Living in the Gift part 1

Me, the Buddhist idea of dana, and the spiritual marketplace

Substack wants me to create a “paid subscriber” level for the Money and Meaning newsletter. Earlier this year, I got a message from a reader “pledging” $80 a year, so I think there are subtle (not so subtle?) ways the platform promotes this. So I looked up “Substack pledges” and found:

If you haven't turned on paid subscriptions for your Substack, Pledges are a tool for your audience to show you they believe your work is valuable. This feature allows your subscribers to pledge to become a paid subscriber if and when you turn on paid subscriptions.

I get that Substack is a business and it needs to make money for me to keep using it. Taking a percentage of subscriptions is how they survive and grow. So by not having a paid subscriber list, I (and you!) are using their technology without paying for it. Substack’s whole business model is that readers would want to reward writers for good writing and interesting ideas. I spend about fifteen hours a week writing the newsletter. There are some number of Substack employees working 40+ hours a week providing the platform. And no one is earning anything if readers don’t pay (there’s no advertising). It’s all unpaid labor.

On my end, I sometimes wonder if I should work on this newsletter 15 hours a week if I’m not even trying to get paid. But I mostly wonder if anyone is reading it. That’s what I fear most: I’m spending all this time writing and no one is reading. I think that would be the real value to me about paid subscribers: knowing that people think my work is valuable. A paid subscription would give me some encouragement, sustain my energy.

The spiritual marketplace

And yet so far I’ve decided against having a paid subscription. First, I worry that asking and not getting would be worse than not asking at all. Second, I write about the intersection of money and spirituality and I find the “spiritual marketplace” distasteful. I don’t want to feel like someone who sells spiritual ideas for money. I’ll return to this later, but all “my” spiritual thoughts come from someone or somewhere else anyway. I’m just mixing and matching from our common human spiritual and intellectual inheritance.¹

So yeah, the spiritual marketplace. Take a look this (from this guy):

LOL. The price for a full ego reduction is a bargain!

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Compare our young friend selling his spiritual services with the Buddhist nun Mushim Ikeda, who operates in dana, the Buddhist method of exchange:

According to tradition in Asian countries, the teachings of the Buddha, including instruction in meditation, are offered freely without a price tag attached to them. This is because these teachings are considered to be priceless. Dharma teachings and practices have the potential to increase happiness and contentment and to decrease anger, fear, stress, and dissatisfaction. At their deepest level, they are considered to open profound paths of insight into the nature of reality, the self, and the mysteries of life and death. Those receiving the gift of a teacher’s personal guidance, or upon being moved by a teacher’s written or spoken teachings, traditionally wish to help sustain the teacher through the practice of generous giving, or Dana. A more contemporary way of understanding this relationship would be to say that Mushim offers Buddhist teachings on a gift economics basis.

In Buddhist practice, giving from the heart not only supports teachers, it deeply supports your own spiritual practice. It’s practice in accepting gratitude and enoughness.

Grace and Gratitude

I talk about grace a lot in this newsletter and it’s worth discussing a little here. Grace means that life is a gift. The world and everything in it is a gift. Your life is a gift. Writer Charles Eisenstein puts it:

We did not earn this world. We did not earn our lives. We did not earn the sun; it is not thanks to our hard efforts that the sun shines. We did not earn the ability of plants to grow. We did not earn water. We did not earn our conception; we did not earn our birth. Our hearts beat and our livers metabolize all on their own. Life is a gift and that’s just fundamental.

You didn’t earn your breath, you didn’t earn your heartbeat, you didn’t earn your blood, you didn’t earn your conception, you didn’t earn your mother taking care of you, nursing you or at least someone looking out for you enough with no possibility of compensation.

When we apprehend these basic truths gratitude comes naturally. Gratitude is the knowledge of having received and the consequent desire to give in turn. Gratitude is primal. All beings including human beings have an unquenchable desire to pour forth their gifts.

Grace surrounds us. We couldn’t not receive it if we tried. Say this to yourself right now.

“I am already living in the Gift.”

Practice throughout the day, where you find it appropriate. For me right now: air conditioning. Water on demand. The sun leaking through the window. Bodily security. My dog Wu Wei sleeping at my feet. I am living in grace. When I think about these things gratitude comes naturally.

When Buddhist nuns and monk teach in Dana, they are practicing offering from this place of gratitude, from the heart, from an unquenchable desire to give. In their free offer, they practice trusting grace will come back. And when the student offers dana, dana becomes a reciprocal exchange of gratitude, a recognition that both live in gift, teacher and student, from each other and from the universe.

Grace is the hardest thing for our egos because it’s the most non-egoic thing to trust. Surrender is annihilation to an ego. So is giving. The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go.

To give and receive gifts breaches a boundary, namely the boundary between me and you, between self and other. — Charles Eisenstein

Shockabuku

A few years ago, I took a workshop called The Soul of Money with one of my heroes, Lynne Twist. She something that inspires and provokes me to this day:

“What we want is enough, and when we get more than we need, it belongs to other people.” — Lynne Twist

Combine that with one of the Fourteen Precepts of Engaged Buddhism:

Possess nothing that should belong to others. Respect the property of others, but prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on Earth.

If I have enough, when I get more than I need, I am actually taking what belongs to other people. Really thinking about this, letting in this possibility, is shockabuku, the swift spiritual kick in the head that alters your reality forever.²

That’s the deeper reason why I don’t want want to work in the spiritual marketplace: Because of financial freedom, I have enough. If I take more, I’m taking from others. Once I have enough to meet my needs and a little of my personals desires, I want to live into a greater desire. I want to live in the Gift. I want to surrender. I want to live in grace.

Participating in grace

The gospel is before all else a call to live differently, so that life can be shared with others. In other words, the gospel is ultimately calling us to a stance of simplicity, vulnerability, dialogue, powerlessness, and humility. These are the only virtues that make communion and community and intimacy possible. — Richard Rohr

As some of you readers know, my personal mission to help people participate in grace. Because I live in enough, I’m trying to practice my own version of dana. This is how I’ve worked it out for now. Terms and conditions may change, subject to my whims. Actually, I think about this stuff a lot:

• I write this newsletter Money and Meaning for free.³ As you can see even in this piece, nothing I write is really mine per se. I’m just trying to learn, and then live, according to the wisdom of our spiritual heritage. By offering it to you in dana, I’m trying to share in the Gift. If you would like to participate in grace too, I invite you to do one of two things: (1) Venmo me (@douglas-tsoi). Proceeds will go to the causes I support: the Center for Action and Contemplation in Santa Fe, Homeboy Industries in Los Angeles, and the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization in Portland. All organizations offering grace to those in need. Or (2) donate to an organization that you feel connected to offering grace to those in need. If you do, I’d love to hear where you offered dana. Knowing my writing had effect on you would give me encouragement and sustain me.

• I practice spiritual direction at whatever feels good, right and alive to you. Listening is the highest form of loving. It's a wonderful way for me to connect more intimately and personally with people and to share in the exchange of grace. If you would like to practice spiritual direction with me, you are free to choose any offering that feels good, right, and alive to you. I want my spiritual direction practice to similar to Buddhist nuns’ and monks’ practice of dana. Every time I offer spiritual direction it truly feels like a gift to me. And when I see someone has offered dana in my Venmo, it feels like a second gift. Again it’s on a gift exchange basis, so don't get stopped by any financial concerns you may have. I'm here for you. 

• I charge for teaching Financial Freedom, based on income. Over the years, I’ve learned that people who I let into my course for free almost never finish the course. People need some skin in the game in order to commit to change. In a strange way, charging tuition is really a gift of accountability. So tuition is based on income because the exact same amount of money means different levels of financial commitment to people of different incomes. The next cohort is July-August. You should take it if you want more understanding and control of your financial life.

Grace surrounds us, we couldn’t not receive it if we tried. When we have more than we need, we are really taking from others. Heaven is a place on earth. But only we make it.

If you like, I’ll write more a part 2 of Living in the Gift. Let me know!

1. If you think about it, all ideas have a lineage, which brings into question the concept of intellectual “property” itself. I started off as an intellectual property lawyer and “originality” is a deep philosophical conundrum dispensed by the law a little too quickly.

2. Or more correctly, shakubuku, but that’s not nearly as fun.

3. Sorry, Substack.