Dana as Skilful Means

This talk was given in 2000

Skilful means is skilful means of communicating the Dharma, communicating the Truth. Skilful means are the best possible means, the means that are most effective. Skilful means could also be interpreted as the most effective or best means of discovering the Truth. Dana means giving, generosity. So we are concerned with generosity as a means of discovering the Truth, generosity as means of experiencing the Truth even, and also generosity as a means of communicating the Truth or Dharma.

Skilful means is a question of motivation. Eventually generosity is motivated by Wisdom and Compassion that is when it is truly skilful means. However in the earlier stages of spiritual life we will have many different motivations. We may, for instance, be motivated to be generous out of a need for approval. We may feel, consciously or unconsciously, that if we are generous then people will like us, we will be approved of. This is obviously not a pure motivation, but we shouldn't be too hasty to condemn it, because it has the seeds of wisdom in it. It is true that if we are generous, we will create a more pleasant immediate world for ourselves to live in and that we are more likely to have friends. The trouble is that if our giving is too much a matter of wanting to be loved, it may not be generosity at all and in that case it could have the opposite effect. People may try to avoid someone who demands to be loved, demands friends, demands to be liked and uses their own acts of giving as a kind of bargaining counter, to induce guilt. Someone who says things like “How can you be so unkind to me after all I've given you?”, “I feel betrayed”. This kind of attitude makes people run a mile. I think it is okay to give, to be generous in the hope that people will like us and treat us well as a result but it is counterproductive to demand to be loved or demand friendship. Love can be given but love cannot be taken. If we give we can be sure that it will have beneficial consequences, so we don't really need to demand anything in return. Demanding that people like us only sets up another set of consequences that are less beneficial.

Another possible motivation for being generous is that we take it on as a practice, a sort of training or discipline to help us to transcend selfishness. In this instance we are motivated by a desire to change and we are following the advice of tradition and of those more experienced to bring about positive change in ourselves. Our generosity resulting from this kind of motivation might feel uncomfortable, a bit stilted and awkward. And we might not be wise in our giving, but since it is a practice, a training, it doesn't matter that we get it wrong from time to time. The main thing is to do it, to be generous and by being generous to learn about ourselves and transform ourselves. This is a good motivation for generosity and again it has in it the seeds of Wisdom. It is wise to follow in the footsteps of the wise.

Or we may be motivated to be generous by feelings of guilt. This is an emotion that is sometimes played upon by the advertising agencies for some of the bigger charities. Although I believe it is good to give whatever the motive, in this case I would say that the whole benefit of giving is seriously undermined, In the first place there will be little spiritual benefit unless the guilt is overcome and secondly it is questionable whether the sort of people who use such emotional manipulation are good custodians of donations, since if they are willing to be devious in acquiring funds, they may also be devious and manipulative in their distribution. To allow ourselves to be manipulated is to encourage those who are manipulative. However in the case of large agencies it is to be hoped that there are sufficient checks and balances in place to make sure that the eventual recipients do benefit, at least materially. But I think we need to be very wary of guilt as a motivation and try to move beyond it to some more positive motivation. On the other hand we shouldn't use the fact that we may feel a bit guilty to prevent us from giving at all. What we need to do is carry on giving but work on overcoming the guilt. Guilt of this type is a species of self-hatred and self-hatred can breed all sorts of other hatreds and resentments that from a larger perspective will tend to create the very problems, the problems of war and conflict, that our generosity is trying to alleviate.

Another possible motivation is that we may simply be motivated by seeing a need. We see that someone needs something, or needs attention or affection and we just quite naturally give. It just seems the right thing to do, the natural thing to do. This is probably the result of positive conditioning and a natural empathy with others and is a very beautiful state of consciousness. If we are like this, naturally generous, we can build on it and stretch ourselves beyond being generous in response to a need to being generous without any such stimulus, so that generosity becomes what we are rather than just what we do.

And then our generosity may be motivated by a desire to bring meaning into people's lives and a desire to help people see and experience their interconnectedness with others. This is the motivation of skilful means. This is not a calculating or manipulative motivation. Rather it grows out of a happy spontaneous generosity that is then channelled by a growing wisdom. That wisdom or awareness can see beyond the surface of life to what is really needed for the well-being of humankind. What is really needed is for more and more people to embody the truth of human connectedness.

There are many different motivations for being generous, some of which I've mentioned. They range from a negative guilt, through approval seeking, wanting to change, responding to needs, to a spontaneous integrated generosity that is eventually channelled by awareness and wisdom into creating spiritual community (Sangha), so that people can have the conditions in which to experience a deeper meaning or higher truth in their lives.

For most of us most of the time our motivations are mixed. We experience a whole cocktail of motivations simultaneously and if we were to spend our time worrying about getting it right we might not act at all. I think we need to trust that if we are meditating and trying to be more ethical then gradually our motivations will clarify and purify. We don't need to dissect our motivations every time we are generous or kind. That could be undermining and inhibiting of our positive actions and what we need is encouragement. We need to encourage our generosity and kindness and encourage generosity and kindness in others. We need to praise and rejoice in generosity wherever we see it, so that we encourage that flow of positivity. If we do that then our motivations will gradually be purified through the positive beneficial consequences of our actions. Actions proceed from the mind and are affected by our mental states, but actions also have an effect on our minds and can encourage the growth of positive mental states. This is why generosity is encouraged as a practice regardless of motivation. The act of giving gives a generous shape or a generous flavour to our mind and that begins to mould a new consciousness that is more expansive and more naturally generous. Generosity is a skilful means of giving a transcendent flavour to our consciousness. Generosity transcends egotism.

There are many different ways to give and they all lead us to the truth and enable is to lead others to the truth too. I'll just briefly go through some of the traditional ways to give. We can, for instance, give our experience of spiritual practice. We can share the benefits of our practice with others. This doesn't necessarily mean teaching meditation to others. That would not be appropriate until you were well established in practice and able to follow through any questions that arose. In the early stages of our spiritual life giving of our experience may mean simply helping out in such a way as to enable more experienced people to teach and spend time with people.

Another form of giving is giving confidence. You give confidence to others by being confident. Confidence is undermined by fear of failure and by a bad conscience. The only way to deal with fear is to act in the face of it and by acting we gain confidence. If we make an effort to develop loving kindness and to practice the precepts we will have a clear conscience and therefore be able to be confident that no one can reproach us. We give confidence by not allowing ourselves to be held back by fears, by being ethical and by encouraging others. Then there is giving of education and culture. This is sharing our knowledge, talents and enthusiasm with others.

Then there is what is traditionally known as giving life and limb. This means being willing to die for the sake of Truth. Under present circumstances in this country we are unlikely to be called upon to sacrifice our lives for the Dharma. That is not always the case everywhere in the world. For instance in Afghanistan the Taliban government has destroyed some 2000-year-old Buddhist statues and I imagine they wouldn't be too friendly to Buddhists either. But I think for us this giving of life and limb simply means being willing to be inconvenienced. Being willing to engage wholeheartedly, not just mentally, but also physically and do what needs to be done to create and maintain the conditions that enable ourselves and others to have a spiritual practice. This could mean simply helping out around the Buddhist Centre, doing a bit of cleaning or painting or it might mean cooking for a festival day or helping someone who is ill by doing their shopping, and so on. This willingness to be inconvenienced is something that goes against the grain of our comfort culture and something we need to consciously work at.

Then there is the giving of time and energy and the giving of material things and money. I want to go into these at some length because this is where many of us will be able to practice generosity most and also where many of us will experience the greatest resistance to being generous: time, energy, money, possessions. All these are connected with each other; time, energy, money, material things. We often sell our time and energy in order to acquire money with which we can buy goods. The things we have in our room or flat or house represent a certain amount of time and energy. They cost time and energy.

Time is very precious. “Our little life is rounded with a sleep” as Shakespeare's Prospero says. Our life is quite little or short from an historical or cosmic perspective. If we are fortunate we can expect to live about seventy five or eighty years. Of these the first twenty or so are spent growing up and the last five or ten are likely to be less active. So we may have about forty five or fifty active years and of course if we sleep for about eight hours a day that is a third of our lives that we spend asleep, leaving us with thirty to thirty five years of active adult life, which is not that much. So time is precious. Any major purchase we make such as buying a house costs us several years of our life. Our goods, our material possessions cost us a certain amount of time of which we do not have an unlimited supply. During that time we use energy, physical, emotional and mental energy. We sell our time and energy for money which we then convert into goods and services.

Because time and energy are so precious it becomes necessary to use them well. We need to be as creative or as intelligent as possible with our time and energy. When we come to see and understand the importance and necessity of the spiritual dimension of life we will naturally want to give more of our time and energy to our spiritual aspirations. And we may eventually want to give most of our time and energy to the spiritual dimension of life for our own sake and for the sake of others. We may even want to give our time and energy to creating the conditions for spiritual practice for future generations. We may come to feel that here is nothing more worthwhile to spend our time and energy on. As that happens we will be more and more generous with our time and energy; seeing each day as an opportunity for encouraging spiritual growth in ourselves and others. This might still mean selling our time and energy to acquire money, but the money would be substantially used in the service of the Dharma.

Generosity as skilful means is generosity that enables us to progress spiritually, enables us to encourage others to progress spiritually and brings about harmony and goodwill between all those who are trying to practice the Dharma. And that is what we will start to use our time and energy for as generosity becomes a more spontaneous quality of who we are.

Often we can expect to experience resistance in ourselves to giving time and energy. Because of the way society is ordered and the current ethos of selling one's life in order to consume, we may tend to make a sharp division between work and leisure, time that doesn't belong to us and time that belongs to us. And of course we can then be very possessive or precious about “my time”, “time for myself”, and through habit and convention we may often proceed to waste it by doing nothing or going shopping. A good use of “my time” or the time and energy that we are not selling is to give it wholeheartedly to what is most meaningful to us. Engagement and wholeheartedness also strangely enough increases our time. Time is a function of consciousness. Time is created by consciousness and a consciousness that is more aware and engaged creates more time. Emotional resistance uses up a lot of energy and leaves us feeling impoverished.

We need to be aware of any tendency to try to hoard our time and energy. It is self-defeating and emotionally impoverishing. We may think that we are being kind to ourselves. We may rationalise our emotional resistance to giving time and energy as not being hard on ourselves. But if we go along with our emotional resistances and poverty mind we will be condemning ourselves to dullness of mind and lack of vitality. Hoarding of time and energy is wasteful, it is better to give our time and energy to that which is meaningful.

I'd like to move on to say a few things about money and possessions. I find money fascinating. What it is, how it moves around, it's potential for good and evil, its associations with happiness and security; it's a very interesting thing, money. And as a topic it is is still somewhat taboo, which makes it even more fascinating. It is not quite socially acceptable to ask someone how much money they earn, how much savings they have, what they spend their money on or what they expect to inherit, and yet these things are so interesting. It is also fascinating to consider attitudes to money and conditioning around money. This is an area where many of us are quite unconscious.

It is very interesting to ask ourselves about our early conditioning around money. What is your earliest memory of money? What was your parents attitude to money? How much has your life been influenced by your early conditioning around money? Are you someone who saves money or never saves, someone who borrows or never borrows. What does this tell you about yourself? Do you part with money easily or are you very reluctant to part with money? Do you assume that your own way of handling money is the best? Do you find the topic of money exciting or depressing, or irritating or scary? If so why? There are so many questions we can ask ourselves about our attitudes to money and there is so much to learn about ourselves by looking into this area of our lives. I would recommend this as an exercise to anyone wanting to develop self-knowledge. I'm not even suggesting that you should change your attitude to money just that you become aware of it.

Money is conventionally defined as a medium of exchange. It replaced barter as a more flexible way to do business. And money is very flexible. It can become almost anything. We tend to think of money as a substance, as something material, because we associate it with notes and coins, but of course money is not notes and coins. That is just a way of representing money or indicating money. Money itself is something else. Most money is represented by numbers on paper or numbers on computer files. And these numbers are constantly changing, moving, flowing. It is best not to think of money as something concrete, it is best to think of it as something fluid. Money is a flow of energy. Money is pure potential. Money is a medium by which consciousness acts in the world. Because we are egotistic creatures and therefore spend much time and effort defending and consolidating our ego identity, we tend to channel money to this purpose too. Therefore we tend to give money the qualities of security and stability and substance. This is just an extension of the delusion that gives stability and substance to our own ego identity. But just as we are in reality a constantly changing process mentally, emotionally and physically, so too is everything else in the Universe including money.

In this regard it is interesting to consider the idea of savings, saving money. Is it possible to save money? It certainly seems to be possible. But how can you save something that is essentially a process, a flow of energy. Traditionally you put your notes and coins in a metal box and put that in a safe place. Of course this is not really saving money because in time it loses value and you could end up with so much relatively worthless paper and metal. What most people do is give their money to a bank, probably with the vague notion that the bank looks after it for them. What a bank does with any money deposited with it is that it promptly gives it to someone else or, more precisely, it sells your money to someone else. When you save money what you are doing is selling it to the bank for a certain period of time and the bank promptly sells it on to someone else, at a profit of course. But what is it that you sell to the banks and what does the bank sell on to someone else? This is a question worth pondering.

Well if your money is really the result of an expenditure of time and energy then it is time and energy that is deposited with the bank and it is time and energy that the bank sells. It could be said that it is more creative to and imaginative to borrow money than to save money. The bank buys or rents money from people who are not able to do anything creative or imaginative with it and sells or rents money out to people who can use it creatively and imaginatively. Of course when you put your money in a bank, this money which represents hours and days and years of your life energy, when you put it in the bank, you have no idea where it goes next or what use it's put to. It could be constructive or destructive, it could be positive or harmful, you just don't know. This is why we often recommend Triodos bank to people because Triodos Bank is a bank run by followers of the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, (Anthroposophy). It operates a policy of transparency, so you can know exactly who your money is being lent to. And the projects they lend to are all life enhancing in one way or another. To use their own words, they lend to projects which “create social and environmental value”.

Because money is fluid and flows on incessantly it is not quite as simple as I've been saying. It is not just you, your bank and whoever your bank lends to. The money didn't begin with you and it doesn't end with the borrower. It is just an invisible cord that connects you to all these people whose hands it passes through. As with everything else, the money we come into contact with is part of a vast chain or cycle of events and we only have the opportunity to send it on its way as positively as possible. As Glen Saunders, a manager at Triodos bank, says “There is no such thing as clean money. Money passes from hand to hand and you can never be quite sure where it has been, nor in its longer life where it will go. It's very “social” in this way, linking you with people you might wish to avoid. We think you can never ask for clean money, only that when it comes into your hands, you transform it by what you do with it.”

(Triodos News Spring 2001 p3)

This is the crucial ethical question in relation to money; what you do with it. And the first thing to consider with regard to what we do with money is are we aware of what we do with our money. Do we know what we spend our money on or do we just have a vague notion about it. As an exercise in developing awareness it is worth writing down what we spend our money on and noting how much goes where. Then we will be in the position to ask ourselves whether that is what we want to spend our money on. Again to quote Glen Saunders “Much ethical investment is defined by a list of things to avoid. But it's much more interesting to look at what is embraced and supported. Thus, for Triodos Bank, our “ethical” is about finding people taking initiative who need capital in order to add social, environmental and cultural value to society.” (ibid)

It seems to me that this is a very good ethical approach. Not concentrating on what to avoid, although of course there are many things to avoid, but concentrating our energy and money on what adds value to humanity; what enhances life and encourages awareness and compassion. This is the ethical dimension to spending money. Channelling the time and energy represented by money as positively as we can. To do this we need to make some effort to be aware of what our money is likely to become when it leaves our custody. What will our money cause to happen. What will it bring into being. If you buy a bar of chocolate or a packet of coffee or a jar of honey you are becoming part of a particular chain or cycle of events. Do you know what sort of chain of events that is? Is it something you want to encourage or support? When you buy clothing or toiletries or a car you are involving yourself in a whole chain of activity. Is it something you want to encourage and support? When you buy a book or pay for a retreat you are involving yourself in a particular chain of events. Is it something you want your time and energy invested in? This is the sort of question we need to ask ourselves often if we are to be ethical in our use of money which represents the resources of time and energy. We also need to ask ourselves what it is that we do want to encourage and support. What are our priorities? What do we believe will enhance life? We cannot be skilful in our use of resources unless we are more aware of what direction we want to move in and what direction we need to encourage the rest of society to move in.

In terms of skilful means, what is being encouraged and supported is communication and harmony between people based on spiritual values. The values of non-violence, generosity, contentment, truthfulness and awareness. To promote, encourage and support these values is skilful means. It is a means of creating and unifying the Sangha or spiritual community. The best possible use of money is to channel it in a direction which encourages and supports these spiritual values. These spiritual values are the foundation for a more sane, ecologically aware and compassionate world. And it is just sensible to give our time and energy,whether in the form of money or otherwise, to creating a sane, ecologically aware and compassionate world. This is what Dana as skilful means is about . And if we want to enter into this sort of chain of activity, this stream of beneficial activity, then we need to take a radical look at our lives and especially at our attitude to money and our use of money. By doing this we will begin to transform ourselves and we will also start to help transform the world.

I said earlier that we tend to see money as something stable, secure and substantial and because of our basic self-view we seek security and stability through money. If we practice Dana as skilful means we are trusting to communication and human connections and friendship for our security and stability. Dana as skilful means is the practice of generosity to bring about harmony and connection and friendship between people. This connection and harmony based on common spiritual values and aspirations is what makes human life meaningful and what makes the prospect of death bearable. When I think of death I envisage my friends rejoicing and celebrating my life. Wealth is produced as a result of the human need for security and as we evolve beyond the material into the spiritual dimension we come to see and understand that real security and real wealth lies in friendship, harmony, trust and interconnection and this is what leads us to practice Dana as skilful means.