"Buddhist" is the popular self-identifier one often comes across
when encountering relativizing post-hippie pacifists who get by
with "live-and-let-live" so long as no actual aggression confronts them.
Buddhism however, is not relativistic in the least;
it certainly addresses relativity and all that is relative.
But it gives objective analysis and points toward truth.
Dharma could never have taught Right Action by relativizing.
The Compassion and Generosity of a Bodhisatva aren't atheistic,
they are void of ego, which by its very nature is loaded with relativity.
Karma is not even relative, and can be depended on to teach
responsibility to those who use the term to excuse their own passivity.
Keeping a faked "peace-of-mind" by philosophizing on others' suffering
because it's not viewed as one's own suffering, and therefore "their karma,"
is a refined form of sloth at best, and narcissistically arrogant to say the least.
To apply oneself as a Buddhist really, to relate to the Teaching, is work.
The path of a monk is not to escape this world, but to apply oneself
in perhaps less visible dimensions, to develop on the meta-level
all of one's spiritual potential, for karma is action, not inaction.
Right Action requires involvement without being sucked in.
This means meditation, contemplation, reflection, discipline, study;
it clearly doesn't mean hanging loose and being "non-judgemental".
Discrimination cuts through the relatives - there is light, there are hues;
they are each beautiful in characteristic, unique: red is not blue, yellow not indigo.
Even white is not quite clear; the Clear Light of Dharma is absent of relatives.
All descriptions notwithstanding, its true nature is basic sanity.
To really shed light on the matter, the personality moved to accept the Path
is already motivated by that Clear Light; all other considerations are relative.
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.
