A Gift That Costs Nothing

3.2 A Gift That Costs Nothing

The giving we have spoken of so far always needed something in hand—food, robes, a park, a house. With nothing, how do you give?

The Buddha says: there is a kind of giving that costs not a cent; the hands are empty, and it is real giving all the same. It hides inside the most ordinary thing of all—keeping the precepts.

Keeping the Precepts Is in Fact Giving

When we ordinarily think of "keeping the precepts," what comes to mind is mostly a string of "do nots"—do not kill, do not steal, do not speak falsely… as if we were putting up a fence around ourselves and boxing ourselves in. Keeping the precepts looks like a matter of restraining oneself.

The Buddha and the patriarchs turn this whole thing the other way around.

Once, the venerable Maudgalyāyana went to teach a householder named Bhadrika. He told him: the Buddha has spoken of "five great gifts," which the householder should practice for as long as life endures. Hearing "great gifts," the householder likely thought he was about to be asked to scatter who knows how much of his fortune again. But the five things Maudgalyāyana counted off were these—

"First, not killing—this is called a great gift. Second, not taking what is not given—this too is a great gift. And then not engaging in sexual misconduct, not speaking falsely, not taking intoxicants—all of these are great gifts, all to be practiced for as long as life endures."

Look: these five are exactly what we ordinarily call the five precepts. Yet here they are not called the five precepts; they are called the five great gifts—five acts of great giving.

Why would keeping the precepts be giving? The reason is very down-to-earth. When you resolve, "I will not kill," then every being that might otherwise have feared harm from you—human beings, beasts, the small insects on the ground—receives, in that instant, peace of mind from you. They need not be on guard against you anymore. Your one decision not to kill hands the assurance of "safe from harm at my hands" to every life that meets you.

This gift has a name: the gift of fearlessness (abhayadāna)—the giving of fearlessness, the giving of "no need to be afraid."

So "not killing" is not only a prohibition binding you; it is at the same time a gift sent out. On this side of the fence, looking inward, it is restraint of oneself; turn it over and look outward, and it is peace of mind given to all beings. One and the same thing, seen from its two sides, looks utterly different.

Why This Counts as Giving—Put Yourself in the Other's Place

The Buddha also taught how this heart of non-harming arises of itself. He taught people to think this way:

"If someone were to want to kill me, I would not be pleased. What is unwelcome to me is unwelcome to another. How then should I kill him?"

This is putting yourself into the other's place. I fear death; so does he. I do not want to be harmed; neither does he. Once this layer is seen through, "not killing" is no longer a cold rule but something grown naturally from the heart: since he fears just as I do, then I will not be the one who makes him afraid.

Look—when you refrain from killing in this way, what you give out is exactly that peace of mind, "no need to fear me." Is this not real giving, through and through? Only this time, what goes out is not goods but fearlessness.

Even the Saṅgha's Days Are Set to Protect Life

The Buddha set this heart of non-harming not only into the individual's precepts but into the rules of the Saṅgha.

Those gone forth originally wandered everywhere, begging their food as they went. But when the rainy season came, the ground was covered with fresh shoots and grasses and small creatures crawling out. As the bhikkhus walked their roads, they could not help treading many small lives to death and trampling the crops. People began to say: even the followers of other paths, even the birds and beasts, know to settle down in the rains and keep to their nests and lairs; yet these renunciants walk on through the rainy season and injure so many small lives.

When the Buddha heard this, He laid down a rule: for the three months of the rains each year, the bhikkhus were to settle in one place and wander no more—this is called the rains retreat. One Vinaya states the reason for this rule most plainly: "[the Buddha] constantly teaches few desires, and the guarding of all beings with a heart of compassionate care"—it came precisely from a tenderness toward beings, an unwillingness to see their lives harmed.

So even the Saṅgha's three months of settled dwelling each year is, at bottom, an act of the gift of fearlessness—the whole Saṅgha, by staying put for three months, yielding a path of life to the small lives of the rainy season.

Giving Need Not Have a Thing in Hand

Set this chapter beside the last one, and you see two faces of giving.

The giving of the last chapter needed a thing—a park, covered with gold coins. The giving of this chapter has empty hands—only a held resolve of "not killing." Yet the latter weighs not one bit less than the former. It even has one advantage the former cannot match: it does not choose its time, does not choose its recipient, and is giving at every moment.

To give material things, you must have the things, have someone to receive them, have an occasion for the giving. But the gift of fearlessness in keeping the precepts needs none of these. You need no money, need not wait for someone to come asking, need no special occasion—so long as you hold the heart of non-harming this moment, then this moment, every being spared fear because of that heart of yours is receiving your gift at once. Every present moment in which you keep the precepts is a scene of giving in progress.

And this joins exactly with what was said earlier: giving, virtue, and cultivation were always done together. Here you see it still more clearly—keeping the precepts is itself a kind of giving. To keep one precept is to give all beings a measure of peace of mind. "Giving" and "virtue," here, turn out to be two names for one and the same thing.

Part Three, to This Point

Part Three turned the lens away from the giver and looked at two things: one, the receiving end—how the Buddha used the precepts to establish the Saṅgha as a field of merit that no one can privately own and that can carry on for a thousand generations; the other, how giving need have nothing in hand—to keep one precept is to send all beings a gift of fearlessness.

By this point, the giving that set out from its Pāli roots has been laid out quite fully in the Āgamas and the Vinaya: from the loosening of one person's hand it grew into the many givings of the human world, was guarded by the Vinaya into an enduring field of merit, and joined with the keeping of precepts to become a gift of fearlessness that costs nothing.

And yet, all along this road, however skillful and however deep the giving, there has always been an "I" standing in the middle—an "I" who gives, a "you" who receives, a "thing" that is given out. The Āgamas and the Vinaya loosened "mine" again and again, but they have not yet touched the last and hardest place: the "I" in "I am giving," itself.

To loosen this last layer too—loosened until even the thought "I am giving" is set down—is a step that had to wait for the rise of the Mahāyāna before it could be taken. In the next part we follow it, from "giving," toward "the pāramitā of giving."