Generosity

Generosity means to share with or be kind towards others. It is not to be blindly kind towards people as this can cause negative results, making them spoiled, greedy, and lazy. Generosity needs to be guided by wisdom.

To be generous, we first need to be wise and get rid of our greed, possessiveness, and jealousy. People lost in these three powers have no chance to develop a generous character.

Generosity has two different types: External and Internal.

External Generosity

It is to share or support other people with money and material goods. There are two different ways to do this: with and without ego. Being generous with ego is the human style; being generous without ego is the bodhisattva generosity character.

For more details, please see this explanation of the Heart Sutra.

Internal Generosity

It is to help others out of suffering and discover unlimited happiness: nirvana. The best way to do that is to help their consciousness develop from blindness to wakefulness. When they have successfully developed their wisdom ability, they will not need generosity from others. Instead, they will have the ability to share or be generous to others.

The more important generosity type is Internal. Why so? If we are only generous to others externally, there are limits to what we can do to help them. As the old saying goes, give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach him to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.

The most important style is Eternal Wisdom with Internal Generosity.

External Generosity can only help people temporarily get rid of their suffering, but Eternal Wisdom can help people out of suffering forever and live free with joy.

Thus, helping people discover the eternal truth of life is the most incredible bodhisattva’s generosity character.