Part Nine · The Modern Diagnosis, and a Coda · Placing This Road Back in Your Hand
From the "letting-go" of the Pāli to the dharma-realm offering of the Huayan—this long road, as far as the teaching goes, has been walked to its end.
But however high the teaching, if it cannot come back down into the days you and I are living right now, back down into that little bit of "mine" in your hand, then it is still only a good book—read once, and set aside. So this final part is a coda: it is here to bring giving out of the scrolls, back into the world before our eyes, back into your hand.
Three chapters.
Chapter one holds a mirror up to our own age. Today the chances to do good and to donate are more plentiful than they have ever been, and yet the act of giving keeps being quietly made back into a piece of business—merit-making, trading for blessings, trading for a name. How do you tell whether this gift of yours is real, or a transaction? The patriarchs of the generations left a very plain touchstone: a gift from a true heart—after the giving, the heart grows quiet, grows settled; a gift with bargaining mixed in—after the giving, the heart turns restless instead, still hanging on the return.
Chapter two takes up something very new—giving by a single tap on the phone. Five minutes, one tap, and the money crosses a thousand mountains and rivers on its way out. Does that count as true giving? The Dharma's answer is deeply reassuring: it counts—because the truth of giving has never lain anywhere but in that one moment of mind, not in how much money, not in how much time was spent. Even rejoicing (anumodanā)—when you give no money yourself, but feel a heartfelt gladness at another's good deed—is a real and solid gift.
Chapter three is the coda of this book, and the end of this road. Together, we will look back over the road we have walked, from its beginning to its end; and then return to the plainest question of all: then where, exactly, do I begin? The answer to that question the Buddha settled for us long ago.
First, then, the mirror: what, today, is this hand clenched around?