This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Giving Attention

One of the central aspects of doing mindfulness practice, practicing meditation, is attention. And there's a wonderful verb, an activity associated with attention that I just really love, that we use in common English. We say sometimes "giving attention." We give attention to something.

And so I think that for much of my life, I just took that expression to mean the same as "pay attention," which seems like a strange concept to me. But to "give attention" has the idea of giving, of generosity, an offering that we make. What if your attention was a worthy gift? What if attention is an act of generosity that we do with attention to ourselves?

Attention is so precious, so valuable, that when we offer it to ourselves, offer it to the world, it has some of the wonderful rebound effects of generosity. When we're generous, when you're a host for someone, part of the delight of it is the delightful giving away, or putting aside some kind of self-preoccupation, self-concern.

If the Dalai Lama came to your house for tea, and you knew he was coming, you would probably try to be a good host. If you had a favorite chair, your chair, you would probably let the Dalai Lama sit in that chair. And if you had just the last of your favorite tea that you want to keep for a special occasion for yourself, but the Dalai Lama comes, "Here, have my best tea." There's a certain kind of putting aside self-concern, self-preoccupation, at the same time as asserting oneself in a certain wonderful way in giving, in an act of generosity. When we bring attention to ourselves or bring attention to anything.

So perhaps for today, when we sit to meditate, you might want to consider a way of engaging your attention that feels more like a gift than a debt that you're paying for "paying attention." More like an act of generosity that's freeing, and giving: "Here, have this." And it just feels so good to let go, to open up. Just, "Here, have this. Here, have this attention." And then see what happens. Then do it again, and do it again. Generous with your attention.

So sitting in an alert posture... and perhaps with your eyes closed or not. You can allow for a gentling of your inner life. A calming of your body. A calming of your mind.

And every moment that you are attentive, for anything you're doing while you're meditating, the attention part of it, see if that can be a giving, a generosity.

So in attending to taking a few deep breaths at the beginning, an act of generosity to yourself to feel, be present for those deep breaths. If you relax on the exhale, being present for the relaxation is the gift.

Letting your breathing return to normal. And continuing to maybe relax on the exhale, where the attention given to relax, and the attention given to feel the relaxation are gifts you give yourself.

And then to settle into your breathing. Settle into the breathing body, your body that's breathing. And in what way can you let it be a gift, an act of generosity, to offer attention to this body that's breathing? The breathing body has been serving you for years and years, keeping you alive. And now you offer your attention back.

A generosity that can't be a duty, can't be a strain, can't be forceful or aggressive. An attention that feels generous, open, allowing, respectful. Giving attention, offering attention, moment by moment, just now, to what's here.

And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, consider, imagine different ways to offer your attention to others, to give the gift of attention to other people. Where your attention is attentive, not demanding or expecting. Where your attention is available, not assertive. Where attention is friendly, not mistrustful. Where the default is with a generous attention, an offering to be present for people as they are. Carrying with it a feeling of being generous, trusting, available to discover what is here.

And in doing so, may we see people more fully. See them in ways that engender our goodwill, our care, maybe even our love. And may it be that this practice of mindfulness that we do supports us in offering the gifts of goodwill, safety, peace, and freedom to others.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Giving, Gift, and Generosity

Good morning, everyone. I'm going to ask first, is it loud enough here for you people at IMC? And I wonder if the volume is high enough for people online.

For those of you who came in person, thank you. I'm hoping that this is the beginning of a direction where we start feeling that we can be more open and come together in community more often. It's a wonderful thing to practice together. It looks like the sound is good and loud enough online. Thank you.

Today I'd like to talk about one of the core virtues, or core practices and attitudes, and realizations of Buddhism, and that is generosity. In talking about generosity, I would like to talk about it in three areas: that of giving, that of the gift, and that of generosity.

If we begin with giving, there are many ways of giving. We can give freely, and we can give expectingly, or demandingly, or obligatorily. There's a whole range of giving. But giving in all its forms is really integral to how human beings are and how we live. Our societies, our communities, our families are often held together in a network of giving. Without people giving of themselves, giving support, there would probably be very little real community and connection anywhere we go.

I was really struck as I was raising children here in Redwood City that my kids participated in all kinds of sports—soccer, baseball mostly, basketball. There was a whole bunch of parents who volunteered their time to be coaches, to be managers of the teams, to set things up, and all kinds of things. I was struck that this was a really important and valuable part of my children's upbringing, to be able to be part of the community in this way. Both to be able to play and have fun and be with other kids, but also they felt connected to the Redwood City community of parents and the wider community, like they were part of something bigger than just our family. It wouldn't have happened unless all these adults had volunteered their time. They gave of themselves, and they knitted the community together in certain ways.

Occasionally it happens, as it did happen to me when I started being a new parent, I had the thought: "What? My parents did this for me?" My parents sacrificed this much, or gave so much of themselves for me. I had no idea that that's how it worked! I never thought about it. I just took my parents for granted. I don't have memories of when I was a baby, so I just didn't think about it. But as a new parent, certainly it was a lot of work, a lot of demands, up all night sometimes with the kids waking up in the night and feeding, and this and that. When they were babies and could do almost nothing for themselves, it just felt for the most part very natural to give time and effort and all this.

I didn't think of myself as being generous, but I did feel, when I wasn't too tired, the delight in it. Part of the delight was the way in which, hopefully in a healthy way, my needs became unimportant. It didn't matter if I was sleepy or tired the next day. It didn't matter if I wasn't thinking about the fact that I hadn't showered in three days. It didn't matter that I was still in my pajamas at 1:00 PM because there hadn't been any time to do anything else. All these things that ordinarily I would have been self-conscious about, or had ideas about, they fell away. In the early period of babyhood, it felt really freeing to have this sense of self-concern drop away so fully and completely.

Then as the children could do more for themselves, it felt natural enough to become more important again, that my situation became something to care for and take care of. That grew over time, and now they're not even home anymore, so then it's a whole different story of how to be. But without someone giving themselves to babies, babies don't grow up very well. The feeling that there are people there caring, attending to them, is formative. Even if they don't remember their babyhood, there are all kinds of ways in which, if it goes well, they feel safe in this world. They feel belonging in this world that they're not going to feel if they repeatedly feel abandoned and no one was there to care for them. This healthy growth of people depends a lot on giving. It's something you could almost not pay someone enough to do, because it has to be more than just a job; I think it has to be a love, a care that's infused in the giving.

Society depends on it to the greatest extent. Here in the United States, there's a culture of nonprofit giving. Maybe it arises out of the religious scene here in this country, where there's an understood way of giving to nonprofits, to churches, to causes. That is kind of absent in Europe. People in Europe are certainly generous, but they don't have the same relationship to organizations like this, partly because the governments fill in and take care of people in a much different, more extensive way than here in this country. So here, often we have to do it because the government is not filling in or expected to do certain things.

In the early '70s, I read an anthropological study of a community or tribe in the Philippines that lived somewhat removed from modern society. They were a dream culture, apparently. One of the central features of their community was focusing on dreams. They would wake up in the morning and tell their family about their dreams. One of the customs they had was that if someone had a bad dream, or a dream where the relationship with someone in the village was strained or difficult, when they woke up in the morning, they would go give that person in the village a gift.

What a phenomenal thing to do! I don't know what the unconscious is doing when it shows a difficult relationship in a dream, but the fact that they would respond to that with a gift... What does that do to this community? What does that do to the relationships and how people relate to each other?

I recently talked to someone who had a very difficult landlord. The landlord seemed to just be unreasonable in demands and expectations. They asked, "What should I do when I go back? I've been away for a while." I didn't know what to say exactly, except the one thing that is kind of a Buddhist thing to say. I said, "When you go back, bring a gift for your landlord." The person was a little bit shocked: "What? This person is so difficult!" But yeah, bring a gift. Maybe bake some cookies or buy something before you go, and just bring it and say, "I was thinking about you on my retreat, and I just wanted to bring you a gift." I've offered this advice to other people who had difficult in-laws. It turns out that it's a leavening, a kind of tenderizing. Something changes when we bring gifts that sometimes can't happen if we don't. People lower their guard somehow, or they soften. There's no guarantee, of course, but the emphasis I want to make here is that giving is a huge part of our lives, and for me at least, I think I underappreciated growing up; I didn't understand the extent of it.

If giving is in the network of our human connections, one of the features of that is the gift that's given. There are many gifts that can be given: giving of our time, giving of our services, giving of material goods, giving of money. There's giving of smiles; giving smiles is a wonderful thing to do. That's a little hard with these masks on. Sometimes I want people to see me smile because I just want them to feel my appreciation and delight in seeing them and being with them. I realized what a wonderful thing it is to communicate delight and appreciation. That's harder with these masks on. I hadn't thought about it too much; I just was smiling because I was happy. Now I want to be able to—it's almost like a communication that's being gifted.

What's interesting about the gift in Indian Buddhism is the word for gift and giving is dāna^[1]. The Buddha used the word dāna in ways that were somewhat equivalent to, but different from, the early Indian idea of sacrifice, which is a different word. He used it in similar ways. I'll give you one example. In some of the religions of his time, they would make sacrifices to the gods; that was a big part of the sacrifice. Brahmā^[2] was one of the great gods. The Buddha said that your parents and your family, especially your parents, are Brahmā.

Here he's redefining what a god is, from some invisible god up in the heavens, to people who are tangible in this world. Your parents, they're your Brahmā, they're your god. And then he said, give gifts to them. So rather than giving an offering or sacrifice to Brahmā in heaven, the Buddha was redefining the notion of giving to what's happening in our immediate experienced world, our social world here. We might not think very much of this, but I think in the ancient world, it was a big change. The central focus of some people's religious life was all these elaborate rituals of sacrifice for the gods. The Buddha was changing it so that religious giving was not a sacrifice to invisible gods, but giving generously to people who were known and here in their society.

So the word dāna has this religious quality in Buddhism. It's a gift which somehow carries spirituality in it. Exactly how it carries spirituality, each of us can find out for ourselves, but it has a heightened value. The gift of dāna, unlike other words for giving in Pali, often has a religious nature to it. We see that in lists of things that you can give. You can give your ethics, your virtue. Living by the precepts is the gift of ethics or virtue. A gift of safety. You can give your kindness. You can give material goods, possessions. You can give the gift of fearlessness, so that people don't have any reason to fear you. These different kinds of things that you can give are pointing back to some quality that we have inside.

So there is the giving, and there is the gift. Different gifts have different values. This is where it gets a little bit complicated, and often challenging for people in the modern West to appreciate some of the logic used in Buddhism for placing value on gifts. Part of the idea of the value of giving the gift is that gifts have an impact on the giver. We like to think we're altruistic, that we just give without any concern for ourselves. To have concern for ourselves might seem selfish, and we have to be on guard for that, I hope. But self-regard and self-care doesn't have to be selfish. One of the things the Buddha talked about was: give gifts that bring you joy. Bring gifts that are uplifting, that inspire you, because you benefit as well. The gift goes in both directions. You're both gifting someone else, but you're benefiting from your own gift. It's a gift to yourself as well.

For example, he encouraged people—remember this is the ancient world, 2,500 years ago in the Bronze Age—he said, "Give with your hands. Give directly." Please don't stop donating to organizations online, for sure, but something different happens when we give in person. I know someone who used this thing called Freecycle, where you post things you have available, and someone comes to your home, and you give it to them personally. This person said, "I could go and give it to Goodwill, but then it's impersonal. When I give it to someone directly who can use it, it just feels so much more inspiring and nicer. Afterwards, I remember this and feel, 'Oh, this is a good thing.'" That's very different than just giving to Goodwill.

If you give ten dollars to someone who clearly seems destitute and challenged, and you find out that the person uses that to buy alcohol... well, maybe it was still useful because the person felt someone cared for them, someone was attentive to them, and they weren't abandoned completely. But then you give ten dollars to someone else, say a teenager who's quite poor. With that ten dollars, they buy paper and pens so they can write their college essay to apply for college. With that essay, they get into college. Later they come to you and say, "By the way, you gave me that ten dollars. I bought paper and pens, and in my free time, I kept writing and rewriting that essay. I didn't have any paper at home. You helped me get into college. Without it, I wouldn't have gotten in." There's a different value in where we give in terms of our happiness, our inspiration, our delight.

I think some people really dislike this idea of putting value like that, because then sometimes there's a feeling that some poor people don't deserve our gifts, and we should only give to places where it's "wonderful" to give. You see this in some Buddhist cultures in Asia, and maybe here in this country too, where some Buddhist centers and temples are clearly over-the-top wealthy. People come with gifts to the temple, while on the sidewalk outside are people who are really destitute and impoverished, and people walk right past them to give to the temple. There is value in giving to people who are poor and have a great need.

How do we decide where to give? How do we decide what gifts to give? It is part of a considered, reflective life. I don't think there are any clear and obvious answers to the question. But the Buddha's idea that you give somewhat personally, so you're giving part of yourself in the process, and also that you give in a way that inspires you and brings you delight and joy, is important. The Buddha also said, "Don't give harming others or harming yourself." That's an interesting guideline. Don't give in a way that harms yourself, or harms other people through giving. This is not a call for harmful self-sacrifice, just giving at all costs. Give in a way that you benefit from it. If you give in a miserly way, there's not so much benefit. If you give generously, there's a lot of benefit for yourself.

Then we go to the third thing today: generosity. Giving, gift, and generosity. You can give without it really being generous. But it's also possible to give with generosity. Generosity is this beautiful quality where things are given that you are not obligated to give. Giving can be obligatory, but generosity can never be obligatory. It's always giving more than is expected, more than is called for. It's an opening up to something that's given freely, an inspiration, a delight, an opening up and letting go. Giving in a nice way, from a good heart, a healthy mind. "I want to do this. This is great. This doesn't harm me. This benefits the person or brings joy and delight." It just feels so warm-hearted and delightful to do this thing.

There was a time when I was younger, when I started the practice of generosity and giving, that I would give—not miserly exactly—but I would give while being a little bit tight and closed because I didn't feel like I should enjoy it. I felt that if I felt good for doing it, that somehow diminished the giving. I've learned since then that this is actually the opposite. The more delight I have in giving, the more other people can feel it's really given freely and generously. I've certainly felt it that way. I've received things from people where I felt that they wanted to do it, but it was a challenge and struggle for them, and then it was a struggle for me to really appreciate it. But then I've had people just give so fully and clearly offered. I have a whole different feeling for it. "Oh, that's so good." Then I can enjoy it more and take it in.

One of the features of the word dāna in the Buddhist sense—religious, spiritual giving—is that it's freely given. Maybe that's what generosity means. It's freely offered with no expectation of exchange, but perhaps with an expectation that this is healthy and good for everyone involved, including oneself. That somehow it feeds the good qualities, it nurtures the best qualities of our heart. Being generous supports generosity in ourselves. If generosity feels like a warm-hearted offering, opening, and letting go, then we benefit.

We see this a little bit with the Pali word for generosity. The Pali word is cāga^[3]. The first meaning in the dictionary is not generosity, but "letting go." The second definition has to do with generosity. It makes some sense; when you give something, you're also letting it go. Rather than calling it letting go, we could use language like "giving up" or "giving over," because then it has the word "giving" in it. Cāga has both that meaning: to renounce something and being generous. How this becomes beautiful is that when the letting go, the giving up, is so freely and unrestrainedly given, it feeds a lightness, an openness, a softness, a warmth to ourselves. Our heart begins to sing because of the letting go and the freedom. Letting go is not supposed to diminish us, but to enhance beautiful qualities within.

There are two fables from the ancient Indian tradition. In Buddhism traditionally, there are these ideas that you make a lot of merit, make good karma for yourself, if you give. There were these two people who were friends, and they wanted to acquire lots of good merit for themselves, build up their store of merit. So they decided, "Why don't we just give back and forth? I'll give you something, then you give it to me, and I'll give it to you." When they died, they were reborn as poisoned wells. They were poisoning each other doing that, rather than doing something really good.

Then there's a story of a monk who had been given a golden begging bowl. He was going to go to sleep one time in a grove of trees, and he noticed a thief was lurking behind the trees, seemingly waiting for him to fall asleep so he could come and steal the bowl. So the monk sat up and said, "Hey, come over here," and he handed him the bowl. "Here, this is for you. You can have it." The guy was so happy he got the golden bowl. He ran off and didn't have to steal it. The next morning he came back to the monk and said, "I've never known anyone to give so freely and not be attached to what they have. You were so open-handed in how you gave it to me, without attachment to this wealth. How did you manage to do that?" Then the thief became the monk's student^[4], and they lived happily ever after, I guess. [Laughter]

These are fables, but they point to something. This monk being able to give so generously was inspiring for the thief, but the way Buddhism understands the ecology of the heart and mind, the monk was also benefiting. Something was opening and freeing and being supported in the person who was giving as well.

One of the ways this is discussed in Buddhism is that one of the purposes of giving, when it's done well and generously, is that it beautifies the mind. Isn't that great? If you're selfish, but you realize you can't be selfish, so you give up your selfishness so that you can give freely, you get this benefit of a beautiful mind. It's a strange logic, right? But this idea that if you give cleanly, openly, and freely, it does something for us. The reason to emphasize that is that it's good to be available for the nourishment, support, and benefit that comes internally when we do good things. We count. We're important as well. Allowing ourselves to benefit, to grow in the Dharma, to grow in good qualities and skillful qualities, to grow in wholesomeness, is one of the great things to do in human life. It's how we mature as an adult, as a practitioner. You mature more if you allow yourself to feel, to be present for the benefits, present for how things shift internally in a good direction.

If you give in a miserly way, maybe there's not that warmth, nourishment, and wholesomeness inside. But if you give freely and openly, something inside benefits. What makes it spiritual in Buddhism, I propose, is that generosity is offered freely and openly. It's offered wisely, with some attention to the consequence of giving, who you're giving to and why, where it's inspiring, and it's giving that supports the growth of wholesome, beneficial, beautiful qualities of mind and heart for yourself and for others.

The protection that provides from selfishness, when you're concerned with beautifying your mind, is that selfishness "uglifies" the mind. It sullies the mind to be selfish. As we get a sense of this beautiful, open clarity, the luminosity of the heart and mind, the warmth, the glow, you'll feel that selfishness contracts it and clouds it over. There is this wonderful way that attending to the beauty of your own inner life supports greater and greater freedom. When you're going to sleep in a grove of trees with your golden bowl next to you, and someone clearly wants it, maybe it's easy for you to let them have it, to give it to them. One of the gifts of that is that the person doesn't get the bad karma of stealing. You save them from that karma by giving it first.

Giving, gift, and generosity. The word for generosity also means to let go, to renounce. It's a very special meaning in Buddhism, a very special part of the deep letting go of liberation.

Finally, I'd like to say that this idea of giving is also a practice in Buddhism. What that means is that sometimes it's useful to give even when you don't feel like it, because it can be a mirror to understand ourselves better. To understand where we're holding on, where we're afraid, where we're calculating in all kinds of ways about why we should give and how we should give. To give where it feels difficult, to stretch in order to learn more about ourselves. To learn what it's like to let go, and to trust what we're doing.

There are all kinds of ways we can practice generosity. You can practice generosity driving a car, where your practice is, no matter what, you always give the other person the right of way. It's a kind of generosity. You never force yourself, even if it seems like it's your right. You could practice it that way.

It could be that you're in the supermarket, and the question is, which checkout line do you stand in? Normally you might calculate which one is going to go fastest and shortest for me. You see one up ahead, and you see someone else is heading there too. You're slightly ahead, so clearly you can get there first. What's the generous thing to do? Most people are eager to get through those lines. You hold back and let the person have it, and find another one. These are simple things to do, maybe, but you do it as a practice. Doing it as a practice means you do it so you can study yourself and learn what's going on, stretch something, and discover how you're challenged by it. And see, is it really necessary, what you're holding onto?

Another nice practice is to take a significant amount of cash with you. I don't know if this works so well anymore; our society is changing so much. But it worked better before when it was much more of a cash economy. Carry twenty or fifty dollars cash or something, and then have the practice of studying as you go through your day someone you can give it to. Someone you don't know. You look for someone you can give it to, someone where it just seems like, "Okay, this person I think I'll give it to." Then see what comes up. Maybe you never give it, but a lot came up, and you learned a lot about yourself in the process. Or maybe you do give it, and you learn some things. Maybe you learn that it was a mistake, but it is a practice to do as well. It's a practice that supports the exploration of the beautiful possibilities of giving, of the gift, of beautifying the mind. The most profound reason in Buddhism to give is to discover how to be free, not to be clinging to anything.

So giving, gift, and generosity are three topics that are well worth reflecting on, living with, and focusing on as part of the wider world of practicing mindfulness. So thank you.

Coincidentally, Nancy came up to me before this talk and mentioned there's an opportunity for some people to do something generous here at IMC. She was going to ask for some volunteers. Do you need to use the mic? Let's get the mic so the people online can also hear, otherwise they're going to be curious.

Nancy: Thank you. If I could get five or six people to help... I think the battery is low, is the green light on? To help outside to pick up trash and sweep and do a little weeding for like 15 minutes, I think we could get a lot done. You can meet me just out in the parking lot, just out the back door would be great, when you get your shoes on. I also have gloves for picking up trash.

Gil: Great, so thank you all. I wish you all well. May the world where giver, gift, and receiver are all interpenetrating each other, all mutual, all kind of disappear into each other. Can we really tell who is the giver, what is the gift, and who is the receiver? So thank you.