Giving, Virtue, Cultivation: Begin with the Hand

2.5 Giving, Virtue, Cultivation: Begin with the Hand

Part Two has asked its way down the road—why give, who to give to, what comes right now, whether to offer to the individual or the Saṅgha—and every question has been about this one thing, giving. But giving, within the whole of the Buddha's teaching, does not stand alone.

The Buddha once gathered the whole of "doing the works of merit" into one very simple outline:

"Bhikkhus, there are these three bases of meritorious activity. Which three? The base of meritorious activity consisting of giving, the base of meritorious activity consisting of virtue, the base of meritorious activity consisting of cultivation."

The deeds that give rise to merit come to three classes in all—giving, virtue, cultivating the mind.

The sūtras of the Chinese canon render these three as "giving-action, impartial-action, reflection-action." "Impartial-action" is virtue—and the rendering is a telling one: it does not present virtue as a string of prohibitions, "not this, not that," but as a positive practice of treating all people impartially, favoring none and harming none. "Reflection-action" is cultivating the mind—settling down, and tending one's own mind.

Giving, virtue, cultivation. These three classes hold nearly every kind of work toward the good. And every time the Buddha lists the three, giving stands first.

First Does Not Mean Shallowest

It is easy to read this order as a ladder from shallow to deep—giving the shallowest, the entry level; virtue one rung up; cultivation the deepest, the final thing. Read that way, giving becomes the beginner's homework: practice deep enough, and you "graduate" to higher things.

That reading should be set down here.

Giving stands first not because it is shallowest, but because it is the door—the entrance to all three. Why it leads, there are four very solid reasons.

The first: it can be seen. Giving has an outward motion—the thing changes hands, the receiver takes it over, bystanders can see it, and you yourself remember it. Virtue is mostly a matter of "not doing" certain things, kept largely within the mind, showing little on the outside. Cultivation is wholly inside, where no one else can see it at all. Of the three, only giving can be seen, can be taught, can be demonstrated and answered on the spot. That makes it the fittest entrance—to someone newly come to the Dhamma, you can point at giving and say, "Look, do it like this," while virtue and cultivation he can only feel his way toward within his own mind.

The second: everyone can come in. Giving has no threshold. A bowl of rice, an old garment, a word of comfort—each is a gift; the poor have what the poor can give, the rich what the rich can give, at any time, in any place. Virtue can only be kept in full once the precepts have first been undertaken. Cultivation needs more still—a settled environment, someone to guide you, virtue laid underneath—and ordinary days do not always assemble such conditions. Of the three, giving has the lowest doorstep, the one anyone can step across. When the Buddha taught householders, He always began with giving—not because they were unworthy of learning virtue or concentration, but because giving requires no condition to be met first.

The third: it is the seed of the other two. This reason runs deepest. The mind you grow in giving flows in two directions. On one side, when you give without weighing "does this person deserve my gift," without secretly reckoning a return—that impartial, uncalculating mind is precisely the seed of virtue (treating all alike). On the other side, when time after time, at the moment of giving, you watch your own mind and filter out, layer by layer, the private wish for return, down to nothing but "giving so that the mind may be clean"—that work of rinsing your own motives is precisely the seed of cultivating the mind. So giving stands first because it is the spring of the other two: virtue and cultivation can both grow on a mind that is willing to give, and willing to attend to itself in the giving.

The fourth: when the Buddha taught, He always began with it. The Buddha's discourses to householders followed a fixed order—first giving, then virtue, then the heavens, then the danger in desires and the blessing of leaving them behind, and only at the last the four noble truths. Giving is always the first stop on that journey. Because it can be seen, and anyone can come in, it is the most natural first step for leading a person through the door.

Put the four reasons together, and you see it: giving's first place has nothing to do with "shallow" or "deep." It stands first because it is the door—the door that can be seen, the door anyone can enter, the door out of which virtue and cultivation grow, the door every course of teaching pushes open first.

The Three Are Done Together

If giving is the door, then what happens after you walk through?

It is not that "once you are inside, the door can be torn down." Giving, virtue, cultivation are not a ladder where you finish one and move on to the next; they are done together.

Which brings us to the most important sentence of this chapter: one clean act of giving is itself, at the same moment, nourishing the seeds of virtue and concentration.

When you give without stinginess, without angling for return, without pride—in that moment you are already treating all alike: that is virtue. When you give and glance back at your own motive, rinsing it toward the clear—in that moment you are already cultivating the mind. Giving, virtue, cultivation do not take their turns after the gift has left your hand; they happen together, in the very moment you give.

So there is no need to think, "let me first give enough, then go and learn virtue and concentration." The real work is this: in the very moment of each act of giving, do all three things together. Take everything Part Two has laid out—seeing clearly which kind of mind you are giving with (why you give), understanding that the receiver and your own mind are each a measure (who you give to), knowing that real returns come right now (what you get)—and gather it all into this one moment of giving. Give once and give well, and three seeds go into the ground together.

This is what Part Two, at the end of its road, places into your hand: giving is not the elementary class of practice; it is the door of practice—and in pushing that door open, your hand, your virtue, and your mind move together.

Part Two, to This Point

Part One set the root of letting-go firm in one person's mind. Part Two has put this loosened hand back between person and person, and seen it in all its aspects—why we give, who we give to, what comes right now, whom we make offering to, and how giving serves as the entrance to giving, virtue, cultivation.

By this point, giving as one person's work has been mostly told. But the last chapter left a thread hanging: the Buddha said that offering to the Saṅgha—that lineage able to run on for a thousand ages—bears immeasurable fruit. Then this Saṅgha, which must receive the gifts of countless people and hand the Dhamma down generation after generation—how is it itself settled, and held up? One person's gift is a single act, a passing occasion; but the Saṅgha as a field of merit—how does it come to stand there steadily, for the long ages, able to receive the offerings of generation upon generation?

For that, we must walk into the Vinaya. In the next part, we go to see how the Buddha, by means of the discipline, established the Saṅgha as a field of merit that can be tilled for a long, long time.