Ah good! Now I have the ability to write from my phone while I am traveling in Europe. I have the hope to leave my laptop behind and travel as lightly as possible. This is a test post made possible by a very kind person who has helped me understand how to work the app he has developed. The internet is populated by such kind people by and large.
If you go to the monastery or small church/priory you will most likely see items of food and other offerings placed temporarily on the altar. This is a practice I follow personally. It is a way to offer up the offering into the infinite hands of the Buddha, or however one chooses to speak about that which is ever present. Uh! just like the calligraphy says: the pure land which is now… Why put offerings on the altar you might ask? Let me try and explain.
Giving and receiving are one flow and at the same time, in a practical sense, there is a giver and one who receives. Putting offerings on the altar takes them out of the individual hands, so to speak, of the giver and receiver and signals that the flow of generosity is fundamentally not personal. This is difficult for people to understand since we are so used to functioning within the money economy. Goods are bought and services are sold and everything has a price or a value. What is given, or asked for, is most often thought to require, or expected to have, something given in return. This is well within our culture and the exchange of gifts forges personal bonds and helps to keep them alive over time. There is an assumption of exchange, where a return gift, or thank you note, is an acknowledgment of the underlying connection of the individuals concerned. We teach that the underlying connection is not two. Nothing separate.
In my tradition we show our appreciation with thank you notes and the like and, as a monastic, the living of life is intended as an offering and only made possible by offerings. This blog is an offering. Even as that is all true the greatest acknowledgment of offerings is shown through ones actions. That’s making manifest the flow of generosity, which is ever present. Now. The placing of items on the altar is simply showing and acknowledging that ever present flow. The heart of our lives.
I am working on answering a letter sent in by a reader on the subject of giving. In particular the struggle that can be there when, with the best will in the world, strings seem to become attached to gifts. Personally I feel the quick answer is that acknowledging offerings is how generosity keeps flowing. And strings attached, fall away.
Thank you once again for this opportunity to talk about generosity.
We have been talking about communication and keeping to the Precepts. This calligraphy was pointed out to me this morning. Thought I’d share it with you all. How could I not do that!
It is a question we all need to ask of ourselves. That’s to reflect on our giving, be it materially, emotionally and in all the gross and subtle ways giving manifests. We have a saying in Buddhism which goes As long as bowing lasts Buddhism will last. At the heart of bowing is gratitude. For the woman who speaks in the article her giving pipe had a major kink in it.
Perhaps for all of us the life lessons which are so very painful are around giving. We extend a loving hand and it is rejected, turned away from, giving goes bad over time. Love is saddened.
Years ago, in India, a monk warned me, “Never give anyone more than they are emotionally capable of receiving, or they will have no choice but to hate you for it.”
At the time, the advice sounded cynical, even cruel. It certainly flew in the face of Christianity’s highest charitable ideals, as famously expressed by Mother Teresa: “Give until it hurts.”
But these days, I’ve come to believe that when you give heedlessly or with an agenda, you actually can give until it hurts, and that the person who is most gravely injured in the exchange is the other guy.
Confessions Of An Over-Giver CNN News
Giving is coupled with receiving. Giving and receiving are one movement. Beautiful, and indeed fulfilling, when giver and receiver know deeply the one movement – of the generous heart. What’s in ones hand, so to speak, is simply an outward expression and not insignificant for that.
Thanks to Julius for the link. As always much appreciated. It is a touching story – and so human.
This morning I received a brief email from somebody simply saying, It will all work out. This was in response to my apologetic email. Yesterday I’d bungled a communication where I was not clear about what I’d said. This lead to an assumption that the answer was NO when it was actually YES! Such bungles happen with the best will in the world. Kindness coming our way changes us on a fundamental level.
And then Dave R. left this response to yesterdays post on grief. Thank you as always for your reflections. They have a power – for the good.
It seems to me that when someone we know dies a part of us dies; all opportunities to experience with that person end. Yet part of them live on in us that remain as we will live on in others.
Looking back I see that I am no longer the child, teenager or young man that I was; each has passed. I continue to change. And there is grieving not for the loss of those years but for what might have been in them yet could not be. And all the people I once knew in those years have passed too, not all into death but they are not unchanged. We share such a short time in life as it arises and passes and yet so much takes place.
Expressing kindness and sympathy are an expression of generosity of spirit. The power is the power to ignite that generosity in others.