Reimagining Generosity



Growing up, I was not taught how be generous.  It was just not something that I learned. 

To be sure, I was taught many other human virtues that revolved around giving such as: charity, reciprocity, equality, responsibility, and accountability.  But not, generosity.

I don’t think my lack of education on generosity is that unusual though in the white Western world of my background.

I first became aware of my lack of experience with generosity on the last day of my first 5-day Mindfulness Meditation Retreat one year ago at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts.

We were all gathered in the main meditation hall, and silence had already been broken.  Everyone had already cleaned out their rooms, and luggage was packed. We were in the home stretch minus the final talk on Dana, the Eastern spiritual practice of generosity, that many meditation centers maintain for the payment of their meditation teachers.

According to Wikipedia (aka the source of all truth), Dana is:

a Sanskrit and Pali word that connotes the virtue of generosity, charity or giving of alms in Indian philosophies.

However, as I learned the hard way when trying to speak Spanish to a native speaker, the problem with a direct translation from one language to another is it sometimes loses the cultural context for a word, which leaves the larger meaning of the word literally lost in translation.

This is why last May, I so much enjoyed the following definition of Dana or Generosity that was provided by the retreat staff:

It is having joy before, during and after giving.

To which I had to pause right where I was, and think to myself, “Hugh, I don’t think I was taught to do that…”

I thought: “I was not taught to be generous as a means to my own happiness.”

No, growing up I was taught to give and share because it was special, good, moral behavior. 

To be a “good person” you give and share with others, and particularly those less fortunate than you.

But this is not generosity from the eastern perspective.  This is charity from the western perspective.

In doing a little internet research on generosity through the University of Notre Dame I learned that the western use of the word generosity has its historical roots in an understanding that to be generous was to be noble- at first noble in the aristocratic sense, and then noble in the sense of spirit (http://generosityresearch.nd.edu).

The word “generosity” that we inherit and use today entails certain historical associations which may still inform, however faintly, our contemporary cultural sensibilities on the matter. Generosity has not long been viewed as a normal trait or ordinary, or of all people, but rather one expected to be practiced by those of higher quality or greater goodness.

In other words, the emphasis in the western perspective is on the giver herself, generosity as an adjective. In the eastern perspective, the emphasis is arguably on the giving, generosity as a verb. 

I’ll give an example.

Several years ago I was out to brunch with my husband celebrating our wedding anniversary.  The brunch and restaurant were quite nice, and more on the expensive side.

Midway through our meal, our attention was called to an elderly couple sitting close by. 

The couple shared with their waiter that they too were celebrating their wedding anniversary, their 50^th wedding anniversary!  “Wow,” we thought, and then offered a “Congratulations” to them.

Toward the end of our meal though, our attention was again directed to the elderly couple as they were finishing eating and preparing to pay for their meal, and their waiter brought over their bill, but said to the couple, “No need to pay.  Another diner in the restaurant who was sitting nearby heard that it was your 50^th anniversary, and paid for your whole brunch.”

Ahhh, love that story…I still get warm fuzzies every time I re-tell it…

The thing is, until recently, I only conceptualized that experience from my western view of giving.

I saw the anonymous diner as an extra-special “good” person who was worthy of praise and admiration.  I also believed his “good” deed would leave him off the hook for the rest of the year in terms of more giving since it was so “good.”

I never once considered the possibility that the role or function of giving could be to create greater joy and happiness in the giver because even to consider that from a western perspective (or as a hardcore New Englander, a puritanical Christian perspective) leaves you looking selfish and self-centered- more guilt, more shame.

The other pitfall of this western understanding of giving, is the inherent dichotomy it creates.  If there are special “good” moral people who give and share, then there are also more ordinary “bad” selfish people who hoard and stockpile. 

So if you had a moment of giving, it was not joy that was felt- it was righteousness and self-importance.  And if you had a moment of keeping to oneself, it was not neutral or even sadness that was felt- it was shame and guilt.

Joy before, during and after giving…

What would that even look like?

Western Buddhist author and teacher Sharon Salzberg tells us in her book Loving Kindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness that generosity, or Dana, was thought to be so important in the path of enlightenment that

The Buddha himself always started with new practioners by teaching them dana, the practice of generosity…Generosity has such power because it is characterized by the inner quality of letting go or relinquishing…When we practice generosity, we open to all these liberating qualities simultaneously.  They carry us to a profound knowing of freedom, and they also are the loving expression of that state of freedom. (pg 154-155)

A couple of months ago I posted a blog entitled “Spiritual Democracy: A Cultural Philosophy,” and since that time I have continued to wonder about the qualities or practices that would be necessary to cultivate this type of global reality. It seems to me, one of those qualities may be generosity.

Take, for example, the political and cultural debates going on at this very moment in the United States about the on-going possibility of an antiquated world where an owner of a bakery can refuse to make a cake for a couple based on a religious objection to the fact that the couple is gay.

(Which as a sidebar I must say is grotesquely reminiscent of the Racial Integrity Act of 1925 in the state of Virginia.)

If we stay in the narrow confines of western dichotomy to address these historical moments, then we will continue to only perceive a reality in which to preserve my right you must concede your right or vice versa. 

This dualistic universe of us vs. them, heterosexual people vs. LGBTQ people, white people vs. Black people, white people vs. immigrants, Christians vs. Muslims, will continue to painfully (and sometimes cruelly) lock our democracy in a limited and purely legal view of democracy that always leaves righteous winners and bitter losers. 

But, if we expand our sense of democracy to include the eastern view of generosity in which my own happiness is tied up with your well-being, then it might motivate individuals to embrace the type of wisdom that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used to preach to America:

All I'm saying is this: that all life is inter-related, and somehow we are all tied together. For some strange reason I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the inter-related structure of all reality (1966).

May it be so.

Learning How to be Happy

(wishtree.info)

A colleague of mine shared this cartoon with me today...

I really like it because creating happiness is not something I was taught how to do.

Please do not misunderstand, this is not a critique of my upbringing per se. 

No, I believe what I was taught about happiness was exactly in line with the white, middle class western world of my time growing up in the last quarter of the 20th century.

The only problem is, in the last 10 or so years, it has become painfully clear to me that what I was taught about happiness was incomplete at best, but more often than not, just plain wrong.

I've had some time to reflect on this too since my 3 year-old daughter has become infatuated with The Trolls movie (2016).

Now, if you don't have a child under the age of 10, you may not have had to watch and re-watch this film complete with Justin Timberlake movie soundtrack- lucky you!

However, I will say the one take-away about this animated movie is a theme that I've been tinkering with for some time now: what is happiness?

Of course for those of you who have seen the movie, it is Princess Poppy who offers her own answer to this question:

Happiness isn’t something you put inside you. It’s already there. Sometimes you just need someone to help you find it.

Growing up in the late 1970's through the 1980's I absolutely took in all the standard messages about happiness being equated with consumption. 

This meant that happiness manifested only when you had the peak experience of a very particular person, place or thing in your life that would finally make you complete (for five minutes or less).

However, what may have been somewhat unique to my experience at that time (though I think it is actually much more common now) was an apparently contradictory edge to that algorithm of consumption=happiness that included a set of rigid morals.

In other words, there was no questioning that the way to attain happiness (because it was something extraordinary to be attained, certainly not something given freely to everyone and definitely not pre-existing) was through people, places and things, but they could only be certain people and certain places and certain things that were within our moral guidelines.

For example, my family would travel, but the trips would always be culturally enriching or we would sleep in a tent.  We would have things, but the things would not be anything remotely connected to a superficial fad or a best-seller which somehow created the illusion that our stuff was better, we were better.

I'll reiterate here what I said above: what I was taught about happiness was incomplete at best, but more often than not, just plain wrong.

So imagine my wonder and amazement when I began to be introduced to these ideas:

Mindfulness is the miracle by which we master and restore ourselves...Mindfulness is the miracle which can call back in a flash our dispersed mind and restore it to wholeness so that we can live each minute of life.

Mindfulness is the basis of happiness.

-Thich Nanh Hanh 1976.

To which I exclaimed: "Wait...What?!"

It would not be an understatement to say that my first encounter with mindfulness created a complete paradigm shift for me in regards to that question: what is happiness?

Whereas I had grown up to believe that happiness was an elite emotion reserved for just a select few (and even for them, happiness was exclusive to only those very peak experiences), along comes mindfulness that tells me happiness is completely egalitarian- literally available to everyone.

Everyone. 

Talk about democracy in action...

Mindfulness also said happiness is available now.  As in, right now.  This-very-moment.

Again, for me, fireworks- another huge paradigm shift.

I realized the myth I had believed for so long that happiness was scarce was just not true. 

Mindfulness said that happiness is not reserved for only the VIP, and happiness is not an endangered specie in the context of painful complicated lives, but rather happiness is in fact abundant.

To which I proclaimed again: "Wait...What?!"

It has been many years now since I began to unpack my early learning about happiness, and I feel so grateful for what I have learned about happiness as to transform my day-to-day, moment-to-moment, experiences in such profound ways.

This past week was one of those weeks where I found myself in deep gratitude for mindfulness and mindfulness practices as my mother was back in the hospital on a Friday and my mother-in-law was in the very same hospital the following Monday.

If I had held onto the cultural myths about happiness of my childhood, times like these would have left me feeling depleted and helpless. 

Which is not to say these types of moments are not stressful, painful and just damn hard- believe me, they are.  Yet I also think, with mindfulness, happiness is present too.

One of my favorite Western Buddhist author and teacher is Sylvia Boorstein who wrote a book called: Happiness is an Inside Job.  And I can say, growing up I honestly would not have had a clue what that title meant.

Now, I can say that I do, and I am so grateful for that.

As I go forward, and continue to explore and redefine happiness, I am interested in trying out other letting go practices such as generosity and renunciation that may prompt feelings of joy and in turn create greater happiness.  I am intrigued with the counterintuitive idea that letting go may yield greater happiness than consumption.

Here's to more seeking!

May it be so.

Kindred Spirits: Mary Oliver

…My back to hickory, I sit

Hours in the damp wood, listening.

It never ebbs.

Its music is the shelf for other sounds:

Birds, wind in the leaves, some tumbled stones.

After awhile

I forget things, as I have forgotten time.

Death, love, ambition-the things that drive

Like pumps in the big rivers.

                                    My heart

Is quieted, at rest. I scarcely feel it.

Little rivers, running everywhere,

Have blunted the knife. Cool, cool,

They wash above the bones.

-Creeks by Mary Oliver

Spring has finally sprung here in New England, and I am once again back outside allowing the sounds of nature to ground me in the here and now.

Like this 81 year-old American Pulitzer Prize winning poet, being enveloped by the natural world is sometimes the only way I can forget things, quiet and rest my heart, and blunt the knife.

Infinite gratitude for this kindred spirit.

Radical Acceptance & God's Will

Lately I've been wondering if the phrases "god's will" and "radical acceptance" might not be a play in mutuality for me.

And if so, it's possible that the approach I've taken to grasp one, might help the other.

Perhaps it's best to start with some definitions though.

Let me start by saying, I've always felt badly for folks who have interpreted "god's will" as a one-way street of destiny, meritocracy, or punishment/reward.

This sympathy began many years ago when my first stepfather was alive and living with HIV and then AIDS.

It was the early 90's then, and it was not uncommon for me to hear from people who still held homophobic views that the reason my stepfather had contracted HIV was because he had "sinned against God" (definitely a capital "G"), and this fatal disease was his "punishment" for "choosing the gay lifestyle."

As a teenager at the time, I had no theology of my own to speak of, but it did not stop me from feeling deep sadness for these individuals who held such a deterministic, hateful and vindictive view of a power greater than themselves. 

I would think to myself: "How on earth do you sleep at night? You must be terrified all the time."

Now that I'm older and have spent many years crafting and listening for my own theology, I still feel great sadness for individuals who believe that when something awful happens, it is because of some personal failure.

What's interesting too, is now, over twenty years later, I hear some of those same people calling this same worldview "karma" instead of "God" (with a capital "G"), though I believe it is just an elephant of a different color.

I do not share this worldview.

When I use the phrase "god's will" I am referring to the laws of the universe.  And by "universe," I mean that quite literally.

The universe that is made up of an estimated 100 billion galaxies, of which only one is called the Milky Way (where we live) that may contain up 100 billion of it's own individual solar systems including ours.

(This is where you stand back and say: "Whoa...")

Here's the funny thing though, and I say this as humbly as I possibly can, the universe also (miraculously) includes you and me, which means the laws of the universe are not deterministic, they are transactional.  God's will is transactional.

Which leads me to radical acceptance.

To me, radical acceptance is a profound and purposeful alignment with reality. 

Whereas god's will might be a noun, radical acceptance may be more of a verb.  It also may be the most sane response to god's will, or to the laws of the universe.

Contemplative practices like prayer and meditation are methods for practicing and perfecting this type of harmonious, and dynamic, encounter with bare reality or god.

Of this topic, much has been said and written for millennia.

Just for an example, the 14th century Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich wrote in her book Revelations of Divine Love:

Prayer is a new, gracious, lasting will of the soul united and fast-bound to the will of God.

And to fast forward to a much more modern text, How to Be an Adult in Faith and Spirituality (2011), the author David Richo ends the book with this question at the start of the Epilogue:

What question was the universe yearning to have answered when it created me?

Though not a Buddhist myself, on this topic of radical acceptance and god's will, I have always been drawn to the Buddhist idea of "faith."

In her article entitled: "Faith: Its Role and Meaning in a Buddhist Wisdom Tradition" posted on the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies website, Western author and Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg wrote this about faith:

The word we normally translate as faith from the Pali language, the language of the original Buddhist texts, is saddha, which literally means 'to place the heart upon.' Saddha means to give our hearts over to, or place our hearts upon something.

When I think about the aspiration I have to align with reality in such a way that it feels effortless and compassionate, the phrase "to place the heart upon" suggests the tenderness and the intentionality that goes along with this level of radical acceptance.

On a very personal note, for some time now I have been periodically using the phrases "your will" or "what is your will" in my sitting meditation as an anchor to the practice.  And the other day, as I sat, these words came to my mind: "I'm here...It could not have been any other way."

I can't tell you exactly why, but I experienced those words as extraordinarily true- bring tears-to-my-eyes true. It felt like a release and a relief.

At times I've thought of contemplative practices like radical acceptance as the method and the mystical experience of divine union with god or god's will as the meaning, and perhaps this is how these two concepts co-exist interdependently for me.

Going forward, my hope is to continue to seek a truth that brings peace and healing to myself as  an individual, and in turn, to the world as a whole.

Perhaps you may have the same aspiration too.

May it be so.