Reinvest Your Noble Treasures

Years back, there was a teacher in another Buddhist tradition who wrote a book criticizing spiritual materialism—the idea that you would practice in order to gain something. It’s worth noting that this teacher belonged to a tradition where students were expected to sacrifice everything for their teachers, even their sense of right and wrong.

So it’s no surprise that his teaching was at odds with what the Buddha actually taught. The Buddha would explicitly speak in terms of the treasures you gain as part of the practice, the rewards that come from giving, from following the precepts, from meditation. You give up things, but you get something in return.

There’s a passage on generosity that discusses the different motivations for giving and the rewards that come from those different motivations. The lowest is, “I’ll get this back, perhaps with interest.” That gets you to the heaven of the Four Great Kings.

Then, there are higher motivations: “Giving is good.” Or, “It’s not right that I have more than enough and other people don’t have enough.” Or because “It makes the mind serene.” You think less and less in terms of material rewards, but you still get rewards—you go to higher levels of heaven when you pass away. Even when giving is just an ornament of the mind, without any thought of any return, you reach the level of non-return. That’s a big reward.

There’s a famous story in the Buddhist tradition about Vessantara, the king who gives up the rain-giving elephant, gives up a few other amazing things, and the people in his kingdom are upset with him, so they drive him out. So he goes out in the forest with just his wife and his children.

He made a vow that if anyone asked him for anything, he would give it up. That’s why he gave up the rain-giving elephant. While he’s in the forest, someone comes and asks for his children, and the person asking for them is pretty cruel. So there’s a heart-rending scene where he and his wife give their children to this brahman who’s going to mistreat them.

Indra sees this and is concerned that Vessantara is going to be giving up his wife at some point. So he comes down as a brahman and asks for his wife. This is followed by another tearful scene where Vessantara finally gives up his wife. Then the brahman turns back into Indra and says, “Look, now that she’s mine, I’m going to place her in safekeeping with you. You can’t give her to anybody.”

Then, in the rest of the story, he gets everybody back—he gets his children back, he gets his kingdom back.

I’ve known some people who are disappointed by that last part. The first part of the story was a great account of self-sacrifice, of giving up, but then he gets rewarded and gets everything back. But given the principle of kamma, you can’t help that. When you give things up, you get things in return. The question is, what kind of trade do you want to make?

The ideal one is the one mentioned in the Theragatha. I think it’s Venerable Supiya who he says, “I’ll make a trade: the aging for the ageless, the burning for the unbound, the highest rest from the yoke.” In other words, you trade whatever good things you have, in terms of material things, in terms of qualities of the mind, for the sake of something that doesn’t change. Otherwise, you just make trades within samsara and we know what samsara is like. You keep wandering on, up and down, up and down, and you go nowhere. You have some pleasures and then they just disappear, like water slipping between your fingers. But if you aim at making a trade for the deathless—in other words, you trade your material comfort, the comfort of sitting comfortably, and instead you’re going to sit here meditating with your legs crossed for a long period of time, with pains, with difficulties, but you’re willing to give up that comfort for something that’s more solid: That kind of trade is worth it.

It’s an interesting principle that the more you try to hold on to, the more gets ripped from your grasp. The more you let go, the more you get rewarded. As Ajaan Lee says, the things you give away are really yours; the things you try to hold on to, the world is going to take back.

So when there’s giving, there’s gaining. Just make sure that you have the right attitude as to what are the best things to give, for what purpose. And don’t be afraid of gaining things in return. Just learn how to use them wisely.

You’ll gain extra things from being generous, from being virtuous. In cases like that, as Ajaan Fuang would say, invest that merit to make more merit. In other words, invest your profits. Don’t just eat them up. You’ve got the profits of conviction, of a sense of compunction, shame, virtue, learning, generosity, discernment. You gain these things. You can use them for all kinds of purposes.

There are a lot of people who use their discernment just to gain more money—that’s a real waste. Use your discernment to find the deathless. Reinvest your noble treasures. And you’ll find that giving is gaining.

There’s that famous story about Luang Puu Dune visiting Ajaan Suwat one time at his cave temple in northeastern Thailand. He spent a couple of days in seclusion and then came out. Before he left, he gave a Dhamma talk. Part of the Dhamma talk was that the things of the world come in pairs, but the Dhamma is one thing clear through. He didn’t say what that one thing was, but I think he was referring to the fact that every stage of the practice is giving—you give up things, you give up your preferences in terms of what kind of precepts you’d like to break and what kind of precepts you don’t care about. Anything that would go against the precepts, you give it up. You give up your defilements. But you gain at the same time. That’s what makes it one thing clear through. The giving is gaining. It’s just a matter of asking yourself, “What do you really want to gain? What kind of giving would give the best results?”

Think of that phrase: You’re making a trade: the aging for the ageless, the burning for the unbound. That’s probably the best trade there is.