Part Four · From Giving to Pāramitā · Loosening the "I Who Is Giving"

Through the first three parts, we loosened "mine" again and again. The hand inside a person's heart opened; the goods given in offering were fenced off from "mine" by the Vinaya; even keeping the precepts with empty hands became a giving that sets people at ease. And yet, all the way along this road, there has stood—upright and unmoved, right at the center—an "I." It is "I" who give, "you" who receive, and a "thing" that is given away.

In Part Four, the Mahāyāna rises—and what it sets out to move is this last, most stubborn "I."

It pushes giving forward a whole step. The question is no longer only "how do I loosen what is mine?" but: that "I who is giving," that "you who receive," that "thing given away"—what are these three, in themselves? When all three loosen through together, giving is no longer "I did a good deed"; it becomes something clean, something that leaves no trace. At that point it is promoted from ordinary "giving" into dāna-pāramitā—pāramitā, literally, "reaching the other shore"—the giving that can ferry a person across to the other shore.

And this answers exactly the word the gate of giving faces. The Heart Sūtra says "crossing over all suffering and distress"; among the Six Practice Gates, the gate of giving corresponds to this "crossing." (This correspondence between the Six Practice Gates and the Heart Sūtra is a reading this book offers; the sūtra itself does not state it.) Loosen the hand to its very end, and the "I" is lost; and losing the "I" is where "crossing" begins.

Four chapters. Chapter one watches how this "promotion" works—what must be added to a gift before it counts as "across the river." Chapter two borrows Śāriputra's eye, given away, to see one thing clearly: whether one can cross the river is measured not by how much is given, but by whether those three are pure at the moment of giving. Chapter three marks the one spot where it is easiest to go astray: to say "empty" is not to say "nothing." Chapter four looks at how this greatest of gifts still has a bottom line that can never be crossed—however great the giving, it must never be conscripted to another's will.

Below, it is still that same hand—only this time, even the "I" who reaches out the hand must loosen too. We begin by asking: when does a gift count as having "crossed the river"?