Generosity; Against The Stream: A Buddhist Manual for Spiritual Revolutionaries
“Generosity is revolutionary, counter-instinctual. Our survival instinct is to care only for ourselves and our loved ones. But we can transform our relationship to that survival instinct by constantly asking ourselves, ‘How can I use my life’s energy to benefit all living beings?” - Noah Levine
Fundamentals of the Spiritual Revolution
PART TWO: Boot Camp
You can read Part 1, 2 & 3 of Chapter 1, AGAINST THE STREAM: BASIC TRAINING here.
So far, I have mostly been talking about the internal rebellion of the traditional Buddhist training in wisdom and compassion. But meditation is only the preparation for the external revolution. The point of our spiritual practice has to be more than just personal happiness. We must address the welfare of all living beings. The world as it is now gives very little support to such endeavors. Therefore, an external revolution is the next step on the path to freedom. We must now subvert and rebel against both the internal and external forces of greed, hatred, and delusion. I must stress the fact that, although the internal training is insufficient on its own, we cannot skip it if we wish the external revolution to take root. We could look at the whole internal/external package as a rebellion from the inside out, but perhaps it would be more true to acknowledge that both internal and external transformation must take place simultaneously.
THE HEART OF THE REVOLUTION
The Buddha described the path that leads to freedom as the liberation of the heart, which is love. In Buddhism the words heart and mind tend to be interchangeable. It is said that some Buddhist masters will point to their chest when talking about the mind. The mind is not only the brain, as we Westerners tend to think of it; it is also the heart-mind, or that which in our consciousness experiences both thoughts and emotions.
“The Buddha implied that this path of love goes against the stream. It is a revolutionary act to overcome the forces of greed, hatred, and delusion through the cultivation of their opposites: generosity, compassion, and understanding. ”
Out of hundreds of meditation practices that the Buddha taught, he said that the most direct path to freeing the heart was the cultivation of loving-kindness, compassion, equanimity, and sympathetic joy. The experience of these emotions is our most effective means of dispelling the pervasive feeling that most of us have of isolation and separation. Loving-kindness and its kindred emotions allow us to enter into a divine abode, as it were; we experience a pleasant abiding of interconnection and non-separateness. Compassion and connectedness and their ilk are natural qualities within our own heart-mind. However, they have been buried beneath the survival mechanisms of attachment and aversion. The Buddha offers us meditative tools to uncover the heart’s truest nature. These tools reveal a way of being in this world of suffering and oppression with a clear-eyed understanding of suffering, its causes, and the path that leads to the end of suffering. Let’s look at these practices in more detail—the Buddha’s teachings about generosity, compassion, loving-kindness, appreciation, and equanimity.
Generosity
Taking the rebellion from the meditation cushion to all aspects of our lives is the task and intention of the true spiritual revolutionary. It is said that the first teaching that the Buddha gave to people he met on his travels through towns and villages was the importance of generosity.
“It’s a good first teaching for all of us: in the beginning of spiritual practice it is our goal to break through our internal greed and self-centeredness by external acts of giving. Generosity takes many different forms and can originate in many different motivations and intentions. ”
Let’s start with the practice of letting go of our self-centered greed and attachment by keeping in mind what other people need. Buddha said that if we knew the importance of generosity, we would never let a single meal go by without sharing it with someone who is in need. On this planet where tens of thousands of people starve to death daily, this is not a hypothetical suggestion. Generosity is revolutionary. It was so 2,500 years ago in the time of the Buddha, and it may be even more so now. Most of the time people are so self-centered, so involved with themselves, that they don’t stop to think how they can help others. To the masses, generosity is counter instinctual. If you don’t already understand this to be true, just look at the current situation in the world, and review human history. Our confused and misguided survival instinct is to care only for ourselves and our loved ones. But here in the industrialized West, we’ve taken survival to the extreme of indulgence. To facilitate a change and to transform our relationship to that instinct, we need to constantly reflect on how we can help others.
“We need to ask ourselves, ‘How can I use my life’s energy to benefit all living beings?’ ”
Meditation is one of the keys to unlocking the natural generosity of the heart. Underneath the greedy and selfish thoughts and feelings of the human condition lies a pure desire to help. We see this in our mindfulness practice: when we let go, there is a natural acceptance and feeling of care. But we cannot wait till there is no longer any attachment or fear to act. The act of giving is one of the ways to uncover the natural generosity that has been hidden by the fear and insecurity of greed. Each act of giving is a rebellion against selfishness. Each act of giving gets us closer to our true nature of generosity. We can see the power of generosity in the Buddha’s life. When the Buddha was enlightened, he didn’t just hang around and cling to his freedom. Released from the suffering of attachment and aversion, he dedicated the rest of his life to serving the spiritual needs of the people. While generosity is the natural response of the enlightened mind, as in the case of the Buddha, it is also the path to enlightenment itself. We are called to practice generosity even when we feel selfish. We are called to give even when we are more worried about ourselves than others. This points to the truth that our feeling of separateness is based in ignorance. Ultimately we are all deeply interconnected and dependent on one another. Generosity is not only good for others; it is good for all, including oneself. It has been my experience that rebelling against the forces of attachment within my own heart and mind has been the most revolutionary thing I’ve ever done. And it’s a battle that I continue to wage, one day—or rather one moment—at a time. And though such rebellion is internal, it has external consequences. As Gandhi suggested, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
“If we want starvation and suffering to end, we must end greed and attachment within our own minds. If we do this inner revolutionary work ourselves, we can make a difference. In fact, it’s the most important thing we can do for all beings. In simple ways it affects others. ”
When we are less attached, we are more generous; and when we practice generosity, we send out positive reverberations (or at the very least send out fewer negative reverberations). Rather than adding to the suffering of the world, we manage to alleviate some of it.
Noah Levine Dharma Talk: Generosity
Against the Stream is more than a just another book about Buddhist meditation. It is a manifesto and field guide for the front lines of the revolution. It is the culmination of almost two decades of meditative dissonance from the next generation of Buddhists in the West. This is a call to awakening for the sleeping masses.
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