How should I wrap my presence?

Many platitudes about the holidays focus on the joy of giving.  Of course, ideas become platitudes by being generally true or at least by being generally accepted as true.  As a parent, I gain a great deal of joy from watching my children receiving gifts.  Yet, there is sometimes a dark side to giving.

Part of this dark side is the norm of reciprocity.  This is defined succinctly by the clip above from the TV show, Big Bang Theory, but basically when someone gives you something, we feel a need to reciprocate.  This is a powerful social norm which can change a joyous giving into a burdensome obligation.  One of the classic studies was conducted in 1974  by Phillip Kunz.  That year, he randomly selected 600 families he didn't know and sent them Christmas cards.

To these 600 strangers, Kunz sent his Christmas greetings: handwritten notes or a card with a photo of him and his family. And then Kunz waited to see what would happen.

"It was just, you know, a shot in the dark," he says. "I didn't know what would happen."

But about five days later, responses started filtering back — slowly at first and then more, until eventually they were coming 12, 15 at a time. Eventually Kunz got more than 200 replies. "I was really surprised by how many responses there were," he says. "And I was surprised by the number of letters that were written, some of them three, four pages long." (See article describing this study in more detail here)

This is the norm of reciprocity at work, and is especially surprising when you remember that these 3-page letters he received were not typed on computers and mass-produced -- they all were handwritten in 1974.

When considering our holiday gift-giving, do we feel it as an obligation or as a joy?  If it's stressful and obligatory, then is it really giving?  The first of the Paramitas (the perfections of the heart that we are cultivating through practice) is dana, or generosity.  The Buddha said (in the Dana Sutta), that there are three conditions that should be met:

1. Before giving, the mind should be glad
2. While giving, the mind should feel inspired (bright and clear)
3. After giving, the mind should feel gratified

Can we practice these three as we shop, as we give, and as we receive?

Perhaps part of what makes the giving difficult for many of us is that the focus becomes the gift itself, which as Nancy Thompson noted in a recent post, is empty.  Another practice is to recognize that we have much more to give than stuff.  Perhaps the greatest gift we can give is our presence. 

As we join with friends and family and others with whom we often have complicated feelings, can we drop the past feelings and be present with them as they are now?  Can we drop our judgments about them while we are with them?  Can we reduce the effect of our past conditioning and respond in a fresh way?  The person in front of you is NOT the same person he or she was last year (or even yesterday).  Can we see who they are at this moment alone?  Can we listen without needing to say our "side?"  Can we understand their point of view, without deciding if it's better or worse than ours?  This is really what most people want - to be truly listened to.  Presence is a present we don't need to wrap.

Photo credits: Here and here.

Peace on Earth and Good Will (Metta) to All

As we enter the holiday season, we will hear the traditional words from Luke 2:14, in which the shepherds abiding in the fields heard the heavenly host of angels saying, "Peace on Earth, and good will to all men." Regardless of whether one comes from this Christian tradition or not, or whether you find it easier to believe in miracles such as virgin birth or that such stories were grafted on to the historical Jesus to make it more palatable for Greek culture that has a long tradition of gods, er, "collaborating" with humans, there are some remarkable aspects of this story. 

First, in the same Gospel that discusses lofty individuals such as Caesar Augustus and Governor Cyrenius, it is remarkable that the message of good will came to shepherds.  Shepherds were not considered to be of high social standing, yet this message was given directly to them, and not to more "important" people, to CNN, or to government officials who could spread it more easily.  Perhaps this demonstrates that peace is something that can only be found and supported by individuals.  I cannot grant you peace, but I can try to maintain good will toward you which may help support your attainment of peace.  It is a grass-roots message, rather than top-down.

Second, I am struck by the discussion of good will to all mankind.  This is similar to Thanissaro Bhikku's definition of metta. I quote (from this excellent article):

"Metta" is usually translated as loving-kindness, but often it is more helpful to think of it as goodwill....Goodwill is often a more skillful attitude than overt expressions of love, and for three reasons.  The first is that goodwill is an attitude you can express for everyone without fear of being hypocritical or unrealistic.  If the people around you haven't been acting lovably, it's good to remind yourself that although you don't condone your behavior --you don't even have to like them--you still wish them well.

The second reason is that goodwill is a more skillful feeling to have toward those who would react unskillfully to your love.  There are probably people you've harmed in the past who would rather not have anything to do with you ever again, so the intimacy of love would actually be a source of pain for them, rather than joy. There are also people who, when they see that you want to express love, would be quick to take advantage of it.  In these cases, a more distant sense of goodwill--that you promise yourself never to harm those people or those beings--would be better for everyone involved.

The third reason is that goodwill acts as a check on your behavior toward those you love to keep it from becoming oppressive.  It reminds you that people ultimately will become truly happy not as a result of your caring for them but as a result of their own skillful actions, and that the happiness of self-reliance is greater than any happiness coming from dependency.  If you truly feel goodwill for yourself and others, you won't let your desire for intimacy render you insensitive to what would actually be the most skillful way to promote true happiness for all.

Many of us will come together this season with friends and family members with whom we have complicated feelings.  Neither we nor they may be ready to enter into full intimate and vulnerable lovingkindness.  Cultivating good will toward all, however, may be easier on both us and them, allowing space for all the complicated feelings.

As Thanissaro Bhikku notes, "there's a passage in which the Buddha taught the monks a chant for spreading goodwill to all snakes and other things...Strikingly, the chant concludes with the sentence, 'May the beings depart.'  This reflects the truth that living together is often difficult..."  

Good will can offer the space that we may find lacking when we come back together and are confronted with old patterns and difficult feelings.  Perhaps Luke wrote them backwards: Good will to all is what can create peace on Earth.

Image sources: Here and here