Transition ③ · From the Vinaya's Field of Merit to the Pāramitā of Giving

Part Three has walked up to an "I" still standing in the middle of it all, and stopped. The page is about to turn.

This middle page is a breath.

By now this book has kept company with giving down a long stretch of road.

Part One, inside one person's heart, loosened the hand clenched around "mine." Part Two put that hand back into the human world and saw its many faces between person and person—why we give, to whom, what is received here and now, whom we make offerings to. Part Three turned to the receiving end and watched the Buddha, through the precepts, establish the Saṅgha as a field of merit no one can own privately, a field able to last a thousand autumns; it also saw that giving need not have a thing in hand—to keep one precept is to give all beings a share of fearlessness.

From the plainest letting-go of the Pāli, to the broad teaching on giving in the Āgamas, to the long-lasting field of merit in the Vinaya—along this road, "mine" has been loosened and loosened again, barred and barred again. What one person held in the hand has been let go; the wealth offered out has been barred by the Vinaya from ever becoming "mine"; even an empty hand, by keeping the precepts, can give others peace of mind.

By the reckoning of the Āgamas and the Vinaya, it is already very thorough. A householder, a monastic, with this whole set in hand, has enough for a very long road.

But down this whole road, one thing has never once been touched.

However skillful the giving, however deep the loosening, there still stands, square in the middle of it all, an "I."

Look once more: it is I who give, you who receive, and a thing that is given. Loosening "mine" loosens what the hand was clenching—but behind that hand, the "I" that reaches out to give is still there, perfectly intact. Indeed, precisely because this "I" has given so much, has loosened so much "mine," it may even, quietly, have grown a little prouder, a little sturdier for it—"look how much I have given."

This is the last place the language of the Āgamas and the Vinaya has not yet touched. They loosened "mine"—the things that are mine—again and again, but they have not yet touched the deeper, harder thing: the "I" itself, the "I" in "I am giving."

And this "I" is exactly the last and most stubborn knot in the whole affair.

So long as there is still the feeling that it is I who give, the giving stays tethered to an "I." Give ever so much, and that "I" may only grow larger—into a generous and charitable I, an I rich in merit. The hand has opened, but the "I" in the heart may, by way of giving, have clenched itself tight all over again. This is the subtlest clenching of all: what it grips is no longer wealth, but the thought "I am a giver."

What Part Three leaves behind, at the end of its road, is exactly this "I" still standing in the middle.

To loosen this last layer too—loosen until even the thought "I am giving" is put down, loosen until it is seen clearly that "I give," "he receives," "this thing is given"—that not one of these three is solid, not one can be gripped—this step the language of the Āgamas and the Vinaya cannot reach.

This step had to wait for the rise of the Mahāyāna.

The Mahāyāna pushes giving forward a whole notch. It no longer asks only how to loosen "mine"; it asks: the I who gives, the you who receives, the thing that is given—what are these three, in themselves? It means to see through all three at once, and put down all three at once. When all three are loosened through, giving is no longer "I did a good deed"; it becomes something clean, something that leaves no trace—and at that point it rises from ordinary giving into the pāramitā of giving—pāramitā, literally, "reaching the other shore": a giving that can carry a person all the way across.

This answers exactly to the word this book faces: crossing. Among the Six Practice Gates, the gate of giving corresponds to the "crossing" in the Heart Sūtra's "crossing over all suffering and distress." The first three parts loosened, inch by inch, the hand clenched around "mine"; what must be loosened next is the "I" behind that hand. When the hand is loosened to the very end, that is losing the "I"; and losing the "I" is where crossing begins.

In the next part we follow the Mahāyāna from the plainest giving toward the pāramitā of giving that carries a person to the other shore—beginning with one question: when giving meets prajñā, what shape does it take?

We turn the page.