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It’s the season of generosity, of doing good deeds. Wonderful. What a terrific excuse to strengthen our kindness muscles, to be openly, and with out apology, compassionate.
This year I am slowly but surely making my way through The Flower Ornament Scripture. It is a blast. The characters are right out of Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. So far, the main character, Enlightening Being, has been settling down to his practice. First, he’s made sure his concentration is strong, doing such a good job that bodhisattvas from the ten directions pat him on the back. And he’s rambled on a bit about miracles. Now, he settles in to teach.
His first lesson? Do good deeds. Not sit an hour a day. Not give terrific presents to your teacher so she’ll sit you near her in the meditation hall. Not do a thousand bows. Just good deeds.
Good deeds bring with them a deep happiness and sparkles of joy because they are sparks of an expanded compassion that come right out of our hearts. We benefit as much as the person or people on the receiving end. We feel better. The very act is a visible reminder that we aren’t always self centered.
These are not huge actions. As I look back at this year, the good deeds that have touched me the most have been small, spontaneous acts of kindness. Last summer, after a long hard day in a courthouse where I waited to be called as a character witness for a sangha member, I came back to the abbey to a scrubbed basement floor. For months the basement had reeked of cat pee and duck poop. Out of desperation I had finally purchased a gallon of bleach, promising myself that I was going to get on my hands and knees and scrub the smells clean sometime soon.
Someone else beat me to it. Cat, my dharma sister had spent the time I was at the courthouse cleaning every inch of the floor.
One of the dharma students, Ron Allen, needed eye surgery. It was supposed to take about a half hour. Outpatient. Instead it took four and a half hours. Kogam, one of the other dharma students took him to surgery and waited all day for him, keeping me posted, chanting for his friend.
Ron Allen wrote a one act play for us for Buddha’s birthday, when I had simply asked for a short presentation. Since he is a well regarded and very busy playwright this took huge chunks of time out of his overflowing days.
None of these cost a cent.
As I think about this, when each of us is completely present, whatever the situation, there is always a “good work” choice. Maybe the good work is to be silent and just listen. Maybe it is to pick up the tab for lunch. Maybe it is offering to do the driving.
A recent study done by the University of Michigan reported that elderly people who “perform selfless services” are happier than those who do not. Significantly happier. This is true across race, income, health. So, good works it is. Someone once told me about his mother dying of cancer; she died blissfully happy. Since I know that is tough to do I asked why. He responded that his mother spent her last months knitting little caps for preemie babies.
“It was the knitting.”
May all beings be as lucky.
