The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path

by Norman Fischer

Dogen tells us that you practice generosity simply by not grabbing or wanting, simply by being happy to receive whatever is given. To be content is to be generous. When you are content, you will spontaneously give. You will give, he writes, flowers on a distant hillside, treasures you possessed in a former life, even things that don’t belong to you. You will give what you see and hear and imagine. You will give a line of scripture, a penny, a blade of grass, a particle of dust. When your generosity defies all rational bounds, people will be deeply impressed, their lives transformed. Later in the essay, Dogen writes, “to launch a boat or build a bridge is an act of giving. If you study giving closely, you see that to accept a body [to be born] and to give up the body [to die] are both giving.”