in the wind. If we were to sow our grain in that field, if we spent a lot of time ploughing and preparing the ground, removing the rocks and then planting our crop we will be very disappointed.
Due to the poor soil quality not all the seeds we have planted will be able to grow. The plants that do grow will struggle to establish themselves and some will die before they can be harvested. The poor soil cannot support the seeds that are sown to flourish into healthy plants, they will be stunted and not develop to their full potential.
Our minds can be likened to the soil in this situation. Lack of generosity shows itself as a dry mind, harsh, mean, closed narrow, stingy, jealous and unforgiving. Soil not able to support growth of any good seeds planted there. Anything we sow, any good actions we do with a non-generous mind will not develop fully, will be stunted and the resultant fruit will be small.
Generosity is nutrient for the mind, the rich, lush, fertile energy which supports and nourishes the growth of further goodness. It is the temperament of giving and forgiving, openness, cheerfulness, supporting, accepting, easing the way for the other person, joyfully lending a helping hand and nourishing.
Sooner or later for any practice to be effective in reducing our suffering we have to address the active ingredients in our mind that produce our suffering. We have seen that the negative or unwholesome minds are the roots of all unhappiness. Now we have to introduce some powerful antidotes into our lives to reduce these unhappiness drivers and their resultants.
Whilst Buddhist texts explain our unwholesome minds as being fourteen in number, the fourteen can be distilled down to three root causes of all our unhappiness. These three are greed, hate and ignorance, with ignorance meaning not seeing the type of reality we call absolute reality or the way things really are.
"Viewed as the quality of generosity, giving has a particularly intimate connection to the entire movement of the Buddha's Path. For the goal of the Path is the destruction of greed, hate and delusion, and the cultivation of generosity directly debilitates greed and hate, while facilitating that pliancy of mind that allows for the eradication of delusion." 3.
The Buddhist Path of reducing our craving and selfishness is how we can discover nibbana, the highest and only absolutely secure happiness available. We therefore practice generosity with the purpose of removing greed, selfishness and craving.
At this stage we may not recognise very clearly how greed or craving is at the root of our unhappiness. One student at the Buddhist Discussion Centre Australia wrote about this in the following way:
“I remember when I was first told over twenty years ago that craving was the cause of my suffering I couldn't believe it! I remember walking along in disbelief thinking "no way could craving be causing suffering! I didn't think I had much craving for a start so how could it be such a big deal? "
We can see the craving operating quite clearly when we watch the "monkey mind" in mindfulness of breathing meditation. The "monkey mind" is our normal untrained mind. It can't sit still for a moment. It chases after one sensation after another. After a few moments of watching the breath the mind gets caught up again thinking, daydreaming, worrying, being disturbed by noises, itches, restlessness and so on.
This is the craving. The mind is thirsty to experience all these things. It is not content to look at the breath. It grabs at one sensation after another because it is in a state of being unsatisfied. The nature of craving is that the craving mind can't find anything that will satisfy it. It is unsatisfiable”.
You can see how our craving makes it difficult for us to be happy. Instead of being content and happy with what we've got we incline towards being dissatisfied. We focus on what we don’t have rather than appreciating and enjoying what we do have. So, we need to find out about generosity, the minds natural antidote to the craving.
Consider this: most of us already give many things to others every day of our lives. If we are already giving a lot, why doesn’t this generosity work to reduce our craving?
The act of giving itself makes the kamma for us to receive things in the future. How we give is the factor by which we can reduce our greed and craving.
Nina Van Gorkom writes in her essay Generosity: The Inward Dimension:
"The giving away of useful or pleasant things is an act of generosity. However, if we only pay attention to the outward deeds we do not know whether or not we are being sincerely generous. We should learn more about the mind which motivates our deeds. True generosity is difficult. While we are giving, our thoughts may not all be good and noble. Our motives for giving may not all be pure. We may give with selfish motives - expecting something in return, hoping to be liked by the receiver or our gift, wanting to be known as a generous person. We may notice that there are different thoughts at different moments, some truly generous, and others having different motives." 4.
Often, we are happy enough to give to others if certain conditions are met, such as the person is someone we like or know well, maybe we don't particularly want the thing we are giving or we have enough for ourselves too, and the person thanks us afterwards, which we normally would expect.
If the receiver of our gift did not express thanks for the gift or if they did something with the gift we did not like, we may feel disappointed or resentful of their behaviour. This is giving with expectation of something in return. When we give in this way we are not really giving freely.
We could be giving because it is our duty, because it is our role in our family or because it is expected of us, because we were told to do it, because it is part of our job, because we want someone to do something for us in return. This is fine in the sense that most or maybe all these things do need to be done but probably, if you look, you'll find you are not actually doing these things with the mind of generosity.
While all this type of giving is going on, what is your mind doing? Is your mind just rushing to get the food on the table, is your mind tired and wanting to sit down for a cup of tea, is your mind just mindlessly handing something to someone else, or is your mind really engaged mindfully in the act of giving with kindness, generosity and love in your heart?
There is a story in the Buddhist texts about a young boy named Priyadarshi. He knew about the Buddha and had great respect and love for him. One day, unexpectedly, he had an opportunity to meet the Buddha face to face. Immediately he wanted to make offerings to the Buddha and pay respect to the great man.
As he looked around for something to offer he realised