Our Teacher John Hughes spent a lot of time teaching us how to give things.

Why would he bother to teach us how to give? Giving appears to be simple enough. We have been giving all sorts of things to others many times a day for most of our adult life. If we are parents that is all about giving, as our children are dependent on us to use our skills and resources to support them. It seems like simple stuff.

We have a book in our library at the Buddhist Discussion Centre about giving called "Dana" which is the Pali word for generosity. The book is 778 pages long. That means there is a lot about giving we have not learned yet!

So this is not just information about what we could refer to as conventional giving. This is teachings about the Buddhist practice of giving. The practice of giving called "dana" in the Pali language, is placed first in the order of things, as a foundation for the process of us becoming free from suffering.

Firstly it is important if we can recognise our dependence on giving as the means by which we will have what we need in our future - both this life and future lives.

We can recollect what the Buddha found out about absolute reality. Buddha says the reason why we receive wealth in the first place, no matter how we received it, comes from something totally different to what is happening when we get the money. How we get the money is we work and get paid for it, but why we get the money comes from our past acts of giving.

We can reflect that Buddhism teaches us that our life itself, and everything that comes to us such as material goods, the services we consume, what we have been taught both formally and informally, the resources we depend on everyday, the kindness we receive from other's, and so on, come to us ultimately from our past generosity.

In Australia we have such an abundance of things we encounter everyday so if you are not familiar with this way of looking at things, it's hard to imagine we have made causes to have access to all those things. But we can recognise that our wonderful conditions are a rare exception in human history.

For most of recorded history the vast majority of the human population in all geographical areas has had to live in moderate to severe poverty. It has only been in the second half of the twentieth century that a majority of persons in some of the world's wealthier countries have been able to acquire modest levels of material wealth.

We can still see many countries of the third world where their citizens are living with not enough basic foods to eat and with personal ownership of only a handful of possessions. So in terms of human history we live in exceptional times. The living conditions of the majority of persons living in Australia today are superior in many ways to that experienced by Kings and Queens in past times.

Whilst most Australian citizens must have very large stores of good kamma from our past to enable us to live in such good conditions we are at the same time consuming a lot of our good kamma or merit just to live our daily lives. We are very high merit consumers. This is a characteristic of our modern world, we consume a lot of resources to function effectively in our society.

When we consider that our giving is the true cause of why we get these things in the first place if we improve our knowledge about giving it will have a mighty impact on our future wellbeing.

So first we need to have this appreciation that just like we have to keep putting money into our bank account to maintain or improve our standard of living, so to at the absolute reality level, we have to keep creating sufficient kammic wealth for our future wellbeing, particularly through our generosity. That is the first level.

However, if we just practiced generosity without any other purpose than accumulating causes for worldly wealth and comfort, we could be born rich over and over or live in sensual heavens for long periods of time. Once all this good kamma has been used up however our real situation is the same as it always was.

Therefore our practice of generosity should be directed towards helping us to come to something better.

This is the second level of understanding generosity in Buddhist practice. We don't give just to satisfy the requirements of living for ourselves and others, we learn to give in ways which will change our life absolutely.

Sooner or later for any practice to be effective in reducing our suffering we have to address the active ingredients in our mind that produce our suffering. We have seen from our earlier classes that negative or unwholesome minds are the root of all unhappiness. Now we have to introduce some powerful antidotes into our lives to reduce these unhappiness drivers and their resultants.

Whilst Buddhist texts explain our unwholesome minds as being 14 in number, the 14 can be distilled down to three root causes of all our unhappiness. These three are greed, hate and ignorance, with ignorance meaning not seeing the type of reality we call absolute reality.

"Viewed as the quality of generosity, giving has a particularly intimate connection to the entire movement of the Buddha's path. For the goal of the path is the destruction of greed, hate and delusion, and the cultivation of generosity directly debilitates greed and hate, while facilitating that pliancy of mind that allows for the eradication of delusion." (Bodhi, 1990) 1.

The Buddhist Path of reducing our craving and selfishness is how we can discover Nibbana, the highest and only absolutely secure happiness available. We therefore practice generosity with the purpose of removing greed, selfishness and craving.

At this stage we may not recognise very clearly how greed or craving is at the root of our unhappiness. One of our members remembers when he was first told over twenty years ago that craving was the cause of his suffering and he couldn't believe it! He remembers walking along in disbelief thinking "no way could craving be causing suffering"! He said he didn't think he had much craving for a start so how could it be such a big deal?

The thing was he didn't know his own mind. We can see the craving operating quite clearly when we watch the "monkey mind" in meditation. The "monkey mind" is our normal untrained mind. It can't sit still for a moment. It chases one sensation after another. After a few moments of watching the breath the mind gets caught up again thinking, daydreaming, worrying, being disturbed by noises, itches, restlessness and so on.

This is the craving. The mind is thirsty to experience all these things. It is not content to look at the breath. It grabs at one sensation after another because it is in a state of being unsatisfied. The nature of craving is it can't find anything that will satisfy it. It is unsatisfiable.

You can see how our craving makes it difficult for us to be happy. Instead of being content and happy with what we've got we incline towards being dissatisfied.

"People crave for pleasant experiences, crave for material things, crave for eternal life, and when disappointed, crave for eternal death. They are not only attached to sensual pleasures, wealth and power, but also to ideas, views, opinions, concepts and beliefs. And craving is linked to ignorance, that is, not seeing things as they really are, or failing to understand the reality of experience and life.

Under the delusion of self and not realising anatta (not self), a person clings to things which are impermanent, changeable, perishable. The failure to satisfy one's desires through these things causes disappointments and suffering". (Dhammananda 1999) 2.

So you see, we need to find out about generosity, the minds natural antidote to craving. But, didn't we recognise earlier that we already give many things to others everyday of our lives. If we are already giving a lot why isn't this generosity working to reduce our craving?

The act of giving itself makes the kamma for us to receive things in the future. How we give is the factor by which we can reduce our greed and craving.

Nina Van Gorkom writes in her essay Generosity: The Inward Dimension:

"The giving away of useful or pleasant things is an act of generosity. However, if we only pay attention to the outward deeds we do not know whether or not we are being sincerely generous. We should learn more about the mind which motivates our deeds. True generosity is difficult. While we are giving, our thoughts may not all be good and noble.

Our motives for giving may not all be pure. We may give with selfish motives - expecting something in return, hoping to be liked by the receiver or our gift, wanting to be known as a generous person. We may notice that there are different thoughts at different moments, some truly generous, and others having different motives." (Gorkom 1990) 1.

Often we are happy enough to give to others if certain conditions are met, such as the person is someone we like or know well, maybe we don't particularly want the thing we are giving or we have enough for ourself too, and the person thanks us afterwards, which we normally would expect.

If the receiver of our gift did not express thanks for the gift or if they did something with the gift we did not like, we may feel disappointed or resentful of their behaviour. This is giving with expectation of something in return. When we give in this way we are not really giving freely.

We could be giving because it is our duty, because it is our role in our family or because it is expected of us, because we were told to do it, because it is part of our job, because we want someone to do something for us in return, a quid pro quo, I'll do this if you'll do that, and so on. This is fine in the sense that most or maybe all these things do need to be done but probably, if you look, you'll find you are not actually doing these things with generosity.

While all this type of giving is going on, what is your mind doing? Is your mind just rushing to get the food on the table, is your mind tired and wanting to sit down for a cuppa, is your mind just mindlessly handing something to someone else, or is your mind really engaged mindfully in the act of giving WITH kindness, generosity and love in your heart?

There is a story in the Buddhist texts about a young boy named Priyadarshi. He knew about the Buddha and had great respect and love for him. One day, unexpectedly, he had an opportunity to meet the Buddha face to face. Immediately he wanted to make offerings to the Buddha and pay respect to the great man.

As he looked around for something to offer he realised he had nothing to give. He was not carrying anything to offer yet in his heart his wish to give something to the Buddha was so strong that he bent down and scooped up a handful of dirt from the ground. As the Buddha looked at him Priyadarshi offered the dirt with his heart filled with love, joy and respect.

As the Buddha blessed Priyadarshi he said that his offering would bring him to many lives of great wealth and good fortune because of the way it was offered. The offering was done with strong volition to give accompanied by heartfelt generosity, gratitude, and joy.

Buddha's Teachings are practised with our body, speech and mind. Generosity as part of Buddha Dhamma practice is performed with body, speech and mind.

So you can see that the mind component of giving is the bit that offers us the possibility to reduce our stinginess and craving if we learn to do it correctly.

Give like you were giving to your child. Give like you were giving to your love. Give like you were receiving the gift. Give completely. Give freely. Once given it belongs completely to the other person. It is no longer your property.

If the person then damages or throws away what they received from you, it should not raise any pain or concern in your mind. If it does, maybe you still have an idea that it belongs to you. You have not given the object freely.

You give someone some chocolates. They put them away. You say to yourself. "They should have shared the chocolates with everyone". In this case you have not offered the gift freely or completely. Your mind still thinks it has some control over the object you gave away, as if in some sense it still belongs to you.

Generate joy for the person receiving the gift. Be happy for their good fortune. Praise them for making the good causes to receive this gift. See yourself as the connector between them and their good merit. What you are giving them is coming from your merit and then from their merit, yet by you doing the giving, you are able to make good causes, to develop your practice of giving and to make merit.

You can see how having a generous heart is at the core of what it means to be kind to others. Generosity is the willingness to help others, the willingness to get up out of your chair quickly and happily when your help would be beneficial. Generosity has the openness, flexibility and lightness to put our own needs down for a while and consider the needs of another, to be sensitive enough and patient enough to find out what the other person really needs to be well and happy.

Our teacher, Master John D. Hughes, on meeting students for the first time would often recommend they start their Buddhist practice by offering food, drinks and flowers to their parents, particularly their Mother. He would also encourage and arrange for us to make the most of any opportunity to make offerings to the Buddhist Monks or Nuns.

This introduces another aspect of generosity. The reason why John would suggest new students made these offerings to their parents in particular and also to monks or nuns is because there is something about the qualities of those recipients of the gift that make any offerings you do to them produce very great kammic returns to the giver.

Lily de Silva writes in her essay entitled Giving in the Pali Canon:

"Another sutta (A.iii,336) maintains that it is not possible to estimate the amount of merit that accrues when an offering is endowed with six particular characteristics. Three of the characteristics belong to the donor while three belong to the donee. The doner should be happy at the thought of giving prior to making the offering. He should be pleased at the time of making the offering, and he should be satisfied after the offering is made. Thus the nobility of thought - without a trace of greed before, during and after the offering - makes a gift truly great. The recipient also should be free from lust, hatred and delusion, or they should have embarked on a course of training for the elimination of these mental depravities. When an almsgiving is endowed with these qualities of the donor and donee, the merit is said to be as immeasurable as the waters in the ocean." (de Silva, 1990) 1.

In fact there are quite a number of factors which can greatly increase the amount of merit made by a single act of giving. If we can rapidly increase our merit making the result is we can improve much faster. It is a key factor that determines the rate our happiness increases, and the rate of our progress on the Buddhist Path.

The Buddha said the kammic connection between a son or daughter and our parents, particularly our Mother is the strongest kammic connection of any type of relationship. Therefore a gift to our parents creates the greatest amount of good kamma compared to an equivalent gift to any other person.

The relative amount of good kamma produced by a suitable gift to our parent can be a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand or even more times that of the same gift to someone we have a weak kammic connection to. You would have to give the other person up to ten thousand or more equivalent gifts for the kamma made to be equal to one single offering of that item to your Mother, for example. According to the Buddha this is the nature of how the Law of Kamma works.

It is a similar case with regard to making offerings to beings whose minds are very pure. The kamma of such gifts is also greatly multiplied by the qualities of the receiver of the gift. Hence this is why when the small child Priyadarshi gave a handful of dirt to the Buddha the kammic result was so vast. Not only was the child's mind having many good qualities, so too the Buddha's mind was completely enlightened.

As laypersons we train to keep a minimum of five precepts. As our purity increases by us keeping our precepts well this too multiplies up the kammic results of our giving. It is said the keeping of each precept multiplies up the kammic results of a gift by a factor of tenfold. By taking five precepts in our mind before we do an offering we can multiply up the kammic return by up to 100,000 times.

This aspect of the Law of Kamma is why in one human life of say, 80 years, it is possible for us to create enough good causes to be born in a heaven birth which could last a million years or more.

Buddhist monks such as Venerable Liv Peo and Venerable Wimilananda keep 227 rules of conduct. It is very rare to meet persons who have developed such extraordinary purity of mind and conduct. Again, any offerings we make to such persons bring great benefits to ourselves in the future.

It is important to know what the kammic returns of particular gifts are. If we know what gift produces what outcome, we can do many offerings of a particular item which we recognise is needed by us. For example, the kammic return of offering flowers brings ten blessings to the giver.

1. Long Life
2. Good Health
3. Strength
4. Beauty
5. Wisdom
6. Ease along the Buddha Dhamma Path
7. Being born in beautiful environments
8. Born with good skin, hair and beautiful to look at
9. Always having a sweet smelling body
10. Pleasant relationships with friends

It is easy to give such things as food and flowers to our parents and the merit