mendel

Generosity, or dana, is one of the ten paramitas of Buddhism. This quote opens an article on it in this month's Tricycle:

When you are practicing generosity, you should feel a little pinch when you give something away. That pinch is your stinginess protesting. If you give away your old, worn-out coat that you wouldn't be caught dead wearing, that is not generosity. There is no pinch. [...] Giving away your coat might keep someone warm, but it does not address the problem we face as spiritual practitioners: to free ourselves from self-cherishing and self-grasping.

- Gelek Rimpoche

"[F]or Nietzsche, the concept of guilt emerges when we draw a distinction between intention and action. 'I didn't mean to do that,' we will say. In this sense, guilt is a total abstraction, for it presupposes that doing is different from choosing."

- Tom Hodgkinson, How To Be Free (which I'm very much enjoying generally).

Each Moment

What primarily concerns me is the necessity for a student to learn to be as awake as possible in each moment. Otherwise it can seem as if the point of practice is to have breakthroughs. The usefulness of these openings exists only if they clarify life and our ability to live it and serve it. But until mind and body - usually through years of patient practice - cease to want an ego-centered life, the openings and their teachings cannot [must not] be distorted into ego successes. Only when mind and body are mostly free of reactivity can a true understanding of what life is become possible - not through a momentary breakthrough, but through an open and compassionate living of life.

--Charlotte Joko Beck, from "Life's Not a Problem" (Summer 1998)