Giving/Receiving

During the meditation practice today, I was reflecting back to the Friday evening Buddhist study group, where one of the participants had mentioned the practice of giving as asking "what can this person gain from me?" This is the opposite of saying "What can I do to help this person" because it starts with the other person and then proceeds to ask how that person can be benefited by me. I find this to be refreshingly different from thinking that giving comes from within the giver. It actually begins with the needs of the receiver, which need to be acknowledged and fully known before the giver can create an appropriate response.
   Today's adage explores #6, "Those who give selflessly are blessed; those who do good deeds are happy." Giving selflessly, as I mentioned, is not easy, because what a person gives and claims as being good is often shaped by their previous conditioning. One often doesn't know what forms of giving are most appropriate to a situation, yet they continue to administer the gifts that they are most familiar with, such as specific kinds of advice or even agendas. The intention to give may be pure, but the giving itself has some self attached to it. That seems to be why giving selflessly, however elusive at times, is emphasized in Master Sheng Yen's remarks.
   I liken this process to being a vending machine. In the movie Penguin Highway, the main character at one point is bullied by a group of kids and is tied to a vending machine, where he starts to pretend he is a "human vending machine" who simply relays requests. If a person functions in this way (or at least imagines such a crazy scenario) they might see giving as a more restrained process that is based on one's capacities as well as the other's wishes. If I am "sold out" of one thing (such as time or resources), maybe I can suggest another gift that I have to share. Conversely, a vending machine doesn't choose on behalf of the receiver, but, instead, offers a range of choices and then responds to the receivers' requests. This is actually quite different from what people actually do, which is to try to give what they don't have (exhausting themselves or exceeding their capacities) or try to give what the receiver didn't even request! Well, giving and receiving are pretty sloppy procedures after all, but perhaps a funny analogy might work to change how these might be framed and or look like.

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