Transcendent Generosity

 

To restrict generosity to what your coffers can or cannot offer, is to miss Buddha's intent, by measuring oneself against the many noble philanthropists who have given from their coffers.

That is one kind of expression of generosity.  There are others.  And each manner of generosity is but a manner - the actual practice of any or another will increase the capacity for practicing generosity - according to that manner.

Karuna:  compassion, lovingkindness, a sovereign love - these both are, and give more possibility for, more generosity.  "I'm doing" or "I'm not" or "I can't" - are all assertions of ego.

There is generosity of time, or of thought or feeling, of visualisation, of word, of action - in breadth and in depth.  This is to be meditated on.  This is what is meant.  This generosity is conscious and intelligent, genuinely free of idiot-naive generosity, free of shoulds or musts, free of  trendy "tolerance"-peddling, or of any cult of political correctness.  Real generosity is sovereign in nature, an authentic expression of one's basic sanity, of Heart-Mind.

It is found and cultivated in stillness - not the deadening of thought but its enlivening through the discipline of first studying one's own mind.  There is no judgement here, just objective observation and reflection.  Concerning generosity with material wealth, however vast and impressive or comparatively humble: motives objectively considered reveal the inherent nature behind it.  It's not that generosity is in itself "wrong" - the reference point directing it may however be decidedly conscious or unconscious.  Some acts of generosity are driven by notions of compensation, or of guilt, or of control and domination, or of recognition and reputation, or tax benefits, or of a duty.  It can generate a good feeling or feeling of goodness, of being good, doing good.  It can also generate joy, enhance lovingkindness.

To differentiate and exercise discriminating wisdom, generosity is for meditation, in this one studies one's mind and what is moving it.  Real altruism is All-True or it is nothing.

Generosity toward strangers without or at the expense of one's person, or of one's family - or in the case of a head of State: at the disastrous cost of one's people and nation - is the neurotic and irresponsible experiment of a manipulative ego with issues.

Helper-Syndrome has nothing to do with generosity, yet always uses this as a cover for this destructive behavior.  There is no self-image in real generosity, there are no deals.  So if you build a huge clinic which becomes an institution of standing, you build it.  If you give your last dollar to someone in need, you give it.  There is already a law of reciprocation, you needn't look for any.  One needn't stack "points" - generosity comes from an inner wealth, not an inner poverty.

In meditating on this one expands toward oneself, toward those near, and those loved.  This cultivates the feeling and is authentic of itself.  The expansion builds outwardly toward community, toward one's own environment of sentient Beings, toward the world as one applies visualisation. It builds inwardly toward one's own past, present, future - without harboring wishes or desires in the conventional sense, just steadily cultivating lovingkindness.  It is not to deny or dismiss or belittle emotions - anger, fear, panic, concerns, preferences - it just transcends all of these.

It is not practiced according to rules or ideologies, it is the free expression and demonstration of following one's true nature.  The most generous thing one can do is to embrace and practice this, and transmit it by example to those hungering for a taste of benevolent reality.