Dear Friends,
This week Annie will facilitate, and we will recite the Five Mindfulness Trainings. We will focus our discussion on the Second Mindfulness Training, True Happiness.
True Happiness
Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, I am committed to practicing generosity in my thinking, speaking, and acting. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others; and I will share my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.
I will practice looking deeply to see that the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from my own happiness and suffering; that true happiness is not possible without understanding and compassion; and that running after wealth, fame, power and sensual pleasures can bring much suffering and despair.
I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude and not on external conditions, and that I can live happily in the present moment simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy. I am committed to practicing Right Livelihood so that I can help reduce the suffering of living beings on Earth and reverse the process of global warming.
At the end of each sangha, we ask for dāna. Dāna is a Pali word that (according to Wiki) “connotes the virtue of generosity, charity or giving of alms”. Looking deeply into the second mindfulness training, we can see that the reason we practice dāna is because we understand the truth of interbeing. Interbeing reminds us that we are interdependent – you might say we are part of the same family. We wouldn’t exploit, oppress, or steal from our own family, and we wouldn’t hoard money when our family was suffering. This training simply reminds us of this truth.
How do we do practice this training?
There’s a wonderful koan from the eight century in China, about a young woman – Lingzhao – and her father Layman Pang. Lingzhao and her father traveled around China for many years learning and practicing Zen. Her story goes like this:
One day, Layman Pang and his daughter, Lingzhao, were out selling bamboo baskets. Coming down off a bridge, the Layman stumbled and fell. When Lingzhao saw this, she ran to her father’s side and threw herself to the ground.
“What are you doing?” cried the Layman,
“I saw you fall so I’m helping,” replied Lingzhao.
“Luckily no one was looking,” remarked the Layman.
What can this story tell us about generosity? When I reflect on this story, I get a certain feeling about generosity/helping – one that is spontaneous and immediate, and one that doesn’t separate the helper from the one being helped. Often when we are the giver in a situation, the person receiving our generosity is made to feel they are the “needy ones”. In our story, Lingzhao’s unselfconscious action highlights their sameness and allows the Layman to maintain his dignity.
There is also a sense of playfulness and intimacy in the “helping.” Lingzhao doesn’t appear to have any confusion, guilt or shame about being in the role of the helper. Instead she immediately joins her father without any rumination. I have heard Roshi Joan Halifax define compassion as “coming along side.” This is what Lingzhao does.
Years ago, a Buddhist nun (Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo) taught me how to work with my own material wealth. She said that feeling guilty about whatever I had was an obstacle to the practice of generosity. Yes, there were causes and conditions (karma) that had led to my material wealth, but those were in the past. What she emphasized was that I should never become complacent about the wealth. (I wrote a blog about this in 2016.)
Had Lingzhao been mired in guilt or shame, it might have prevented her from acting. We too can get caught in thinking and be unable to act in the generous ways that can reduce suffering. Conversely, being complacent puts us to sleep and we don’t notice that there are things we can do to help. In the Second Mindfulness Training, Thay reminds us how to walk the middle way when he writes simply “I will share my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.”
It’s impossible not to be a part of exploitation while living in the U.S. at this point in history. And it’s nearly impossible not to possess what should belong to others. The land I am sitting on right now was taken by force from the Piscataway nation. The monuments and many buildings in Washington D.C. were built by slaves. Immediate and intimate compassion and generosity, like Lingzhao’s helping, can guide our practice with all of it.
One concrete example of sharing material resources is Karen Pittleman, a young woman who received and then gave away her entire $3+ Million dollar inheritance. (Read more about Karen and see her books here and here.) She, like Thay, Tenzin Palmo, and Lingzhao, demonstrates how to be uncomfortable - not complacent – in order to reduce the suffering of living beings. She says:
White supremacy is in fact a system for the redistribution of wealth: it steals the labor, resources, and lives of Black people and other people of color and transfers that wealth to white people. And it requires an extraordinary amount of institutional violence to keep that system in place. While I am also committed to giving away my own money, philanthropy will never even scratch the surface of hundreds of years of the systemic redistribution of black wealth to white people. Only systemic change can do that.
In another interview, Karen says, about giving away her money:
Even if my family never gave me another cent, my opportunities and my future are defined by that privilege, from the ivy league degree I got debt-free to my connections and access to elite networks. I can never really give it all away. I can make a lifelong commitment to challenging the unjust distribution of wealth and redistributing the bulk of my inheritance. But it’s a tough, messy, lifelong process instead of a one-time dramatic moment.
On Monday, after our meditation period, we will read the Five Mindfulness Trainings together.
Then we will have time to share about the Second training, Lingzhao’s helping, and our own lives of generosity.
We will also sing together “In gratitude” which you can hear – lyrics are by Irene D'Auria:
In gratitude you have watered Seeds of love in me
In gratitude In gratitude I will water Seeds of love in someone too
I know you're there for me And I am so happy
And when you suffer some, please call and I will come.
Some questions we might consider are:
· How do we resonate with Lingzhao’s helping? What does it bring up for us?
· In what ways do I feel guilt or shame about my material resources? In what ways do they make us feel safe?
· How do we or might we practice sharing our time, energy, and material resources with those in need? How might I “come along side” others in need and allow them to maintain their dignity?
· How can we support each other in remembering that material resources are not the source of our happiness?