Today is Colorado Gives Day. So what better time to discuss Giving than today? As you know, we have been discussing six perfections for the past couple of weeks. After Gratitude, this is my favorite topic. Let’s talk about another perfection—Giving in today’s session.
Giving is a virtuous mental intention to give. It can also be helping with bodily or speech actions with the mental intention to give. There are three types of giving: 1) giving material things; 2) giving Dharma or spirituality; 3) giving fearlessness.
If we have difficulty giving material things, it helps to think about the disadvantages of miserliness. Miserliness is a tight, uncomfortable mind, that leads to isolation. Giving on the other hand is a joyful mind that leads to abundant resources in the future. There is no point in clinging to our possessions because wealth acquires meaning only when it is given away or used for the benefit of others.
There are many benefits of generosity. When we give away material things, it reduces our attachment to the material world. According to a Canadian research study, generosity can reduce blood pressure, reduce depression, reduces stress, decreases anxiety, and more. Generosity also improves our relationship with the people around us. When we give, we are creating positive momentum and hope it catches on and other people carry on with that torch.
I saw an interesting research piece from the John Templeton Foundation on generosity. They found that people who give on their own accord, tend to be happier. Happy people tend to be more generous so it creates its own ecosystem. They also found that donating money releases the same neural pathways in our brains that are activated by other pleasure activities such as food, sex, etc. People tend to be more generous when they see other people giving. As Americans, we are the most generous nation on earth. We donate more than $500 billion per year. That is a staggering amount.
Giving also needs to have the right motivation. For example, if we give something expecting something in return it is not really giving. It is just bartering. Giving also should be without pride. If we give with pride that washes away the benefits of giving. Buddha said that having pride in our giving is like eating a feast of a meal with poison sprinkled on it. It does you no good.
Giving for the sake of giving is what we need to learn to practice. When we begin to do that, we do it out of contentment, and as a result, happiness follows.
And we have touched on this before but giving does not mean giving material things only. One can give our time, our skillsets, our compassion and care, our attention, and so forth. Giving away one’s skills and abilities without any thought of return is giving out of compassion. That is what true generosity looks like.
Why is generosity important you might ponder? Generosity by definition diminishes one’s ego. If we cultivate generosity, we will slowly take a stab at reducing our ego.
One thing to keep in mind is that we should only give away all of our possessions when the time is right. If we give away everything that we have, we won’t be able to function and help people in need for a long time. So one way to practice giving is to mentally dedicate all of our possessions for the benefit of others and then physically give them away when it is most appropriate. This is similar to nonprofit organizations that keep funds in the reserve and do not spend every donation they get right away.
The amount of merit we receive by giving also depends upon the nature of the recipient. If we give to spiritual causes or to our parents or to people who are sick and poor, we accumulate more merit.
The next type of giving is giving Dharma. When we teach someone spirituality with the right motivation, we are accumulating merits of giving Dharma. This is much more beneficial than giving material things because material things help someone in this lifetime but spirituality helps them in this lifetime as well as in future lives. If we are not able to teach another way to accumulate merits of giving Dharma is dedicating our virtues to peace and happiness of all living beings.
The last type of giving is giving fearlessness. To give fearlessness is to protect other living beings from fear or danger. This can come in many forms. For example, if we rescue someone from a fire, or natural disaster, or protect them from physical violence, this is all types of giving fearlessness. Our first responders who do this on a daily basis are accumulating tremendous amounts of merit. If this is not possible for us to do, we can still accumulate merits of giving fearlessness by praying for those in danger.
I hope this inspires you to practice giving on a regular basis and not just one day a year!