Through Giving, We Receive Ourselves Back
Uncovering our darkness through the simple act of giving.
Hi,
How are you this week? How familiar are you with the uncharted territories of your being?
Over the last two weeks, we’ve talked about the plenty in us. I wrote about it here and here, please have a look in case you missed it. Today, I believe the only topic that could follow, is one of the natural consequence of this richness within us: giving.
Giving is not an easy or obvious thing. It can enrich our lives beautifully, but it can also leave us feeling depleted and barren, especially in the case of emotional giving. We are told our whole lives that we must be charitable, aid those in scarcity, home the wandering and clothe the naked. Each spiritual and cultural tradition frames the practice of giving differently, yet most of us are encouraged to give regardless of our origins.
Charitable actions are also rooted in science: giving support and assistance may be a better predictor of living longer than receiving it, according to researchers at the University of Michigan. I cannot dispute it. Just a couple of days ago, I sat with my grandma, soon turning 90, and sipped tea as we talked about the realities of past and present. Life wasn’t easy on her; she and her family lost all they had multiple times due to IIWW and its repercussions. Yet, she always did all she could to help everyone in need, always shared whatever little she had left with those who had even less. “Sometimes I wonder if this is why I was gifted a long and healthy life in return”, she tells me.
But in order to give joyfully and freely, we must first feel plentiful inside. That’s what the previous essays were for — to help us reconnect with this internal wellspring of ours.
When we give from this place of inner abundance, the act itself enriches us, transcending the material value of what we possess or lack. In Buddhism, this enrichment is understood as gaining merit, particularly through acts of dāna—selfless giving. The practice of dāna, regarded as a fundamental moral virtue in Buddhism, is not about seeking returns. Instead, it cultivates generosity of spirit, which enhances spiritual growth and connection with others.
It goes far beyond mere rituals or moral conduct. Of course, people are in need, and yes, some are more affluent than others, so naturally, it is good to help those less fortunate, whether financially, physically, spiritually, or mentally. However, the act of giving is twofold—as we reach our offering hand out to the world, its reflection reaches deep into our beings. This gesture reminds us something very important about ourselves: that the happiness of others is not separate from our own. Our lives cannot thrive in division from the lives of others. Observing this relationship, we slowly begin opening up to a larger truth: we are interconnected; one cannot exist without the other.
Giving as cooperation
I returned from my 4th Vipassana course a few days ago. It began on my birthday and lasted a week.
Every year, I choose (or invite) a guiding word that corresponds with what I intuitively feel needs working in me (I wrote more about it here). My word for 2024 is “offer,” and at this point, I could not imagine a better way to celebrate my life and the body it is carried in than through service. Thus, I was compelled to join a work and sit period at the Vipassana centre I had perviously attended other courses at. Meditators willing to come and support this effort were working on the grounds to make the venue comfortable and welcoming for others.
The tasks included cooking, cleaning, and some gardening work. I chose the latter, and that’s how I spent my week. One day, I was picking out weeds from a pathway near the teachers' house. The pavement was made of concrete slabs, and the weeds were growing out of the thin joints between them. Every time I pulled out a plant with its roots, a swarm of ants emerged, alarmed by my actions. They always appeared where the plants grew, nowhere else. One could easily conclude that they lived in a kind of cooperation with those weeds.
The plants, caring for their own survival and reaching for the light through the thinnest gaps, enabled much smaller and more fragile ants to do the same. They didn’t go out of their way to help the ants. They simply did what they must have done to provide for themselves, but in their abundance, they could still offer something to those smaller organisms. I’m sure the ants repaid the favour: perhaps by offering protection from insects or through some other act they were capable of.
Giving, therefore, can take the form of cooperation rather than pure charity. Even if the exchange is not readily visible, it certainly resonates within our beings, enhancing our potential to grow and lead stronger, happier, and longer lives—towards the sun. That doesn’t mean we should always give expecting to receive something in return—that wouldn’t truly help anyone. But perhaps, if we opened up to the idea that giving itself gives back, and that it invites us to the realisation of our interconnectedness and interdependence, we might struggle a little less as a species.
Giving as a form of self-expression and communication
One doesn’t have to be particularly observant to notice examples of this truth in everyday life.
If I look up from my screen and through the window behind it, I see a forest; the crowns of trees basking in the sun, swaying rhythmically to the hum of the gentle wind. Each of the countless leaves forming the dancing canopy produces oxygen which benefits nearly all living beings. The leaf doesn’t do so out of charity; rather, it is a byproduct of its fundamental processes, a natural expression of its abundance.
Similarly, we also have fundamental processes taking place within us, one of which is the call we repeatedly hear from life: the return home to our innermost selves. When we face unexpected difficulties, when everything falls apart, when we uncover painful truths about ourselves we’d rather not know—these are all calls to return home. Once we get there, we open up to the wealth of our hearts and minds.
Having seen the abundance within us, we naturally feel compelled to share it with others, and soon we discover that giving has simply become a byproduct of how we lead our lives, in their natural processes. Generosity, as the Dalai Lama XIV said, “is the most natural outward expression of an inner attitude of compassion and loving-kindness.” Thus, giving is no longer a moral or social responsibility we were taught to obey, but a natural expression of our beings, the manifestation of the gentle life throbbing within us.
Understanding how rich we are inside, and recognising that this wellspring lies beneath our limited conceptions of self, we realise that this wealth does not belong to us alone, nor to anyone else in particular, but is shared equally and abundantly, endlessly by all.
Giving, then, can be also seen as a form of self-expression and communication with others. The quality of interconnected abundance within us seeks to connect with the same quality within others, and co-create. At the intersection of these two, immense joy awaits us. It’s a nonverbal, nonphysical form of energy exchange, of well-wishing for others, of giving freely and happily what we feel comfortable and capable of offering.
Giving as a way back home
Giving is a natural, almost inevitable act that stems from recognising abundance within ourselves.
It is an inherent part of existence, not just a moral obligation. Analogously to love, which is, as Willow Defebaugh of Atmos describes, “not something we fall in or out of, but something we remember we are part of;” giving, too, is a state of being we find ourselves returning to upon knocking on the door of our innermost beings.
And as I said, once the hand reaches out to offer to the world, like in a mirror, it is reflected by the offering within. It can take many forms.
Every time I create space to look deeply into myself, whether during a meditation course or through practice at home, I get to reclaim, piece by piece, a vaster view of myself, the world, and life, marked by the interconnectedness and elusiveness that permeate them. Through giving myself fully to the spaces inside me, I receive lost parts of myself back.
Every time I open up to the wounded heart of another person who has hurt me, I discover new avenues of my being. By offering myself to the spaces inside others, I am gifted new understandings about myself.
Every time I'm falling through life with no ground under my feet, I meet and expand parts of myself I never knew existed. Entrusting my being to the vast, unpredictable landscapes of life, I find the particles of myself swaying with the wind.
Offering myself to places — whether they be physical, human, or emotional and psychological — I receive myself back.
When you give yourself to places, they give you yourself back.
— Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking
This time around, at the meditation centre, I was fortunate to share the space with men and women who have practised meditation and followed the path it enables for 20-60 years. Observing and interacting with them left me astonished by the renewed realisation of how potent we are—not in the sense of power, but in the potency of softness. By opening up to themselves, they became and offering to the world and each other, and in return, they received much more than they could ever ask for. You can see it clearly in how they talk and carry themselves with respect, integrity, and gentleness.
We’re endlessly capable of softening our hearts and minds, so that they become fit to see the middle way: neither clinging nor rejecting, neither excitement nor sadness, neither happiness nor misery — but an opening to the possibility of them coexisting, without overwhelming us.
It takes a certain gentleness to approach our minds, and, by extension, ourselves, in a way that enables steady transformation. We're taught to use force to execute our wants and desires. We believe that unless we assert strength and rigidity, we won't achieve the intended results. We cling to our very selves and whatever they consider “mine,” and we struggle to offer ourselves to the world and to its beings, fearing we might lose too much.
Yet there is another way available, a subtle act of inviting transformation, opening up to it rather than executing it firmly. A way of observing, noting, observing, noting, not interpreting too much, simply allowing thoughts, emotions, and life events to unfold and not becoming too overpowered by their force. It’s a reciprocal potential of giving ourselves to spaces.
As I am learning, the essential aspect of this operation, is to ensure that kindness and compassion for ourselves and the world are deeply rooted in our hearts. Through this kindness, through holding ourselves tenderly and with care, we are fortified to walk into the darkness with at least a trace of trust, peace, and sureness of our integrity. Walking back home will indeed require us to wade through the darkness; after all, it’s been a while we visited, and the lights have dimmed since then.
Giving allows us to understand that we’re not alone on this path; it enables us to see the same quality of softness in others and to realise they, too, have lost their way in the dark. Just like the weeds and ants, we can collaborate to help ourselves and each other reach the light.
It is on the path of softness, as opposed to that of severity, that our potential for transformation blossoms—through the thinnest gaps, outward towards the sun. And through this transformation, by offering ourselves to places both in the outside world and those within other beings, we get to explore and reclaim the vast terrains of ourselves: piece by piece, heart by heart, breath by breath.
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Question to you, dear reader:
What can you offer today?
dear justyna,
thank you for these gifts as always! and happy birthday!
i love this: "the act of giving is twofold—as we reach our offering hand out to the world, its reflection reaches deep into our beings. This gesture reminds us something very important about ourselves: that the happiness of others is not separate from our own. Our lives cannot thrive in division from the lives of others. Observing this relationship, we slowly begin opening up to a larger truth: we are interconnected; one cannot exist without the other."
thank you for sharing!
love
myq
Could inner abundance live compatibly with emptiness? Giving time and attention seems to come spontaneously when inner experience is quiet, allowing and accepting. A good but simple example -- when actually listening fully to someone speak, with relaxed attention, rather than partial listening while simultaneously preparing my response. I know this from both sides, times when there's stillness and times when there's a raucous inner dialogue streaming on.