Awakening the Buddha Within _ Eight Steps to Enlightenment - Lama Surya Das [95]
We all need to consider how our often exploitive short-term gains and economic policies contribute to larger global issues; we need to find ways to help our communities and countries develop policies that protect global resources and work toward equitable distribution of wealth. When the Dalai Lama had a private meeting with the American president he said to him, “You are the most powerful man in the world. Every decision you make should be motivated by compassion.” In our daily actions we all face a similar challenge.
Using up fewer natural resources and recycling more consistently may seem insignificant, but this attention to detail is how we start to make the world a safer place: safer for us, safer for all, now and in the times to come. When we can bring more of our spiritual beliefs into the way we live, then we will become responsible guardians and planetary stewards.
Training Ourselves in Generosity
The Buddha didn’t only deliver negative edicts such as “Don’t steal.” He also exhorted his friends and followers to let go, give, love, rejoice in everyday life, and share. He said, “Giving brings happiness at every stage of its expression. We experience joy in forming the intention to be generous; we experience joy in the actual act of giving something; and we experience joy in remembering the fact that we have given.”
A classic teaching tale relates how the Buddha once counseled a wealthy householder. The man’s problem was that he just could not give or even share any of his wealth or possessions. This was a clear-cut metaphor for his inability to “let go” in any area of his life. In this teaching tale, as the Buddha shows the stingy householder how to train himself from the outside in, the Buddha appears to be an early and intuitive expert in the benefits of constructive behavior modification.
Buddha instructed the rich householder to begin by thinking of his two hands—right and left—as being separate and disconnected; then he told him to practice generosity by taking a coin in his right hand and giving it to his left. Once the householder learned to part with a small coin, from one pocket to another, from one hand to another, the Buddha told him to experiment with larger sums of money. Eventually the man began to cultivate letting go, generosity, and nonattachment. As he became accustomed to parting with the money, the Buddha told him to soften his hardened heart and better use his riches by making gifts—first small, then larger—of his money and possessions to family members, then to friends, and finally to beggars and strangers. Through this practice of dana—giving—this man became much happier, freer, more content, and beloved by all.
Don’t we all need some concrete form of retraining so we may learn to be more generous and let go more gracefully? We all—each of us without exception—have so much to give, if we only knew it! We can make gifts of kindness, prayers, support, time, and empathy; we can give to friends, family, strangers, and even to the earth itself. We can train ourselves to become more yielding, equanimous, and flexible, giving up our rigid stances and fixed ideas. Each act of giving is a good deed that will be carried with you as part of your good karma. We can’t take our wealth, possessions, or friends with us beyond the grave, but we can ride good karma as far as we can imagine and even further. Give now; use your wealth, talent, and energy for the greater good, and it shall indeed follow you into the afterlife.
Opening Up to the Heart-mind
That Is Free from Craving
The instruction to “refrain from stealing,” of course, reaches far deeper, and is ultimately connected to the desireless natural heart-mind and the utter peace of nirvana. It’s a continuum: We begin by not taking more than our share, and eventually that can evolve into an attitude of profound letting go and letting