Part Six · The Reverse Side of the Śūraṅgama · Seeing Giving from the Side of Not Taking
Through the five parts before this, we have looked at giving from the front—watching how that hand loosens its hold on "mine" and gives it away.
But the self-grasping that keeps a person turning round and round in birth-and-death has two hands: one clenches inward and cannot bear to give (this is stinginess); the other reaches outward and cannot keep from taking what was never mine (this is the craving to take). The first five parts treated the first hand—with giving. This part circles around to the reverse side to look at the second hand—the hand that cannot keep from taking; and what treats it is not-taking.
This part rests on one scripture—the Śūraṅgama Sūtra. It does not teach you from the front how to give; it cuts in from an angle you would never expect. Three chapters, three layers.
Chapter one looks from the side of precept: not stealing—holding to not taking what should not be taken—turn this over, and it too proves to be a kind of giving: it gives everyone a measure of peace of mind. On the reverse side of not-taking, giving lies hidden.
Chapter two looks from the side of concentration and wisdom: in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra, twenty-five sages each entered by a different road and awakened. The strange thing is that every one of those roads, at its end, naturally flows out into a kind of giving—even meditative concentration, even wisdom, is a form of giving.
Chapter three is an alarm bell. Where practice goes very deep, even this good thing called giving can be hijacked, turned upside down—people impersonate sages and steal for themselves the offerings of the faithful, the reverence of the faithful. The Śūraṅgama Sūtra points out these traps one by one. And at its close it says: to pass on to those who come after the skill of recognizing inverted giving—this gift of the Dharma surpasses giving away seven treasures enough to fill the whole of space.
Below, the main thread is still the same—only this time, from the side of not taking, we watch how that same "I" loosens, and how it can also be deceived. We begin with this: why is not stealing, in itself, a kind of giving?