"Things are not separate from one another. Everything is flow, everything is complete. Since no one owns anything, there is no giver or receiver. Life circulates as a gift. 'Things go round again go round,' as Wallace Stevens writes in his great poem, 'The Pleasures of Merely Circulating.' Our very bodies come and go, their molecules mixing with air, food, and water, and eventually dissolving into soil and air as they circulate into other beings. So the perfection of generosity is a joyful practice. Giving is simple. Its manifestations are myriad. One of my teachers once instructed me to practice giving in airport restrooms (I am in airports a lot) by wiping down sink counters when I am done washing my hands -- to do this for future sink users and for the sink itself. Even inanimate objects deserve our generosity and are likely to be generous in return.
"The counter-wiping practice can be done everywhere. Why not wipe counters in your own bathroom or kitchen as the practice of generosity? Do it beautifully and joyfully. For yourself, for others in your household, for the counters. You could wipe your counters as an offering to people far away who have no counters. When the perfection of generosity is appreciated as the limitless imaginative practice that it is, almost anything can be a vehicle for it."
