Start by Giving

When the Buddha taught, he very rarely started with meditation. He most often started with generosity, the willingness to give, seeing the benefits of giving. There are people in his time who denied that giving had any virtue. Either you gave because outside forces forced you to—in which case there wasn’t any virtue on your part—or because whoever might receive your gifts was going to be annihilated anyhow at death, so nothing really much was accomplished.

But right view for him starts out with: “There is what is given,” the meaning being that you do have the choice to give or not to give, and that’s a sign of your virtue that you do give, that you’re willing to share, and that it will have long-term benefits. When you come with an attitude of giving and you have some experience in giving, then you’re coming to the meditation with the right frame of mind.

To get something out of this, you first have to give. You give your time, give your energy to exercise what mindfulness and alertness you have so that they can get stronger. Then the results will come. All too many people say, “I don’t want to meditate until I know what I’m going to get out of it.” But you don’t really know how you can benefit until you give it a try. You commit, then you reflect.

So have the attitude that you come to meditation to give. Give your time, give your energy, give your full attention to what you’re doing. The goodness you want to see in the world has to come from within you. If people were not willing to see the goodness of giving, the Buddha didn’t really want to teach them.

As he said, if you’re stingy—and this meant stingy not only with material things, but also with your knowledge, with your help—if you’re stingy, it’s impossible to get even into right concentration, much less any of the noble attainments. So you to have a generous and open heart, a large heart, thinking of the needs of other beings, the needs of other people, and how you might help.

If you wait for other people to be good to you—if the whole world were like that—what would happen? Everything would shut down. It’s because people are willing to give first that we have a society that’s livable. When they stop having that attitude, that’s what makes society unlivable. So do your best to make this a livable place.

I’ve seen people talk themselves into being narrow-minded and stingy. It takes a fair amount of talking. It basically comes down to the thought that they don’t see any good in other people, so why should they be good to them? But if you want to see the goodness in other people, you first have to open up and start being good to them. That’s when their goodness will show itself, and the world will become a better place to live in. Your meditation will go better as well. When you’re trying to meditate, it’s good to have a large heart rather than a small heart, because a large heart has the opportunity to really blossom.