On Generosity

"If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; it's purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold evermore wonders." Andrew Harvey


*

The Buddha named generosity as the first of the Ten Perfected Qualities of an enlightened mind.

*

Author M. J. Ryan contends that generosity is "the mother of kindness." And it can be manifested in many forms — material, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. "We can be generous when we give our knowledge, our awareness, our empathy, or our silence. Generosity is also about letting go of grudges, hurts, and concepts of ourselves and the world that stand in the way of our connection to others."

*

Lama Surya Das: "Don't we all need some concrete form of retraining so that we may learn to be more generous and let go more gracefully? We all — each of us without exception — have so much to give if we only knew it."

*

"It’s not the earthquake that controls the advent of a different life but storms of generosity." Boris Pasternak