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Norman Vincent Peale, Frederic Brussat's Twitter Collection
If you think you have given enough, think again. There is always more to give and someone to give it to.
There is always more to give
Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
Compassion has nothing to do with achievement at all. It is spacious and very generous. When a person develops real compassion, he is uncertain whether he is being generous to others or to himself because compassion is environmental generosity, without direction, without "for me" and without "for them." It is filled with joy, spontaneously existing joy, constant joy in the sense of trust, in the sense that joy contains tremendous wealth, richness.
Real compassion is filled with joy
Jack Kornfield, Frederic Brussat's Twitter Collection
Compassionate generosity is the foundation of true spiritual life because it is the practice of letting go.
Compassionate generosity
Master Hsing Yun, Keys to Living Well
Gratitude is the resource for cherishing our blessings. In conducting ourselves, we must have the virtue of gratitude. People who are grateful cherish what they have, enabling them to go on to repay others in return. As the saying goes, "Repay the generosity of a drop of water with a gushing spring." Gratitude is the wealth of life, and the lives of those who are grateful are the richest.
Gratitude is resource for cherishing our blessings
Geri Larkin, The Chocolate Cake Sutra
In Buddhism, we accept that there are ten thousand sorrows in every life. At the same time there are ten thousand joys. In the Dhammapada, a much-beloved sutra, the teaching is clear: "Live in joy." For the more than forty years that he taught, the Buddha focused on behaviors that would pull us toward joy if we acted on the teachings. Generosity is the behavior that starts the joy parade. Generosity is the practice of giving joy.
Generosity starts the joy parade
The Ten Commandments
"Stealing, in the biblical sense, then, is not so much a private or personal sin as it is a social sin. To take what we do not need, to destroy what is useful to another, to deprive those in the community of their basic needs is stealing.
"Strict honesty in business dealings is the foundation of the entire Torah, the Jew learns. It is, the Jewish child knows, the first thing for which a person is judged in the heavenly court. Business and a career are always to be considered secondary to our duties toward God, however successful the business, however consuming the career.
"In the final analysis, then, this commandment cries out for us today to rethink the Western notion that the accumulation of wealth is an ideal worthy of a human life. It reminds us that sharing is the human imperative because we all depend on someone else somehow to provide what we each need. None of us is entirely self-sufficient. It warns us that compensation must be just. It reminds us that stealing is as much about method as it is about money.
"In a world where credit card companies charge from 12 to 21 percent interest and 3 billion people are living on less than $2.00 a day while the average CEO of a Fortune 500 company is earning over $8,500,000 annually, 'You shall not steal' may be the commandment that proves what Jesus meant when he said, 'It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for the rich to get into heaven' (Matt. 19:24).
"The 'deal,' the 'scam,' the legal loopholes that form the business patterns of the twenty-first century make stealing the template, the foundation, of the business world. Those who have get more. No questions asked. But those who have nothing get only disdain.
"With the rise of the middle class and the industrialization of the Western world, reformist theology swung away from the scriptural obligation to provide the poor with ways to glean their livelihood off the surplus of others. Instead, the whole philosophy of 'rugged individualism' emerged. Those who could get could have. Those who could not get died in the gutters of the newly emerging cities or lived in squalor. They sold their bodies to the evils of day labor in the nineteenth century and felt their souls smothered by the shame of being dependent on handouts and bread lines in the twentieth century.
"Now small checks, too slim to assure their dignity and reluctantly given, deprive their children of medical care and three meals a day.
"Stealing has become the order of the day in a world bulging with wealth and teeming with the poor at the same time.
"The interpretation of the commandment, shrunk to the level of the personal, gives a very specious comfort to those for whom the theme of social justice has long been missing in their understanding of the Decalogue's mandate for communal sharing. 'You shall not steal' has been reduced to mean no shoplifting, no pilfering, no pickpockets, no burglary, no petty theft. It has become the province of poor people, sick people, immature people.
"But the stealing the Decalogue really has in mind, is really concerned about, has actually become the sin of rich people, powerful people, people in a position to say 'take it or leave it' to those who seek a living wage or subsidized housing or medical benefits and pensions.
" 'I have heard the cry of my people in Egypt' (Exod. 3:7) Yahweh says to Moses in the burning bush 'and I mean to deliver them.' The awesome thought of Yahweh bringing down plagues on a people who treated them poorly, overworked and underpaid them, sends a tremor through the entire Hebrew scriptures. If we listen carefully, it is almost possible to feel the shudder again, now, in our own time, when 225 wealthy people have an annual income equal to that of 2.5 billion of the poorest people on the planet and, as a result, the poorest die daily from starvation."
Joan Chittister on the many meanings of stealing.
Planting Seeds
Watering Flowers
"Materials: colored pens, pencils, or markers; and for each child a large drawing of a flower head with a circle in the center, with as many petals as there are people in the circle
"Sitting in a circle, each child can write his own name in the center of the flower. Then he can write a quality or something that he likes about himself in one of the petals. If some children can't write much, encourage them to draw something in the petal or an adult can transcribe their words.
"Everyone passes their picture to the person on their left. Then everyone fills in the next petal and writes a good quality of the person whose name is in the center. At the end of the session everyone should have a flower full of good qualities about themself offered by each person in the group. You can do the same thing with rays of the sun showing a child's strengths. Each child draws a picture of the sun with large sunrays. Put a photo of the child in the center or have them draw their own face there. The compliments they received in flower watering can be written in short form in the rays themselves.
"You can also do this exercise without the drawing and just give the children the chance to have their flower watered by every other child in the circle. They can give compliments, thanks, or notice positive qualities in the child. There is a fifth-grade teacher in Germany who hands out a sheet of paper to each student in the class with the names of every student (and herself, too!) down the left-hand column of the page. Every student writes one sentence appreciating every other person in the class. Then, she takes the sheets, cuts them carefully, and pastes all the positive qualities about one student on a single page to copy and hand to them. It is time-consuming but she notices that the atmosphere changes dramatically in her classroom after this, becoming much warmer and more open."
Thich Nhat Hanh on children learning to compliment and praise one another.
The Ultimate Gift
Red Stevens (James Garner), a self-made billionaire, has passed away and his relatives and lawyers gather in a board room to hear his partner Ted Hamilton (Bill Cobbs) and executor of the estate read the will. Many of them are disappointed, and others feel that they have been cheated. Before he died, Red made a video of himself speaking directly to Jason Stevens (Drew Fuller), a privileged young man who is the black sheep of the family. He has lived off a trust fund and spent most of his days as a hedonist, doing whatever he wanted. Red has other plans for him: if he wants his inheritance he must fulfill a series of 12 challenges designed to help him clarify what is most important in his life. Ted will judge whether Jason passes each test or not.
The first task is to come to appreciate the gift of work. This is a hard one since this "trust fund baby" has had everything handed to him on a platter. Jason travels to Texas where Gus (Brian Dennehy), a rancher friend of Red's, takes him to a corner of his property and leaves him alone to build a barbed-wire fence. After some initial squirming and fretting, Jason gets the hang of the work and in a month's time has passed the first test.
The second challenge involves making due without money: his credit cards, penthouse, and car are taken away. The third challenge is to learn the meaning of the gift of friendship. Jason struggles with this one but is fortunate enough to meet ten-year-old Emily (Abigail Breslin), a spunky and imaginative little girl who is dying of leukemia. She and her single mother Alexia (Ali Hillis) are burdened with many problems but are willing to help Jason out.
As he proceeds on the journey that his grandfather has designed, this self-centered young man begins to slowly open his heart to others. He benefits from the gifts of learning and solving problems but is most stunned by the gift of family. This involves a trip to Ecuador where his father died mysteriously.
The Ultimate Gift is based on a self-published book by Jim Stovall that has sold three million copies. This parabolic film directed by Michael Sajbel depicts the spiritual transformation of a self-absorbed individual. The 12 gifts enable him to become a more loving, compassionate, hospitable, generous, and kind human being. Although Drew Fuller is the focus of the drama, the emotional vibrancy is delivered by Abigail Breslin, who proves that her Academy Award-nominated performance in Little Miss Sunshine was no fluke. With the smallest gesture or changes in her voice, she conveys the soulfulness of a pint-sized spiritual teacher who plays a crucial role in changing Jason's way of life. In these times when the gap between the rich and the poor is widening, it is good to be reminded that true wealth is giving to others and not looking to satisfy our own needs.
The Ultimate Gift is not as good as Pay It Forward but it does in its own didactic way affirm the high value of the spiritual practice of generosity.
Special DVD features include: an introduction by source writer Jim Stovall; "Behind the Scenes of The Ultimate Gift"; featurette "Live the Ultimate Gift"; and music videos "Something Changed" and "Legacy."
A parabolic film about one selfish young man's spiritual transformation.
Let Your Life Speak
"If I try to be or do something noble that has nothing to do with who I am, I may look good to others and to myself for a while. But the fact that I am exceeding my limits will eventually have consequences. I will distort myself, the other, and our relationship — and may end up doing more damage than if I had never set out to do this particular 'good.' When I try to do something that is not in my nature or the nature of the relationship, the way will close behind me.
"Here is one example of what I mean. Over the years, I have met people who have made a very human claim on me by making known their need to be loved. For a long time, my response was instant and reflexive, born of the 'oughts' I had absorbed: 'Of course you need to be loved. Everyone does. And I love you.'
"It took me a long time to understand that although everyone needs to be loved, I cannot be the source of that gift to everyone who asks me for it. There are some relations in which I am capable of love and others in which I am not. To pretend otherwise, to put out promissory notes I am unable to honor, is to damage my own integrity and that of the person in need — all in the name of love.
"Here is another example of violating one's nature in the name of nobility, an example that shows the larger dangers of false love. Years ago, I heard Dorothy Day speak. Founder of the Catholic Worker movement, her long-term commitment to living among the poor on New York's Lower East Side — not just serving them but sharing their condition — had made her one of my heroes. So it came as a great shock when in the middle of her talk, I heard her start to ruminate about the 'ungrateful poor.'
"I did not understand how such a dismissive phrase could come from the lips of a saint — until it hit me with the force of a Zen koan. Dorothy Day was saying, 'Do not give to the poor expecting to get their gratitude so that you can feel good about yourself. If you do, your giving will be thin and short-lived, and that is not what the poor need; it will only impoverish them further. Give only if you have something you must give; give only if you are someone for whom giving is its own reward.'
"When I give something I do not possess, I give a false and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in reality, loveless — a gift given more from my need to prove myself than from the other's need to be cared for. That kind of giving is not only loveless but faithless, based on the arrogant and mistaken notion that God has no way of channeling love to the other except through me. Yes, we were created in and for community, to be there, in love, for one another. But community cuts both ways: when we reach the limits of our own capacity to love, community means trusting that someone else will be available to the person in need.
"One sign that I am violating my own nature in the name of nobility is a condition called burnout. Though usually regarded as the result of trying to give too much, burnout in my experience results from trying to give what I do not possess — the ultimate in giving too little! Burnout is a state of emptiness, to be sure, but it does not result from giving all I have: it merely reveals the nothingness from which I was trying to give in the first place.
"May Sarton, in her poem 'Now I Become Myself,' uses images from the natural world to describe a different kind of giving, grounded in a different way of being, a way that results not in burnout but in fecundity and abundance:
"As slowly as the ripening fruit"Fertile, detached, and always spent,"Falls but does not exhaust the root . . .
"When the gift I give to the other is integral to my own nature, when it comes from a place of organic reality within me, it will renew itself — and me — even as I give it away. Only when I give something that does not grow within me do I deplete myself and harm the other as well, for only harm can come from a gift that is forced, inorganic, unreal."
Parker Palmer on being authentic and loving.
The Intuitive Writer
"Listening is soft. A sound occurs and you cradle it, gently.
"Listening is harmonic. Being in tune, you hear the whole chord, not just the melodic line.
"Listening is playful. A hodge-podge of sublime, voodoo, spooky, exotic, weird.
"Listening is virtual. Wrapped in a spell, you experience the spell, sometimes more powerfully than your actual life.
"Listening is subtle. You can skimp on depth, but your connection with the speaker will be negatively affected.
"Listening is yielding. "Bend an ear" means your whole listening nature.
"Listening is rhythmical. You catch the beat of the other person's essence and modulate (dum-tee-dum-tee-dum) your interjections accordingly.
"Listening is multi-tasked. Simultaneously, the listener receives, organizes, makes meaning, responds, and processes the feelings that arise in herself.
"Listening is generous. You give, first yourself, then the speaker, your entire attention.
"Listening is willing. There is a word for people who only hear what is already in their heads.
"Listening is setting aside your defenses (for the time being). Upholding defenses requires psychic energy that, if you are listening, rightfully belongs to the other person.
"Listening is personal, therefore creative. A jazz musician hunched over his keyboard is listening to himself, wherein the next note resides.
"Listening is forever. Not only does everything we do reverberate for eternity, How we do anything reverberates for eternity. How we do anything is forever.
"Listening isn't just listening. Listening is the meeting point of souls."
Gail Sher on qualities of listening.