The Dharma Itself Is Giving

8.5 The Dharma Itself Is Giving

Sudhana has walked to the road's end and entered Samantabhadra's body. This dharma-realm, this layered and endless Flower Ornament, is the very "end" this book has been walking toward all along.

We tend to assume that the end is the place where giving gets left behind—as though giving were the low, beginner's work, dropped once one has climbed to a height like "the dharma-realm." Giving for the road; metaphysics for the summit.

But the close of the Avataṃsaka, through Samantabhadra's own mouth, turns this whole picture over.

Samantabhadra's Own Account: Everything I Am Came by Relinquishing

Sudhana has entered Samantabhadra's body, and Samantabhadra opens his mouth and tells his own story—his original course through measureless kalpas, world-ages past counting. The account is long and dense, all in the first person, "I." And its content, overwhelmingly, is giving:

"Across past kalpas as numerous as the dust-motes of inexpressibly inexpressible buddha-fields, I practiced the bodhisattva-practice in pursuit of all-wisdom…giving up all that was inner and outer…all I relinquished, with not a single grudge."

Wealth relinquished; cities relinquished; kingship relinquished; wife and children relinquished; even head, eyes, bone, and marrow relinquished. More than thirty lines of self-account, and the list is nothing but relinquishing.

What matters is not how long the list is. What matters is its position: when the sūtra at last lets this Samantabhadra—the one who is the dharma-realm—open his mouth and speak of what he is, what he speaks is a history of relinquishing. Samantabhadra—the bodhisattva whose body Sudhana has just entered, the bodhisattva all but equal to the whole dharma-realm—describes his own makeup, his own origin, his own essence, as one continuous, unbroken relinquishing.

Giving is not Samantabhadra's "past," long left behind. Giving is Samantabhadra's "content." He is made of letting go.

One Sentence That Sets "Dharma" and "Giving" Equal

The whole account gathers upon one sentence. Of everything this book has walked past, this is the highest sentence, and the most thorough:

"In all my ocean of dharma, there is not one letter, not one phrase, that I have not acquired by relinquishing the position of universal monarch; nor is there one letter, one phrase, that I have not acquired by giving away all that I possessed."

It means: in this whole "ocean of dharma" of mine—there is not one letter, not one phrase, that was not gained by relinquishing and giving: giving away the position of universal monarch, giving away all that I possessed.

Read this sentence as an equation, not as a polite flourish of praise.

"The ocean of dharma"—all the dharma Samantabhadra has realized and spoken. Every letter, every phrase, came by relinquishing. The quantifier is universal: there is no exception anywhere. Which is to say: in this dharma-realm, there is no part that is not the accomplished form of an act of giving.

And so, at this book's end, the water recedes and the rock stands clear: the dharma-realm does not surpass giving. The dharma-realm is giving—giving stretched into its final, fullest, widest form. Walked to its end, giving does not dissolve away, is not replaced by something higher; it has itself become the dharma-realm. The Dharma itself is giving.

"One Act of Giving Gathers All Practices"

That line of the sūtra states the equation "dharma is giving"; the one who spells out how the equation works is Master Fazang of the Huayan school. He has a sentence for it, clean and brisk:

"One act of giving gathers all practices…giving is the nine perfections."

"One act of giving gathers all practices"—this one practice, giving, takes every practice in. "Giving is the nine perfections"—giving simply is the other nine pāramitās (keeping the precepts, patience, vigor…prajñā, and the rest).

This is the "one is all" we met earlier, brought down onto practice: one act (giving) is all acts. You need not finish giving before moving on to the precepts, nor work the six pāramitās up one by one until the set is complete. One real act of giving, in accord with the Dharma, already holds discipline within it (taking nothing that is not yours), holds patience (no vexation at the receiver), holds vigor, holds meditation, holds wisdom (the three wheels empty)—the six pāramitās, complete in this one act of giving.

When Fazang set out to teach "one is all"—the most recondite of principles—he did not reach for whatever example lay at hand. He chose giving. To the Huayan school, giving is the best of all examples for showing how one small, concrete act can contain the whole dharma-realm.

One Stick of Incense Carries the Whole Road

Put Samantabhadra's self-account and Fazang's sentence together, and the end of this book comes fully clear.

The dharma-realm, that great building of layer upon endless layer, is not a metaphysical pavilion for admiring from a distance and quietly speculating upon. It is a building held up by practice—and giving is the foundation-stone this tradition picked out with its own hands to show how one act is the whole.

For ordinary people like us, this carries a very real, very warm meaning:

The small, concrete act of giving you do at this moment is not a "low" step waiting to be surpassed. It is not the first rung of a staircase to the dharma-realm—because that staircase never existed. Within the building of the dharma-realm, so long as your mind accords with the Dharma, so long as the "I" in it has been loosened, then the stick of incense you pass over, the bowl of rice, the word of comfort—each, then and there, already carries the form of the whole road. You do not have to climb from "giving" up to "dharma-realm"; this one opening of your hand is, in itself, already inside the dharma-realm.

Samantabhadra's autobiography of relinquishing is the model given to us: a being of the dharma-realm is, in the end, in his very content, a history of letting go. Every time we open the hand, we are adding one more line to our own history of letting go.

Part Eight, to This Point—and the End of the Long Road

With these five chapters, Part Eight has walked the Huayan through.

Giving is the door into the Way (the Ground of Joy). Offering, stretched until there is no edge (the vast cultivation of offerings). Every offering that accords with the Dharma, gathered into the highest, the dharma-offering (among all offerings, the dharma-offering is supreme). The dharma-realm, entered step by step, by walking (Sudhana and the fifty-three teachers). And at the road's end, Samantabhadra says it outright: the Dharma itself is giving (the chapter on Entering the Dharma-Realm).

From that plainest word of the Pāli in Part One—letting-go—to the Huayan's dharma-realm offering here, where dharma is giving: the long road this book's name points to, from Pāli roots to the dharmadhātu, has here come to its end.

That hand clenched around "mine" loosened, in Part One, only a little—softly, inside the heart of one busy householder. Then it loosened and loosened—loosened into the human world, loosened into the Vinaya's field of merit, loosened away the "I who am giving," loosened to "not abiding in marks," loosened until even the body was offered, loosened until offering filled the dharma-realm. Loosened to the last, the hand has loosened beyond all trace—loosened into the whole dharma-realm. And that is the word this gate of giving answers to—"crossing over"—made good on its widest, most thorough scale.

Walking On

In principle, the road has reached its height. But this resplendent dharma-realm must, in the end, come back down to our world—back down to the ordinary days you and I are living right now.

And our age, in so many places, has quietly turned "giving" back into a deal—merit-making, bargaining for blessings, trading charity for a name. This is exactly the knot this book has been loosening for us since its first page.

So, having walked this long road from the Pāli to the dharma-realm, the final part will invite giving out of the scrolls and back into the world before our eyes—to look at us as we are today: what, exactly, is this hand clenching, and how is it to loosen? The next part is this book's coda.