Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. Thubten Chodron guides practitioners through meditation on the first of the six far-reaching attitudes: generosity. After establishing the bodhisattva intention to become a Buddha for the benefit of all beings, she walks through three types of giving: material generosity (visualizing offering possessions and money to those in need), protective generosity (rescuing those in danger, consoling the afraid, safeguarding others’ welfare), and the generosity of wise counsel (offering compassionate listening, helping others understand their own anger, sharing Dharma teachings and books, or supporting Dharma activities). Throughout, she emphasizes visualization and encourages practitioners to examine their own blocks around letting go of attachment. The practice is sealed by reflecting that the giver, gift, action, and recipient are all empty of inherent existence, existing only interdependently. Suited for those familiar with Buddhist ethics and the bodhisattva path.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 39 GM.mp3
UUID: 16d99a91-d1c4-480e-8989-45e63419708a
Teacher: Thubten Chodron Guided Med
Collection: Guided Meditation (Thubten Chodron Guided Med)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~545
After we generate the altruistic intention then the sole focus of our life is to become a Buddha so we can benefit others most effectively. And to do that, we have to practice the six far reaching attitudes. So the first far reaching attitude is that of generosity, which is the wish to give our body, our possessions, and our positive potential to others for their benefit. There’s three types of generosity. The first kind is giving material possessions and money to those in need.
So think of what things you have now or might have in the future that you can give away and imagine giving these. So really visualize in your meditation, specific people. Imagine giving these things and imagine the others being happy. If you run into blocks and the mind says, but I don’t want to give these things away because then I won’t have them, then remind yourself that this is simply a visualization and give it a try. What would it feel like if I can loosen my attachment to those things and really give them and think of how happy the other people would be?
And then imagine doing it. The second type of generosity is giving protection to those who are in danger or in need. So this might be taking drowning bugs out of water or consoling those who are afraid, looking over other people’s possessions, any way of protecting others and preventing their fear. So think of situations in which you can practice this and then imagine you’re doing it. And the third type of giving is giving wise advice to people who need it or giving Dharma teachings to people who need it.
So giving advice doesn’t mean we tell people how to run their lives, but it can mean that we listen with a compassionate heart and ask questions that help people gain some understanding of their own situation. It can also mean that somebody comes to us and is angry. Instead of siding with them against the person they’re angry at, we help them understand their own anger. We explain various approaches and ways to look at the situation so that they can begin to give up their anger. And even if we’re not capable of giving Dharma teachings, we can give Dharma books.
We can say our prayers and mantra out loud so that the beings, the animals, the insects, the nearby environment can hear it. And we can support Dharma activities that spread the teachings. So think of situations in your life where you can do all these various kinds of activities that constitute giving wise advice and Dharma teachings to those who need them. And in our practice of generosity, what makes it the perfection of generosity is that every time we do a generous action, we think I’m doing this in order to become a Buddha for the benefit of all beings. And then after we do it, we reflect that ourselves as the agent, the object that we gave, the act of giving, and the recipient are all empty of inherent existence.
They all exist dependently. And so we seal our practice of generosity by understanding the emptiness of the agent and the action and the object.