Preface · Loosening the Clenched Hand

The book in your hands is about something utterly ordinary, and utterly extraordinary—giving.

Ordinary, because you have probably done it long since. Taking out a coin, giving up a seat, sharing the last half-bowl of rice with the person at the door—who has not done these things? To give is one of the plainest human acts; it hardly needs to be learned.

Extraordinary, because this "giving" you thought you had long known goes very deep. It was taught, carefully, while the Buddha was still in the world; across more than two thousand years, generation after generation of disciples, patriarchs, and great teachers have turned it over, deepened it, reversed it, pushed it to its limit. Behind the small act of giving you do so casually today stands a long, long road, walked for more than two thousand years.

This book takes you down that road, from its beginning to its end.

A Clenched Hand

To walk this road, you must first see one thing clearly: its protagonist is not the hand that reaches out to give, but the hand that clenches and will not let go—and how, inch by inch, it loosens.

When we ordinarily speak of "giving," our eyes are mostly on the act of giving: how much was given, to whom, whether anyone knew afterward. These things are all visible, and they all matter. But when the Buddha taught this, the weight did not rest on the hand reaching out; it rested on that loosening in the heart, before the hand ever moved.

Think about it: the last of something is left at home, and someone comes to the door asking. Is there not, in your heart, a small pause, a small contraction? That contraction is brief—perhaps less than a second. In the Buddha's teaching it has a name of its own: stinginess. And what this whole book is about, in the end, is the handling of that contraction—how to loosen the hand in the heart that clenches around "mine."

So the true protagonist of this book is one word: letting-go. Not the giving of "how much was given," but the letting-go of a hand that can open.

A person can make a very great gift while the hand in the heart has not loosened at all—out of face, out of repaying a favor, out of fear, he brings the thing out; the gesture is beautiful, and the "mine" inside has not moved a hair. And someone else shares out only half a bowl of rice, and that hand has truly opened. The Buddha's teaching looks at these two people and reads the layer underneath: that hand—did it loosen, or not?

This is why this book is not a history of charity, of humanity growing ever more generous. What it tells is how a hand opens—and how much was in the hand was never the point.

A Road Two Thousand Years in the Loosening

This hand has been loosening all along the way. The book's subtitle—"from Pāli roots to the dharmadhātu"—names exactly this long road from end to end.

In the plainest letting-go of the Pāli texts, it loosened for the first time—the Buddha telling a busy householder: the real measure of giving lies not in how much is given, but in whether the hand in the heart can open.

It walked into the Āgamas and reached into the space between person and person—learning to see clearly with what kind of mind one gives, to whom one gives, and what one receives then and there.

The Vinaya guarded it into a field of merit that no one may claim as their own and that can endure a thousand autumns; and then came the discovery that even keeping the precepts with empty hands—not taking what should not be taken—is itself a way of giving.

In the Mahāyāna it loosened deeper still—even the "I who is giving" began to come loose: one act of giving, joined with that little wisdom that sees through, crosses the river and becomes the pāramitā of giving, able to ferry others across.

In the prajñā sūtras it loosened to "not abiding in marks," loosened to the Heart Sūtra's line, "seeing that the five skandhas are all empty"—until even the "I" that clenches things is seen to have been empty from the first.

In the Lotus it was pushed to the limit—even the body can be given in offering; and that fire burned not the body, but the "I."

At the last, in the Huayan, it loosened until there was no edge—offerings filling the whole dharma-realm, thought after thought without interruption, until the bodhisattva Samantabhadra said it outright: the Dharma itself is giving. The hand that clenched "mine" loosened and loosened along the whole road, until at the end it loosened beyond all trace—loosened into the whole dharma-realm.

From a small loosening in one person's heart to the offering of the whole dharma-realm—that is this road. One sentence says it all: Giving is not a transaction of merit-making, of trading for blessings; it is the work of loosening, inch by inch, the hand that clenches "mine"—loosening "mine," and at the last loosening the "I" itself.

And this is the very word the gate of giving answers to, among the six gates of practice—"crossing over." (This correspondence between the Six Practice Gates and the Heart Sūtra is a reading this book offers; the sūtra itself does not state it.) The "crossing over" of "crossing over all suffering and distress" is nowhere else: it is right where that hand opens all the way. When the hand has loosened to the very end, the "I" is lost; and losing the "I" is crossing the river of suffering, swollen by self-grasping, to the other shore.

This Book Is Written for You

This book is not written for scholars.

It debates with no one, and it does not compare "Buddhist giving" with this or that charity or philanthropy elsewhere. What it does is one plain and simple thing: it tells you, item by item, following the scriptures, what that "giving" the Buddha once taught really is—what it is, when He taught it, how it is practiced, what it means.

The book quotes many sūtras and many treatises, from the Pāli scriptures and the Āgamas, to the Diamond Sūtra, the Heart Sūtra, the Lotus Sūtra, and the Huayan Sūtra, on to the works of patriarchs such as Nāgārjuna and Vasubandhu. But set your mind at ease: the catalog numbers, the original Sanskrit and Pāli words, the scholars' textual notes are all gathered into the appendices at the back, not laid in the body text to trip your feet. In the body text there is only an old monk, following the scriptures, telling it to you slowly.

It is written for you—for someone willing, in later years or in the thick of busy days, to quietly loosen, a little, the clenched hand in the heart. You need not know Sanskrit. You need not remember catalog numbers. You need not first become a scholar. You need only be willing to listen, and willing to try loosening the hand a little.

Walk Slowly; There Is No Hurry

The book is divided into nine parts, like nine stages of a road. You may read from the first page straight through to the last, following the road slowly; or you may go first to whichever stage speaks to your heart.

Parts One through Three are this hand's plainest loosening—in the Pāli texts, the Āgamas, and the Vinaya. This is the root, firmly planted, closest to a householder's ordinary days. Parts Four through Eight follow the Mahāyāna and loosen this hand all the way—to "not abiding in marks," to offerings filling the dharma-realm. This is the scenery of the heights; when you look up at it, remember that it is still the same one hand loosening. Part Nine is the coda—bringing this road back to the world we live in today, back into your hand.

And if you are impatient—if all you want to know is "then what, right now, do I actually do, and where do I begin?"—you might turn first to the final chapter, "The Road You Have Just Walked." That chapter gathers this whole road into a few of its plainest words and sets them in the palm of your hand. When you have read it, come back and walk slowly from Part One, and you will see: behind those few words in your hand stands a road this long, and this deep.

At the Last

Giving, in the end, is very simple: the hand in the heart that clenches "mine"—gently, loosen it.

However thick this book, however much it says, it is all for one thing only: that you may do that simplest thing with a more settled heart, and a clearer one.

May there come a day, as you read, when the book can be set down; when the reasonings, the sūtras and treatises, can all be set down too.

What remains is your hand—and behind that hand, that little loosening, even now coming loose.

Homage to the Original Teacher Śākyamuni Buddha.