Random Acts of Generosity: Spitting in the Wind or Casting Bread on the Water?

This past Friday, I kicked off my birthday weekend. Here are some highlights of the transition into my 56^th year: I baked three cakes and gave two of them away; I gave away three lunch bags, each to a homeless stranger (one was a veteran who had served in Iraq); I wrote three letters, each one to someone with whom I had not been in touch with for some time.

I seldom talk about the things I do for others; I really believe that the things you do secretly for others makes it more about them. But today is my birthday, and I have decided to make confessions.

For many months, if not the past several years, there has been a sense of unease growing inside me, mainly resulting from the quickly growing economic disparity within my community. Throughout the region, the numbers of homeless have grown. Housing for many is threatened by decreases in availability and increases in cost, while wages have been stagnant in most sectors except tech, banking, property development, and a few others. The drum is beaten against the sensibility of tying minimum wage to a cost of living index; even at a rate $15 an hour, who can survive on it?

There is unrest; there is violence; there is anger.

During the 1960s, when I was a kid, there was a “can do” attitude. There was a notion that we could tackle problems like illiteracy and hunger and solve them. Not only could they be solved here at home, but throughout the world. People were committed to this notion.

What happened?

The simple answer is greed happened. Institutions of all shapes, sizes and purposes have been carved out. Corporate stockholders are less likely to invest, more likely to sell off. Municipality, transit and utility boards have been deferring maintenance for decades, so that people at the top can make more and more money. The centralizing, commodifying, chartering and privatizing of everything is squeezing our institutions for every dime possible, while delivering their missions less sustainably and reliably. The so-called “sharing” and “gig” economies are merely code words that mean “we can’t make it with one job alone.”

Humanity bought capitalism and capitalism is failing humanity.

All of this makes me angry. My family struggles to make more and more money, and we have much, much less. And we look around and see that we are not alone in the struggle.

Of the issue of homelessness, people are quick to say that millions and millions of dollars have been applied to solve it and have not done a thing. “Spending money on homelessness is like spitting in the wind” is a sentence I have actually seen in the editorial pages of my regional newspaper. This is too frequently an excuse to do nothing, or worse, to criminalize vagrancy. “If we must have homelessness, I don’t want to see it” is the attitude.

So the can is kicked down the line to the next generation.

People, this just will not do.

But it is my birthday – this is my party. I could “cry if I want to”, as the lyrics from Lesley Gore’s 1963 song suggest, but I’m not going to do that.

I am going to live more audaciously, as the sermon I heard last night invited (thank you, Rabbi Judy Shanks!). That impulse to brazenly, if in haste, pack some food into flimsy lunch bags and hand it out my car window when encountering someone in need – I want to live like that, casting what bits of bread I have on the water, sharing it with a stranger.

The truth is that each of us has the world; we don’t need more than that. But what we possess, we must responsibility to uphold and steward. There is plenty, if we will but share. But this giving, we have to do it, we have to live that, every day.

Today is my birthday (and the birthday of the world!). It’s my party, and I declare it’s our party, and I invite you all to join me, in whatever way you can.

What you will do? How will you cast your bread on the water? What random acts of generosity will you perpetrate?

– Wait, don’t tell me. Let it be a surprise!

Sutra of No More Sutras

Thus I have heard, once and forever.

In the wake of Shariputra’s death and parinirvana, Ananda spoke,
voicing the thoughts of those assembled.

“Honored teacher, we know your time with us nears its completion.
Pray, tell us how to continue beyond your extinction?”

The Buddha opened his eyes and offered his smile to all,
and then he spoke:

“For many years, we have thus assembled,
and I have given voice to the music of one vehicle,
three treasures,
four noble truths,
six perfections,
ten powers and ten precepts,
twelve causes and thirty-two signs.
I have spoken and chanted into the ten directions:
and these sayings and singings continue to vibrate through the chiliocosm. “

“To you, a good doctrine has been given,
acknowledged by buddhas and arhats,
past, present and future,
and expertly remembered by you, honored Ananda.
Many sermons have been set down,
by scribe after scribe,
in scroll after scroll after scroll.

“Good cousin, Ananda,
these teachings of the way
have been the making of a raft,
one strong enough to float above
the ever-flowing stream of happening
and even of dharma practice.

“But this raft must now be untethered and released,
and each adept must engage
the singular stream of unfolding—
the teaching, and also the teacher,
must be released into the wild unknown.

“Wherefore?
Because, any other course would come to ruin
in grasping and corruption.”

All present, on hearing these things, quietly bowed their heads.

“Do not sorrow, Dear Ones,
do not sorrow; the great void is not to be feared,
for truly it is indicative of endless potential,
which is Presence,
gleaming and differently perceived in each moment.

“How the good doctrine will flourish
on the ever-flowing river
cannot be foretold by the Tathagata,
nor by all the ranks of adepts in every dimension,
neither can time tell.

“To reside on the scroll
is to miss the point,
it is a surrender to inaction
that borders on forgetting;
one can rapidly become lost
in the thicket of serifs and diacriticals,
grammars and dialecticals.

“This leads to doubt.
Doubt leads to discussion.
Discussion leads to arguments and grousing,
parsing and chasing
after forms and meanings.

“In the end, this activity is
so tarry illogical
to the reality of eternal moment.”

The birds in the trees stopped singing,
cocking their heads to listen.

The butterflies found a place to light,
so they could hear.

The trees bowed their limbs lower.

“The chasing after merit
is also like the chasing after forms and meanings.

“There is only the Way,
and the truth of the Way
is where the heaping of merit occurs
never for the individual,
but only for all of existence,
as served by the Three Jewels.

“These Jewels are Buddha, Dharma and Sangha;

compassion, frugality and humility;

right view, right knowledge and right conduct;
thought, word and deed;
essence, vitality and spirit.

“Any heaping of merit is
unknown and unknowable,
but indeed present in eternal moment.

“Every being who does right in the moment
heaps merit onto the wheel of time and change,
for all and for all time.

“There is no such thing as competition;
all conscious right actions are integral
to the completion of perfection.
This is the essence of the Middle Way.”

A single ray of light burst forth
from between the Buddha’s brows,
touching all with understanding.
The birds, the butterflies and the trees
arose jubilantly.

“Take to the raft of the Way and journey.
Be the gift of goodness in the World.
Do not write it or discuss or plan it.
Be it, in the best way you can, in the moment;
this is how the teaching grows and spreads
to all generations.”

When the Buddha finished this Discourse,
all present were filled with the joy of this teaching,
and, taking it sincerely to heart, they went their ways.

© 2015 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Borrowing

Spring cleaning:
an exercise in wiping away
the dust and tears,
the petty futilities
of talk that says nothing
and acts that do nothing;
so many things
you pay someone to do
you end up doing yourself--
so why pay?

Borrowing time,
always borrowing,
to think, to dream, to write, to sing,
to watch the children grow
(they won't be small for long);
I don't want to miss
my second childhood,
to feel again the growing pains
and all the other hurts
of being in a new world.

Borrowing youth--
time away from
dishes and dusting,
cooking and cleaning,
sweeping and sifting,
folding and scolding;
the sun and breeze
feel different now
than the first time
I sneezed my way through.

All borrowed,
all of this life,
this incomparable,
incomprehensible life,
this experiential being,
hopefully not interest-free;
we can only hope
to reduce our debt
by loving each day,
at peril of dust and tears.

© 2012 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

The Gift So Worn

Weariness,
weariness walks on my soul.

The doing that can never be done
tolls in my mind, a dissonant bell,
for there is no rest.

The sun rises,
yet there is no rising,
though the shining sun
blesses
even the most feeble flower.

That blessing,
birthing hope
over the multiscapes of being
—that light caresses the soft flower petal.

Would that I were the flower!

© 2011 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

Advent

When the feasting is done,
the workers return to the fields,
the householders return to the hearth;
the boards are swept of the leavings,
and actions return to sameness.

Is this indeed our lot?
Is this what all the celebration was for?

That being abounds in sameness
is a misapprehension
of our purpose.

The Divine One sighs.

Celebration,
it should be a sending forth
into revolution,
nothing less than
a miracle of conception,
that will be nurtured
with warm and loving hands,
an alchemy of all the elements
and all that is unseen.

Life cannot be measured,
cannot be calculated
into minutes of this,
hours of that.

Life is even beyond
the measure of the mead
that raises warmth to the cheek,
that raises the inner spirit toward
the unexpected.

Life is the journey,
pushing beyond all boundaries
of the known and comfortable,
to a place wholly unknown.

There is no arrival,
but expect the abyss
to be open before you,
waiting.

A divine bridge will appear
for all who have the courage
to step forward.

This is the morning after,
the Dawning Day of Next,
wherein we meet God
in the work of creation.

© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen

The Point

Many people ask the difficult question,
“What is the point?”

This = ,
this point,
this is where we meet;
this is a place, both metaphorical and real:
now.

There may have been a before,
which speaks to some other point of fact or being,
or may even indicate a point of origin,
if such is possible,

But this is the here-and-always-now,
the ultimate point on which we must focus our attention—
all comings and goings depend upon ti,
all shall-be and ever-beens, as well—
the turnings of universes within universes
rely on how well met we are at this point.

Shall we dance like angels on the head of a pin?
The point is what we make of it, within it,
whether guiding or following it as a moving path,
in lines or waves,
flowing on it as a stream,
surrounding it, avoiding it,
on point or off,
melding into or averting from
(rendering either a going and a return
or a point of departure)…

Now is always;
whether we “decide” to meet there or not,
now happens,
here, there and everywhere.

Now is the wellspring of creation,
the hub,
the crux,
the point of being
and, more to the point,
of beingness.

How shall we make our point?
How shall we be?
What shall we do?

Now is an opportunity that requires action
(for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health),
but action depends on how we define our point.

Shall we dance?


© 2010 by Elisabeth T. Eliassen