The Road You Have Just Walked

9.3 The Road You Have Just Walked

You have turned to this page. The thirty-one chapters of this book—here, you have walked them all.

Before the book closes, let us turn around together and look back down the road we have walked, from its beginning to its end.

One Hand, Loosening the Whole Way

Do you remember where this book set out from?

It set out from the smallest, most ordinary of instants—the last of something left in the house, someone at the door asking, and in your heart, that pause, that flinch. The flinch is called stinginess. The "giving" this whole book has been about is, in the end, the handling of that one flinch: how to loosen the hand clenched around "mine."

And so this hand went on loosening, the whole way.

In the Pāli, it loosened for the first time—the Buddha telling a busy householder that the truth of giving lies not in how much is given, but in whether the hand in the heart can open. That is letting-go. And with that one loosening came a mark of stream-entry, and a practice of looking back on what you have given, day after day (Part One).

In the Āgamas, this opened hand reached into the human world—it learned to see clearly with which mind it was giving, to whom it gave, and what it received visible in this very life; and it came to understand that giving, virtue, and cultivation begin together, from this one loosening of the hand (Part Two).

In the Vinaya, what this hand let go of was guarded by the Buddha, through the discipline, into a field of merit that no one could seize as his own, a field that could last a thousand autumns; and the hand discovered that even keeping the precepts empty-handed—not-taking what is not given—is itself giving (Part Three).

In the Mahāyāna, the hand loosened deeper still—it began to loosen the "I who is giving." A gift, joined to that little piece of seeing-through wisdom, the three wheels loosening together, crossed the river and became the pāramitā of giving, a giving that can carry others across (Part Four).

In the prajñā teachings, it loosened all the way to giving without abiding in marks—the hand gives, but the mind does not halt upon "I give, he receives, this thing"; loosened to that line of the Heart Sūtra, "seeing the five skandhas all empty, crossing over all suffering and distress"—where even the "I" that clenches is seen to be empty from the start (Part Five).

It was looked at once from the reverse side, too—and it turned out that not-taking (not stealing) loosens the very same "I"; and that every road of practice, in the end, flows toward giving (Part Six).

In the Lotus, this hand was pushed to the limit—even the body could be given as offering. And that fire was burning not the body but the "I": the losing of the "I," pushed to the very end of the flesh (Part Seven).

At the last, in the Avataṃsaka, the hand loosened until there was no edge—offerings filling the dharma-realm, thought after thought continuing without interruption—loosened until Samantabhadra said it outright: the Dharma itself is giving. The hand clenched around "mine" loosened and loosened, loosened until, at the end, no trace of it remained—loosened into the whole dharma-realm (Part Eight).

Look—from one small loosening in one person's heart to the offering of the entire dharma-realm, what was being said, from first to last, was a single thing: loosen the hand clenched around "mine"; and loosen, too, the "I" that does the clenching.

And this is the very word this book was set to face—"crossing over." The "crossing" in "crossing over all suffering and distress" is nowhere else: it is exactly where that hand opens all the way. The hand loosened to its end is the losing of the "I"; and losing the "I" is the crossing of that river of suffering, swollen high by self-grasping, to the other shore.

This is the road you have just walked.

Then Where Do I Begin?

At the end of this long road, one plainest of questions most likely remains in you:

I have understood the teaching. But—then—where, exactly, do I begin?

The answer to that question does not need me to work out for you. The Buddha settled it for you long ago.

When the Buddha taught those newly come to the Dharma, He followed a fixed sequence—first the discourse on giving, then on keeping the precepts, then on the heavens, then on the danger of desire and the blessing of renunciation, and only at the last the Four Noble Truths. Giving is always the first stop of that teaching.

You see—the question "where do I begin" the Buddha answered long ago: begin with giving. This is not some teacher's suggestion; it is the structure of the path itself. Giving is the door—the one anyone can enter, and the first step most worth taking first.

So you need not cast about for the place to begin. The place to begin the Buddha set down for you long ago; it is standing right there. You have only—to walk over.

Nāgārjuna said the whole of it in seven characters:

"Giving is the first condition for nirvāṇa."

The word in the original is dāna: giving. Giving is the "first condition" for nirvāṇa—the first condition, the first stair, into the road of liberation. Giving is not the road itself; but it is the road's entrance. If you mean to set out, the first step is here.

The Scriptures Themselves Are Extending the Invitation

At the end of this book, in truth, nothing more from me is needed. The patriarchs of the generations, the sūtras and the śāstras themselves, are extending the invitation to you. Answer any one of them, and that is your first step.

Samantabhadra invites you with a vow that has no end: "Should the realm of space be exhausted, the realm of beings be exhausted, the karma of beings be exhausted, the afflictions of beings be exhausted—only then would my vow be exhausted." But space is without end and beings are without end, and so this giving, thought after thought continuing, is never exhausted. You, too, can place every gift you give into this endless river.

The layman Vimalakīrti once took a grand and lavish assembly of giving and, with one light turn, turned it into a dharma-offering—telling us that the homeliest giving, the moment the heart loosens and accords with the Dharma, opens straight onto the highest offering. You, today, in any bustling scene of good works, can learn that one turn from him.

And if at this moment your hands hold nothing at all, not even a single coin to give—do not worry: this door stands open to you all the same. The Pāli discourses say: only see another doing good, and let your heart be genuinely glad for him—that gladness (rejoicing, anumodanā) is, in itself, a complete act of giving. Giving has never shut anyone outside its door.

Master Shandao, Master Yongming, Master Ouyi, Master Yinguang… for more than a thousand years, masters beyond counting have walked this road, and in what they wrote they left hands stretched out toward you. This book has done no more than point those hands out to you, one by one.

At the Last

This book has run thirty-one chapters, citing sūtras beyond counting, śāstras beyond counting, speaking all the way from the Pāli to the Huayan.

But however thick it is, however much it has said, in the end it was all for one simplest thing: that you might go, with a more settled heart and a clearer eye, and do that one simplest thing—

Loosen, gently, the hand in your heart that is clenched around "mine."

May the day come, as you read and read, when this book can be set down. When the teachings in it, the sūtras, the śāstras, can all be set down.

What remains is your hand—

and behind that hand, that small loosening—already, quietly, coming loose.

Homage to the Original Teacher Śākyamuni Buddha.