Bringing Wisdom to Life. Anita Carter

give. He was not carrying anything to offer yet in his heart his wish to give something to the Buddha was so strong that he bent down and scooped up a handful of dirt from the ground. As the Buddha looked at him Priyadarshi offered the dirt with his heart filled with love, joy and respect.

      As the Buddha blessed Priyadarshi he said that his offering would bring him to many lives of great wealth and good fortune because of the way it was offered. The offering was done with strong volition to give accompanied by heartfelt generosity, gratitude, and joy.

      Buddha's Teachings are practised with our body, speech and mind. Generosity as part of Buddha Dhamma practice is performed with body, speech and mind.

      So the mind component of giving is the bit that offers us the possibility to reduce our stinginess and craving if we learn to do it correctly.

      Give like you were giving to your child. Give like you were giving to your love. Give like you were receiving the gift. Give completely. Give freely. Once given it belongs completely to the other person. It is no longer your property.

      If the person then damages or throws away what they received from you, it should not raise any pain or concern in your mind. If it does, maybe you still have an idea that it belongs to you. You have not given the object freely.

      You give someone some chocolates. They put them away. You say to yourself; “They should have shared the chocolates with everyone”. In this case you have not offered the gift freely or completely. Your mind still identifies with the object you gave away, as if in some sense it still belongs to you.

      You can see how having a generous heart is at the core of what it means to be kind to others. In generosity is the willingness to help others, the willingness to get up out of your chair quickly and happily when your help would be beneficial.

      Generosity has the openness, flexibility and lightness to put our own needs down for a while and consider the needs of another, to be sensitive enough and patient enough to find out what the other person really needs to be well and happy.

      The Founder of The Buddhist Discussion Centre Australia, John Hughes, on meeting students for the first time, would often recommend they start their Buddhist practice by offering food, drinks and flowers to their parents, particularly their Mother. He would also encourage and arrange for the students to make the most of any opportunity to make offerings to the Buddhist Monks or Nuns.

      This introduces another aspect of generosity. The reason the teacher would suggest new students made these offerings to their parents in particular and also to monks or nuns is because there is something about the qualities of those recipients of the gift that make any offerings you do to them produce very great kammic benefits to the giver.

      The Buddha explained that the kammic connection between a son or daughter and our parents, particularly our Mother is the strongest kammic connection of any type of relationship. Therefore, a gift to our parents creates the greatest amount of good kamma compared to an equivalent gift to any other person.

      The relative amount of good kamma produced by a suitable gift to our parent can be a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand or even more times that of the same gift to someone we have a weak kammic connection to. The Buddha observed this is how the Law of Kamma works.

      It is a similar case with regard to making offerings to beings whose minds are very pure. The kamma of such gifts is also greatly multiplied by the qualities of the receiver of the gift. Hence this is why when the small child Priyadarshi gave a handful of dirt to the Buddha the kammic result was so vast. Not only was the child's mind having many good qualities, so too the Buddha's mind was completely enlightened.

      As laypersons we train to keep a minimum of five precepts. As our purity increases by us keeping our precepts well this too multiplies up the kammic results of our giving.

      This aspect of the Law of Kamma is why in one human life of say, eighty years, it is possible for us to create enough good causes to be born in a heaven birth which could last a million years or more.

      Some Buddhist monks keep 227 rules of conduct. It is very rare to meet persons who have developed such extraordinary purity of mind and conduct. Again, any offerings we make to such persons bring great benefits to ourselves in the future.

      It is important to know what the kammic returns of particular gifts are. If we know what gift produces what outcome, we can do many offerings of a particular item which we recognise is needed by us. For example, Buddhist texts teach that the kammic return of offering flowers brings ten blessings to the giver.

      1 Long Life

      2 Good Health

      3 Strength

      4 Beauty

      5 Wisdom

      6 Ease along the Buddha Dhamma Path

      7 Being born in beautiful environments

      8 Born with good skin, hair and beautiful to look at

      9 Always having a sweet-smelling body

      10 Pleasant relationships with friends

      It is easy to give such things as food and flowers to our parents and the merit of these type gifts are very important to our human life.

      And for food offerings the Bohjana Sutta says as follows:

       “In giving a meal, the donor gives five things to the recipient. Which five? He or she gives life, beauty, happiness, strength, and quick-wittedness.” 5.

      As a result, the giver of the food has made the kamma to receive those five things back. Every day of our life we are using up our health, strength, long-life, beauty and alertness. We need to make many such food offerings to maintain our kammic stores of these things our lives really depend on.

      In terms of human history, we live in exceptional times. The living conditions of the majority of persons living in many modern societies today are superior in many ways to that experienced by kings and queens in past times.

      Many citizens living in wealthy Western societies have large stores of good kamma from our past to enable us to live in such good conditions. However, we are at the same time consuming a lot of our good kamma or merit just to live our daily lives. We are very high merit consumers. This is a characteristic of our modern world, we consume a lot of resources to function effectively in our society.

      Our life already has enormous opportunities to give to others regularly. When we have the right attitude to the countless generous actions we are already doing in our life, these actions will be transformed into much stronger causes for our happiness and well-being. Turn the mundane, common place things you do many times every day into the exact things you need to increase your happiness and well-being.

      It's a matter of remembering to not see your life as just getting things done. Recognise that many of the things you are getting done are your acts of generosity to others. Change from looking at your life in the old habitual way of living.

      When you turn on the heater or air conditioner offer the comfort or warmth to warm others when they are cold, cool air to cool others when they are hot.

      When you pay the gas bill, electricity bill, the water bill, etc., offer the water you are paying for with the intention to increase the long life, strength, health, cleanliness, beauty, and alertness of the others in your home. That is what they actually receive from the water you are providing.

      When you put flowers on the table offer them to everybody for their enjoyment and pleasure.

      When you clean, offer the clean environment you have created to others so that they always have good clean places to live in.

      When paying tax, offer the tax you earned from your efforts to all persons living in your country. Recollect all the things that tax money goes toward such as education and education resources, health care and medicines, roads, transportation systems, law and order, peaceful government, our welfare systems, pensions, and so on. Having recollected those things, offer them in your mind to all the persons living in your society.

      In the Dhammapada, the