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Jonathan Lehmann: From Comparison to Inspiration

We remember that 'comparison can be the thief of joy'...

https://insighttimer.com/jonathanlehmann/guided-meditations/from-comparison-to-inspiration

Transcript

Hi and welcome to this meditation from Comparison to Inspiration.

Comparing ourselves to others is a subtle addiction that can have real harmful effects on our emotional state. When we get caught up in the habit of using what we find admirable in others to underestimate our own abilities, Breed feelings of dissatisfaction, Jealousy, And low self-esteem, And by constantly turning our attention outwards to the actions of others, We tend to allow ourselves to be influenced in our behavior without questioning whether these actions are truly aligned with our own deepest goals and aspirations.

However,

If we approach comparison with awareness,

It can also have beneficial effects.

We can find inspiration in the achievements of people more advanced than us in certain fields,

And even imagine joining forces with those whose work we admire.

We can also use comparison in a constructive way with ourselves.

When I take the time to measure how far I've come on my own path,

I nurture feelings of pride and confidence in my abilities,

Regardless of others' achievements.

The key to moving from unhealthy,

Self-defeating comparisons to inspiring,

Empowering ones lies in our ability to bring awareness to our automatic thinking.

The practice consists of letting go of the thoughts that devalue us and giving energy to those that motivate us.That's what we're going to explore in today's meditation to move from comparison to inspiration.

Start by sitting upright,

But without it being uncomfortable.

Make sure that the front of your body is open so as to receive the full range of your breath.

Close your eyes to turn your attention inwards,

And start breathing slowly through your nose.

Become entirely still.

The only thing moving in you is the air coming in and out of your nostrils.

Now,

Notice what's happening in your experience of this moment,

The different sounds around you,

The sensations of your chair or cushion beneath you.

And if you feel a particular mood today,

Notice how that mood manifests within your body.

Turn your attention to the sensations of your breath,

And notice how your body is breathing on autopilot,

Without you having to do anything but to observe this rising and falling movement.

Now,

Starting at the top of your head and going all the way down to your toes,

Observe the sensations in your body as if you were passing underneath a scanner.

If you notice stronger sensations,

Slowly sweep your attention once again on this area,

And notice if they're linked to any emotion you're feeling today.

If at any point during this meditation you're distracted by thoughts,

Sounds or sensations,

It's perfectly normal and it's okay.

When you notice these thoughts,

Simply bring your attention back to your breath,

That is, To the sensations of the air coming in and out of your nostrils or to the rise and fall of your chest or abdomen.

Follow your breath from the very beginning of the inhale to the very end of your exhale.

And now,

Simply by observing your breath,

Allow it to slow down so that the flow of air moving in and out of your body becomes thinner and thinner,

As if your breathing was following the rhythm of very small waves on a quiet beach.

Now,

Notice how your breath is flowing in and out of your nostrils,

As if you were following the rhythm of very small waves on a quiet beach.

When you follow your breathing with your full attention,

It's as if you were diving in the depths of your inner ocean.

You can watch the waves of your thoughts and emotions from an area of calm and serenity.

If you get caught into one of these waves,

It's all right.

Simply bring your attention back to your breathing.

Now,

Think of an area of your life that's important to you,

And in which you feel you've made progress.

For example,

In certain creative or athletic abilities,

In improving a certain relationship,

Or in your understanding of a certain subject.

Think back to when you were just starting out on this path.

Remember the difficulties you faced,

The moments of doubt.

Here and now,

With each inhale,

Bring to your body the courage to move forward amidst uncertainty.

Now,

Visualize what helped you to overcome the obstacles along the way.

The support and resources that enabled you to move forward.

Notice how what you've learned has been assimilated,

And is now second nature to you.

Here and now,

With each inhale,

Call up a feeling of gratitude for everything that you've done.

Here and now,

With each inhale,

Call up a feeling of gratitude for having made progress in an area that's important to you.

Now,

Bring to mind someone you admire for their achievements,

And whose actions you find inspiring.

This could be someone you consider a mentor, a teacher,

Or simply someone more advanced than you in a particular field.

Visualize what this person does that generates your admiration.

And see if you can recognize the value that this person embodies,

Which is also close to your heart.

Perhaps generosity,

Intelligence,

Humor,

Honesty.

Here and now,

With each breath,

Feel your appreciation for the values this person embodies.

And notice how you too are capable of embodying the same values.

Now imagine that this person you admire looks you in the eye,

And encourages you to keep going.

Maybe they're saying,

You're doing great,

You too have great qualities to share with others.

Here and now,

With every breath,

Call up the confidence in your abilities.

Finally,

Think of a future goal you'd like to accomplish.

Maybe one in which you contribute to a project that inspires you,

Or collaborate with someone you admire.

Imagine yourself on your way to a destination that energizes you and fills you with joy.

Here and now,

With each inhale,

Bring to your body the confidence that you're exactly where you're meant to be.

Before ending this meditation,

Once again,

Notice your current mood,

And observe how you feel when you're connected to the present moment.

You can now slowly come back to the space around you,

By noticing your surroundings,

Starting with the sounds around you,

The weight of your body on your seat,

The weight of your body on your seat,

And when you're ready,

You can slowly open your eyes.

I hope you enjoyed this meditation.

Feel free to return to it whenever you want to shift your focus from a harmful comparison to one that inspires and motivates you to move forward on your path.

I wish you an excellent day,

And I'll see you next time for more meditations.

 

Hugh Byrne - June 23, 2024 - 4 Heavenly Messengers

The practice of 'Triage' in our inner lives. What is most important now in a world full of challenges - a personal world and a world common to all of us.

Being present for 'this'...meet it wholeheartedly...what can be dealt with now, in this moment...the power of now: Eckhardt Tolle.

Some things have to be dealt with later...when the time is right. 

What is this moment calling for? The messenger is here. Reminders of our impermanence. What is a compassionate response to this person, to this situation...this instead of 'judgement', instead of aversion. 

Here we remember the criticality of attending to our spiritual life, the primacy of our spiritual life, our inner life... being present with our life, in an 'inner' way: cultivate kindness, compassion... thereby we create the conditions that are appropriate to the outer life.  this is the message of the 4th Heavenly Messenger.  from this quality of being present now...opening wholeheartedly to this moment. Cultivate acceptance.

How are these Heavenly Messengers showing up in my life? Sickness in my life, in my partner's life, my family's life. 

Antonio Machado: "Walker"

Intention, resolution

 

A New Year’s Blessing for realists.

As you enter this new year, as you pack away the Christmas decorations and get out your stretchy pants, as you face the onslaught of false promises offered you through new disciplines and elimination diets, as you grasp for control of yourself and your life and this chaotic world -

May you remember that there is no resolution that, if kept, will make you more worthy of love.

Yearly reminder: there is no resolution that, if kept, will make you more worthy of love.

There is no resolution that, if kept, will make life less uncertain and allow you to control your aging parents and your teenage children and the way other people act.  

So this year (as every year),

May you just skip the part where you resolve to be better do better and look better this time.

Instead, may you give yourself the gift of really, really low expectations. Not out of resignation, but out of generosity.

May you expect so little of yourself that you can be super proud of the smallest of accomplishments.

May you expect so little of the people in your life that you actually notice and cherish every small, lovely thing about them.

May you expect so little of the service industry that you notice more of what you do get and less of what you don't and then just tip really well anyhow.

May you expect to get so little out of 2024 that you can celebrate every single thing it offers you, however small.

Because you deserve joy and not disappointment.

So, I wish you a Happy as possible New Year.

Love, Nadia.

Wise Intention - Valley Insight Meditation Society

Wise Intention - Valley Insight Meditation Society

Wise Intention

Last Sunday in the beautiful AVA gallery space, our Sangha gathered once again for refuge, recollection, and reconnection. The church bells rang outside while inside, our community’s bell rang in responsive solidarity and drew us once again into the shared silence of our practice. It was February 14th, Valentine’s Day, and coincidentally, Tibetan New Year’s – a good day for resetting the intentions of our hearts towards loving kindness and compassion.

Wise Intention is the second path factor of the Eightfold Path, which is the 4th Noble Truth, the Truth which is to be cultivated. Often in the Suttas, the Buddha speaks of the heart or mind that “inclines, slopes, slants and leans” towards freedom. This leaning of the increasingly liberated heart towards wisdom and kindness is due to the power of Wise Intention fueled by the Wise Effort of Wise Mindfulness and Wise Concentration as well as by Wise Intention’s synergistic relationship with Wise Speech, Wise Action and Wise Livelihood. In the hologram that is the Eightfold Path, good intentions, in relationship with the other path factors, do not “pave the way to hell”, but instead mobilize us on the path to freedom.

The Dalai Lama, when asked how he stays calm in threatening situations, affirmed this understanding of intention’s power with his answer: “My sincere motivation is my protection.”

“Neuroscience tells us that setting an intention ‘primes’ our nervous system to be on the lookout for whatever will support what we intend…” In his book THE MINDFUL BRAIN, Daniel Siegel talks about the effect paying ‘attention to intention’ has on our brain and thus our experience of our surroundings. He writes, “Intentions create an integrated state of priming, a gearing up of our neural system to be in the mode of that specific intention: we can be readying to receive, to sense, to focus, to behave in a certain manner.” This suggests that when we pay attention to the intention “[…] we are more likely to notice the [relevant] actions, opportunities, people, and things…” (James Baraz in AWAKENING JOY).

In Buddhist teachings, there are three categories of Unwise Intentions: greed, hatred and cruelty or harming. The three categories of Wise Intention are: Non-greed, non-hatred, and non-cruelty. We could frame these in a more positive light as renunciation and generosity; good will and friendliness; and compassion and kindness. These are the intentions we are encouraged to cultivate. An important aspect of cultivating them is to notice in our direct experience when they are and are not present – to notice with interest and without reactive judgment – so that clarity and honesty can guide the body and mind on its path to freedom. This is the role of mindfulness.

Another way to cultivate Wise Intention is through the concentrative meditation practices of Metta (loving friendliness) and Karuna (compassion). Through the silent repetition of phrases in the quiet, reflective mind, we plant the habit seeds of future action. In Buddhist teachings, there are three ways we act in the world: through thought speech and action. The three are deeply related and influence one another in often surprisingly habituated ways. Each kind of action is preceded by intention. Intention leads to action; action leads to habit; habit leads to disposition or inclination. Inclination, of course, colors intention and so on. Whispering Metta and Karuna as words and ideas into the soft heart can began to give new shape to this process.

The Tibetan New Year is held to be a particularly auspicious day for hanging prayer flags. Prayer flags are both metaphors for and expressions of intentions. The Tibetan prayer flags we see in photos of India and Nepal and those we can purchase locally have words in Sanskrit printed on them expressing loving kindness, compassion, and peace –essentially wishes for well-being in the world. When the prayers are hung they can blow freely into the wind and cover the world. Unlike the prayers in a theistic tradition, these prayers are supplications to power higher than the human heart, but understood as potential forces in supplanting the intentions of greed, hatred and cruelty – internally (in those with the wisdom to hang them) and externally (to those hearts in the far reaches of the wind).

Last Sunday we gave the flags a place in our sitting group and added to their printed messages an infusion of our own words/thoughts/intentions of compassion. We ended our practice reciting aloud together the following words of compassion — towards specific individuals in our lives, to groups of people in the world, to ourselves, to all beings who are suffering:

I know your (my) pain
I care about your pain
May you be free from suffering

May you feel cared for and supported
May you be comforted and healed
May you be surrounded by kindness

Peace and best wishes,

Doreen

Compassion and Generosity - Tenzin Gyatso (b. 1936)

Compassion and generosity must be accompanied by detachment. Expecting something in return from these two attitudes is like trading. If the owner of a restaurant is all smiles with his customers, it is not because he really loves them but because he wants to increase his turnover. Neither should we love beings and help them because we find such and such a sympathetic one, but because we see that all beings, no matter whether we consider them as friends or enemies, desire happiness and have the right to find it.

FOURTEENTH DALAI LAMA, TENZIN GYATSO (B. 1936)
Oral teachings given in Schvenedingen, Germany, 1998.

https://www.matthieuricard.org/pensees/53

The Buddha places great emphasis on generosity because it's the first step on the spiritual path. ~ Zen Moments

Spiritual Stinginess

Spiritual Stinginess - Tricycle Daily Dharma, December 10, 2013 - seelindsay@gmail.com - Gmail

We try to turn a profit in practice—to get something from it. We try to get better. We try to get enlightenment. We try to get seen for doing it right. What are we being stingy with here? Wholehearted surrender to the present moment or to what is. Think how stingy we are with that. Think how tightly we hold on. We also imagine that in practicing, what we will “get” will be ours—which is, of course, the greatest delusion of all.

- Sensei Nancy Mujo Baker, "On Not Being Stingy"

On Not Being Stingy

The Eighth Zen Precept is about more than emptying your pockets.

Sensei Nancy Mujo Baker

“Stingy” —it’s a funny word. Scrooge comes to mind. We usually think of “stingy” in terms of possessions and possessiveness—not sharing what we own, being tight with money. Notice that the word “tight” describes what it actually feels like to be stingy.

There are many ways of being stingy. For example, a friend of mine, someone I dearly love, is very stingy with the servings she gives to people whenever she is the hostess. It’s noticeable to her guests—everything on their plates is very small. Rumi describes stinginess perfectly in his poem “Dervish at the Door”:

A dervish knocked at a house
to ask for a piece of dry bread.
or moist, it didn’t matter.

“This is not a bakery,” said the owner.

“Might I have a bit of gristle, then?”

“Does this look like a butcher shop?”

“A little flour?”

“Do you hear a grinding stone?”

“Some water?”

“This is not a well.”

Whatever the dervish asked for,
the man made some tired joke
and refused to give him anything.

Finally the dervish ran into the house,
lifted his robe and squatted
as though to take a shit.

“Hey, hey!”

“Quiet, you sad man. A deserted place
is a fine spot to relieve oneself.
and since there’s no living thing here
or means of living, it needs fertilizing.”

The dervish began his own list
of questions and answers.

“What kind of bird are you? Not a falcon,
trained for the royal hand, Not a peacock,
painted with everyone’s eyes, Not a parrot,
that talks for sugar cubes, Not a nightingale,
that sings like someone in love.
Not a hoopoe that brings messages to Solomon.
Or a stork that builds on a cliffside.

What exactly do you do?
You are no known species.

You haggle and make jokes
to keep what you own for yourself.

You have forgotten about the One
who doesn’t care about ownership,
who doesn’t try to turn a profit
from every human exchange.”

(Translated by Coleman Barks, from “The Essential Rumi”)

The One, or Oneness, as we might say in Zen, never tries to turn a profit from anything at all. It wouldn’t even make sense. We, on the other hand, are always trying to turn a profit from every human exchange. We are always trying to get something—admiration, love, recognition, praise, acknowledgment, even just staying connected. Think how we manipulate and bargain and negotiate to turn a profit from every interaction. Much of this is subtle, unconscious habit. Even when we give, or serve, or love, or pay attention, we’re trying to get something. Sometimes it’s just to get back some of what we give.

So what are we stingy with in all these cases? One of the things we’re stingy with is one hundred percent. We’re stingy with the possibility of doing something one hundred percent. Imagine loving one hundred percent. Imagine acknowledging someone one hundred percent, with no thought of getting something in return, which would take part of it away and make it seventy percent, or even twenty percent. We’re also stingy with the truth, the truth of what’s really going on in us—what we really want. We hold onto the truth, hold it back, withhold it. We play our cards close to the chest, covering the heart.

We also try to turn a profit in practice—to get something from it. We try to get better. We try to get enlightenment. We try to get seen for doing it right. What are we being stingy with here? Wholehearted surrender to the present moment or to what is. Think how stingy we are with that. Think how tightly we hold on. We also imagine that in practicing, what we will “get” will be ours—which is, of course, the greatest delusion of all.

And then there is surrender. In addition to treating it as a bargaining tool—“I’ll surrender to the present moment and then get something back”—we imagine that surrender is something we can do. If it were wholehearted surrender, there wouldn’t be anyone there to do the surrendering. So how do we surrender? How do we do this nondoing? We have to be taken, if you will. We can only prepare the conditions for being taken. Taken by what? By the present moment, by Ultimate Reality, by the Absolute, by God. And the way we prepare those conditions is by staying here now, by giving up all our negotiations, our bargaining, our “getting.” Bargaining is something stingy people do all the time: “I’ll do this if you do that”; “I’ll do this in order to get that.” It’s always a kind of tit for tat—conditional. Think of the notion of unconditional love. It’s interesting that we usually think about how nice it would be to receive it.

We are stingy with anything we hold onto—any person, any situation, anything that’s going on in us that we are unwilling to open to. We are stingy when we’re not fully participating in what’s happening here and now. Imagine wholeheartedly being here, for whatever it is—a class, a meeting, a dinner, gardening, a fretting baby. We are stingy when we’re withholding anything about the truth of where we are. We are stingy when we don’t take risks. We are stingy when we’re not compassionate. We are stingy with our tears, with kind words, with openheartedness, with open-mindedness.

What else are we stingy with? What else do we hold onto? Security. Self-images. Pain. Suffering. Unwillingness to suffer. Being right. Truth. Love. Being a victim. Need for recognition. Time. Praise. Think of how we hang onto those things. We don’t give them away; we don’t share them. One of the important things that we’re stingy with is gratitude. It’s amazing how stingy we can be with “Thank you.” Think of the gratitude expressed in grace before meals. The Zen version begins, “Seventy-two labors brought us this food. We should know how it comes to us.” Are we wholehearted in knowing that—and expressing our gratitude—or are we stingy? I think Mary Oliver is reminding us of this wholehearted gratitude in her poem “Rice”:

It grew in the black mud,
It grew under the tiger’s orange paws.
Its stems thinner than candles, and as straight.
Its leaves like the feathers of egrets, but green.
The grains cresting, wanting to burst.
O, blood of the tiger.

I don’t want you just to sit down at the table.
I don’t want you just to eat, and be content.
I want you to walk out into the fields
where the water is shining, and the rice has risen.
I want you to stand there, far from the white tablecloth.
I want you to fill your hands with the mud, like a blessing.

(“Rice,” from “New and Selected Poems, Volume 1,” published by Beacon Press)

We can also be stingy with receiving gratitude. With receiving praise. I had a great lesson in this at age sixteen when my favorite teacher complimented me on a paper I’d written. I remember exactly where I was standing on the stairway. And I behaved like a stingy sixteen-year-old, embarrassed yet pleased at the compliment, wanting to hang onto it but making a mess of receiving it. The teacher grasped my forearm with her long, slender fingers and said, “Don’t be so ungracious.” I’ll never forget it. It is a kind of stinginess to not be gracious, to not receive with gratitude what is given to us. Many of Mary Oliver’s poems are about being grateful for, and graciously receiving, the world. In “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches,” she writes:

Do you think this world is only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides with perfect courtesy, to let you in!

Consider what the Japanese Zen master Eihei Dogen has to say about the Eighth Precept: “One phrase, one verse, ten thousand forms, one hundred grasses, one Dharma, one realization, all Buddhas. All teachers. Since the beginning there has never been Being Stingy.” What he’s talking about is Ultimate Reality, the Absolute, the Faceless One—the “One,” as Rumi calls it. There is nothing stingy about the One. There can’t be, because there’s nothing “outside” it. Stinginess implies separation, but there is no separation here. When it comes to this world of multiplicity, it is manifested over and over and over again, from moment to moment—there is nothing stingy there. It is a gift, given to us constantly—alive, pulsating. Love, trees, fingers, the sea and its dividing water when we step in—everything is a gift. Another Zen master, Keizan, writes in the “Denkoroku”:

The light of the Mind—moon, and colors of the eye-flower are splendid;
Shining forth and blooming beyond time, who can appreciate them?
. . .
Sourceless stream from a ten-thousand-foot cliff,
Washing out stones, scattering clouds, gushing forth.
Brushing away the snow, making the flowers fly wildly—
A length of pure white silk beyond the dust.

Look at the language here: “shining forth,” “blooming,” “gushing forth.” That length of pure white silk beyond the dust displays no stinginess in its manifestation. Spring blossoms, sweeping, walking, Auschwitz, nuclear waste, life, death, our lives—all are gushing forth. Another verse from Master Keizan uses my favorite image:

That One whose whole life is extremely active and lively
We call the One who raises the eyebrows and blinks.

That One, the Faceless One, who raises the eyebrows and blinks— what a wonderful image of this manifest world, this world of many-ness, that we live in, that we are. That One whose life is extremely active and lively—nothing stingy here.

What about my life? What about myself? To not be stingy with my life, with myself, is to fully express myself at every moment—fully express everything that I am. I’m not talking about “exercising my talents, my gifts.” Exercising one’s talents is not what “fully expressing oneself ” means. When we are fully expressed from moment to moment, we are transparent. There is no one there to know whether talents are being exercised, much less my talents. Nor is it my life. Again, in “Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches,” Mary Oliver writes:

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? . . .

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters, caution and prudence?

And I would add stinginess.

Not being stingy with one’s life, with one’s self, with this precious short gift we’ve been given is often associated with voice, with finding one’s voice. Rumi writes:

Let your throat song be clear
and strong enough
To make an emperor fall full length
suppliant at the door . . .

You that come to birth
and bring the mysteries.
Your voice thunder
makes us happy.
Roar lion of the heart
and tear me open.

In Buddhism we have the lion’s roar. Mary Oliver expresses her own version of this in “West Wind”:

And the speck of my heart, in my shed of flesh
and bone, began to sing out, the way the sun
would sing if the sun could sing, if light had
a mouth and tongue, if the sky had a throat . . .

Voice, our primary example of expression, shows up as a metaphor for the manifestation of the One, as well as in the notion that everything “preaches the dharma.” Dogen says in a little verse, “Are not even the sounds of the bustling marketplace, the preaching of the dharma?” No stinginess here. Everything preaches the dharma—nuclear waste, skunks, flowers, grass—and does so fully and completely. What is, is not stingy. There is nothing withheld.

So here we are, stingy in this way and that, wanting not to be. How do we work with this? The first thing is to not be stingy in discovering who we are in relation to stinginess. “Where am I stingy? About what? With whom?” we need to ask. Can we take a good, neutral look at ourselves, with no preferences? Can we compassionately allow what is, or who we are in the relative sense? Can we explore deeply enough to feel the withholding, the tightness, maybe even the fear? Can we feel safe enough, not-stingy enough, to express who we are, where we are, to another? Coming to terms with who I am in relation to stinginess—and doing so with no judgment—is one thing, but being not-stingy enough to place my stinginess right out on the table before others takes the practice even deeper.

What are we doing when we do this? What is happening? Master Sosan, the author of the Zen poem that begins “The Great Way is not difficult for those who have no preferences,” also says something in that poem about letting things “take their course.” It’s as if everything wants to liberate itself, to take its course, and we, out of our fear—out of our stinginess—prevent that from happening. Mary Oliver’s poem “The Kookaburras” is precisely about this:

In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
to come out of its cloud and lift its wings.
The kookaburras, kingfishers, pressed against the edge of their cage,
they asked me to open the door.
Years later I wake in the night and remember how I said to them,
no, and walked away.
They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
They didn’t want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
home to their river.
By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
Nothing else has changed either.
Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.

(“The Kookaburras,” from “House of Light,” published by Beacon Press)

By opening that cage door, by letting out whatever we imprison inside us, we are letting things take their course. We are not being stingy with stinginess or who we are in regard to this or any of the other precepts. By letting the kookaburras fly away, we let them take their course and transform themselves. It is then that the precepts begin to manifest naturally. Dogen says of his enlightenment:

For fifty-four years
Following the way of heaven,
Now leaping beyond
shattering every barrier.
Amazing!
To cast off all attachments
While still alive!
Plunging into the yellow spring!

This is the precept of not being stingy.

The Zen Precepts

1. Non-killing
2. Non-stealing
3. Chaste conduct
4. Non-lying
5. Not being deluded
6. Not talking about others’ errors & faults
7. Not elevating oneself and blaming others
8. Not being stingy
9. Not being angry
10. Not thinking ill of the Three Treasures [the Buddha, dharma, and sangha]

Sensei Nancy Mujo Baker, a dharma successor of Roshi Bernie Glassman, is spiritual director of the No Traces Zendo in New York City. She is also a professor of philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College.

As If There is Nothing to Lose How giving comes from gratitude. By Sallie Jiko Tisdale Once I was young and poor—and generous. I shared an old house with several people and slept on the porch and owned nothing more valuable than my bicycle. I volunteered many hours every week at community organizations. One day, when I had only five dollars, I treated a friend to dinner, and afterward we laughed about my now total poverty. It was easy to give away what I had; I never doubted that the world would somehow provide for me in turn. Now I have a house and a car and a savings account, and I am not so generous. I do give—my money, my time, my attention— but sometimes I give reluctantly, with a little worry. Sometimes I want a nicer house, a newer car. I wonder if I have enough money saved. I want more time to myself. It is not just a matter of youth and age. I have many more things now, and that means I have more things to lose. When I had little, everything I had was important. If I found a sweater I liked at the Goodwill, it felt like my birthday. In a way, having nothing meant everything in the world was mine. Even a sandwich was cause for celebration, and nothing distracted me from enjoying it. Every gift was a delight, and I was grateful for everything I had. Gratitude, the simple and profound feeling of being thankful, is the foundation of all generosity. I am generous when I believe that right now, right here, in this form and this place, I am myself being given what I need. Generosity requires that we relinquish something, and this is impossible if we are not glad for what we have. Otherwise the giving hand closes into a fist and won’t let go. This generosity, arising from abundance, is natural. We see it in the world around us all the time. Haya Akegarasu loved spring. “Young grasses,” he wrote, “I can’t help it—I want to kiss you.” To him the spring grasses were great teachers, because they made a “whole effort” to simply live their lives. “Their growth is a long, wide tongue that covers the whole world,” he said. I see a fearless generosity in the flowers and trees, in the way birds sing out at dawn, in the steady drumming of the rain. As I grew older and found I had things to protect, I forgot. I completely forgot that I had always had enough in the first place. Now I am trying to learn this once again—total abundance, nothing begrudged. Sallie Jiko Tisdale is a dharma teacher at Dharma Rain Zen Center, in Portland, Oregon. Her most recent book is “Women of the Way: Discovering 2500 Years of Buddhist Wisdom.” Photograph by Neeta Madahar, “Sustenance 104” Courtesy Julie Saul Gallery, New York

As If There is Nothing to Lose

How giving comes from gratitude.

By Sallie Jiko Tisdale

Once I was young and poor—and generous. I shared an old house with several people and slept on the porch and owned nothing more valuable than my bicycle. I volunteered many hours every week at community organizations. One day, when I had only five dollars, I treated a friend to dinner, and afterward we laughed about my now total poverty. It was easy to give away what I had; I never doubted that the world would somehow provide for me in turn.

Now I have a house and a car and a savings account, and I am not so generous. I do give—my money, my time, my attention— but sometimes I give reluctantly, with a little worry. Sometimes I want a nicer house, a newer car. I wonder if I have enough money saved. I want more time to myself. It is not just a matter of youth and age. I have many more things now, and that means I have more things to lose.

When I had little, everything I had was important. If I found a sweater I liked at the Goodwill, it felt like my birthday. In a way, having nothing meant everything in the world was mine. Even a sandwich was cause for celebration, and nothing distracted me from enjoying it. Every gift was a delight, and I was grateful for everything I had.

Gratitude, the simple and profound feeling of being thankful, is the foundation of all generosity. I am generous when I believe that right now, right here, in this form and this place, I am myself being given what I need. Generosity requires that we relinquish something, and this is impossible if we are not glad for what we have. Otherwise the giving hand closes into a fist and won’t let go.

This generosity, arising from abundance, is natural. We see it in the world around us all the time. Haya Akegarasu loved spring. “Young grasses,” he wrote, “I can’t help it—I want to kiss you.” To him the spring grasses were great teachers, because they made a “whole effort” to simply live their lives. “Their growth is a long, wide tongue that covers the whole world,” he said. I see a fearless generosity in the flowers and trees, in the way birds sing out at dawn, in the steady drumming of the rain. As I grew older and found I had things to protect, I forgot. I completely forgot that I had always had enough in the first place. Now I am trying to learn this once again—total abundance, nothing begrudged.

Sallie Jiko Tisdale is a dharma teacher at Dharma Rain Zen Center, in Portland, Oregon. Her most recent book is “Women of the Way: Discovering 2500 Years of Buddhist Wisdom.”

Photograph by Neeta Madahar, “Sustenance 104” Courtesy Julie Saul Gallery, New York